Writings to Download
Ruminating on Seaweed: An Annotated Photo-Essay Exploring the Film‐Philosophy of Pierre Creton with the Seaweed‐Eating Sheep of North Ronaldsay
SHIMA Journal of Island Studies, Vol 17 No. 2 (2023), 140–171.
DOI: 10.21463/shima.192
Photo-EssaySHIMA Website
From Darkness
Catalogue Essay for Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum exhibition, Feb–March 2020
Full CatalogueBright Hauntings
Catalogue Essay for Caroline Jane Harris, ASC Gallery, June–August 2018
Full CatalogueFiction as Method: Counterfactuals and Effective Virtualities in Contemporary Art and Culture
Co-edited with Theo-Reeves Evison, Sternberg Press (2017)
Design and Layout by Keith Dodds
Contributors: Justin Barton, Delphi Carstens & Mer Roberts, Tim Etchells, Matthew Fuller, David Garcia, Dora García, M. John Harrison, Simon O'Sullivan, Erica Scourti
"Fiction—it's not just for storytelling anymore. This book takes readers on a whirlwind tour through a range of perspectives from the arts and the humanities in order to reveal fiction's prevalence and functionality in the objects and processes that we are convinced are completely real. More significantly, however, it describes the myriad ways in which the elements that comprise this greater universe of fiction have been discovered, produced, harnessed, and/or used for purposes that stretch from the malevolent to the compassionate. This volume is a thought-provoking and enjoyable read—even at its most disconcerting moments."
Steve Kurtz, Professor Emeritus, University of Buffalo, cofounder of Critical Art Ensemble
A Life of Idiocy: Artaud after Deleuze
Theory, Culture and Society Vol.33 Nos7–8 (Dec 2016)
A scholarly article written as part of a special issue on art and affect. In it, I consider Deleuze’s proposal that Artaud is a kind of "idiot", in that he refuses to accept social norms of common sense and questions the image of the human as a rational animal. I am broadly in agreement with Deleuze on this point, but I argue that, when approaching Artaud's work, this deterritorialisation of the conceptual onto idiocy must be accompanied by an affective deterritorialisation. It is this, I suggest, that characterises Artaud's notion of "the body" and in particular his autofiction Artaud le Momo -- where Momo is Marseillais slang for "idiot".
PDF Journal WebsiteAthleticism is not Joy: Extricating Artaud from Deleuze’s Spinoza
Deleuze Studies Journal Vol.10 No.2 (May 2016)
An academic article examining the ways in which Deleuze’s reading of Artaud establishes sympathies with Spinoza’s Ethics, and why these parallels should be regarded with scepticism. To simplify, I am reluctant to agree that the diagram of anterior exteriority which lies at the core of Artaud's lived ontology of suffering can or should be synchronised with the comparable diagram of a constitutive outside which forms the basis of Spinoza's ethics of joy.
PDF Journal WebsiteRattle: A Journal at the Convergence of Art and Writing
A five year project co-created with Tom Robinson of Gloucester Road Books, Bristol
Issue 1 Editorial Issue 2 Editorial Issue 3 Editorial Issue 4 Editorial Issue 5 Editorial Gloucester Road Books
Untitled: Retreat from Language in the Titling of Rachel Whiteread
Écrire L'Art/Writing Art (Mare & Martin, 2014)
From a paper first presented at the Sorbonne, University of Paris IV. The essay proposes that Rachel Whiteread's titling "formula" be considered as more than a deconstructive wordplay of negations; rather, I argue, these titles should be seen as demonstrating a productive poetics beyond negativity. In making this case, I draw on the descriptive exhuastion of H P Lovecraft's horror stories and especially Herman Melville's character Bartleby, the Scrivener
.PDF Publisher Website
Plane of Immanence
Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014)
An extended glossary entry on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the plane of immanence or consistency, which Christian Kerslake has called "perhaps theproblem inspiring Deleuze's work."
PDF Publisher WebsiteThe Object of Myth: A Review of Graham Harman's Recent Publications
Philosophy of Photography Vol.2, No.1 (2011)
PDF Journal Website“Nsissim is the Eye” (An Essay-Poem)
Catalogue piece for Andy Holden's ChewyCosmosThinglyTime at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2011)
PDFPoems
Herbarium (Capsule Press, 2011)
A poetry anthology edited by James Wilkes featuring work by over fifty writers. The project explored contemporary relationships with medicinal plants and was undertaken in collaboration with the pop-up community garden at 100 Union Street, London SE1 installed by Urban Physic Garden and Wayward Plants.
My contributions were "Salad Burnett" and "Sage", the latter written with poet and musician Chris Page.