Writing Art

This is the first volume in a series, published in association with the Kent Institute of Art and Design. Each volume creates a site between academic scholarship and other forms, modes and genres of writing including essays in imaging in photography and other textual forms. In this volume, art is viewed as a presentation, not a re-presentation, of theory. The relationship between them is perceived as symbiotic. The interplay across art and theory is understood as contiguous, not homogeneous: neither are defined in terms of content or form but, rather, through a series of questions and arguments concerning their identity, however contingent or provisional, within cultural production and institutions of culture. Art criticism is perceived, here, as a place where art's meanings and definitions are transmitted, fixed, disputed and changed through interpretation and commentary, words and images. "ACT" argues that serious art writing is only possible through drawing on a multiplicity of intellectual models and modes which include critical theory and literature.
Each volume in the "ACT" series will provide new opportunities for discussing and determining the ever-changing boundaries between art, criticism and theory. "ACT 1" explores the conundrum posed when the pre-positions "about" or "on" are abandoned in an encounter with art and its representations.