Books by Simon O'Sullivan
This book looks at three different kinds of writing practice - theory-fiction, autofiction/autoth... more This book looks at three different kinds of writing practice - theory-fiction, autofiction/autotheory and art writing - that are increasingly prevalent as genres (or ‘hybrid genres’) in the arts and critical humanities. The chapters in the book operate as a critical survey of these new forms of writing (many examples are listed) whilst at the same time they each work towards some provisional definitions. Some key precursors to these new genres are also identified.
The book explores what these new kinds of writing do. What is particular to them or what do they add to those already existing styles and genres (and especially the academic essay and article)? Key here is that each form of writing works in a performative manner or as a device that enables a shift in perspective. A case is made for their urgency in relation to contemporary issues and concerns and for their importance in terms of being both from and for more marginalised communities.
The book concludes with a discussion of machine writing and especially our collaboration with artificial intelligence language models.
See: https://shorturl.at/54qzZ
The Ancient Device is the story of four somehow familiar, rather dishevelled, sometimes sympathet... more The Ancient Device is the story of four somehow familiar, rather dishevelled, sometimes sympathetic characters: Hare, Fox-Owl, Ribbonhead and King John. We meet this dysfunctional and longing band of players on their journey to a site in the English landscape where they are to give a performance of sorts.
Yet exactly who they are, where they are and what they are up to, becomes increasingly uncertain as the book draws us into the mist, exploring and experimenting with notions of narrative and plot, psychology and self, performance and place.
Like the characters themselves, readers are unlikely to come out as they went in.
The Ancient Device is both a novel and an exploration of what the author calls the ‘fiction of the self’. The title of the book refers to this fiction that we all necessarily inhabit, but also to performance as a kind of device (and, indeed, the book as a device too). At stake in this exploration is also the development of an idea of ‘myth-work’ and how narrative and the laying out of imaginary landscapes and figures can work as a form of repair.
See: https://www.triarchypress.net/ancient.html
From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair is a two-part book bringing together fourteen essays ... more From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair is a two-part book bringing together fourteen essays broadly concerned with the “fiction of the self” and with practices and explorations beyond that fiction. Each part of the book approaches this theme from a different angle.
The first part, entitled “On Magic and Myth-Work,” deals with practices of transformation and with contemporary myth-making in relation to landscape, performance, and writing. The second part, “On Care and Repair,” gathers together essays that are more personal, but that also look to various technologies (or devices) of self-care alongside ideas of collaboration and the collective. Crucial throughout this exploration are questions of agency and self-narration, but also how these connect to larger issues around historical trauma, neoliberalism, and ecological crisis.
The essays reference many other texts and fellow travellers, and also draw on the author's own experiences (and teaching) within various art and theory worlds, as well as with performance, magical practices, gaming, and Buddhism.
See: https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/from-magic-and-myth-work-to-care-and-repair/
Fictioning: the Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, 2019
Maps out the practice of fictioning as a new field of study for art and philosophy. Fictioning in... more Maps out the practice of fictioning as a new field of study for art and philosophy. Fictioning in art is an open-ended, experimental practice that involves performing, diagramming or assembling to create or anticipate new modes of existence. In this extensively illustrated book containing over 80 diagrams and images of artworks, David Burrows and Simon O'Sullivan explore the technics of fictioning through three focal points: mythopoesis, myth-science and mythotechnesis. These relate to three specific modes of fictioning: performance fictioning, science fictioning and machine fictioning. In this way, Burrows and O'Sullivan explore how fictioning can offer us alternatives to the dominant fictions that construct our reality in an age of 'post-truth' and 'perception management'. Through fictioning, they look forward to the new kinds of human, part-human and non-human bodies and societies to come.
'This is a book about loops, the fictional and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past that never was and the people yet to come-and how to occupy them, to live in the in-between, summon demons, talk to cats, compose new temporalities, all in the name of building a future so alien that none of us could even imagine what it might be like.' Laboria Cuboniks
Futures and Fictions, 2017
Futures and Fictions edited with Henriette Gunkel and Simon O’Sullivan. Repeater Books 2017
Papers by Simon O'Sullivan
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 2023
My article is concerned with the investment in-and reality of-fictions. It looks at the magical i... more My article is concerned with the investment in-and reality of-fictions. It looks at the magical idea of the egregore or of an entity, broadly understood, that is produced through collective investment and then speaks back to its authors as if it came from someplace else. At stake here is also an investigation into other kinds of agency-other 'deep assignments'-that are always already at work behind the fiction of the self. Important in this enquiry is an idea of writing-or rewriting the self. Indeed, my claim is that various fields-from magickal practice to literary experimentation and from neuroscience to psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis-offer up important resources for this creative and pragmatic task.
Fieldwork for Future Ecologies, 2022
New Perspectives on Academic Writing: The Thing That Wouldn't Die
We say, "There is no such thing as academic writing. " The academic (also us) draws a breath and ... more We say, "There is no such thing as academic writing. " The academic (also us) draws a breath and responds by pointing to the volumes of critical writing on our bookshelves separated from our other books (which the academic silently observes are mostly Science Fiction). We concede Arts and Humanities academics have one Unique Selling Proposition: critique. (Not a problem, critique is necessary, it is needed.) Still, we say there is no such thing as academic writing, though without doubt there are academic communities. When the academic asks how is anyone able to identify our community if there is no such thing as academic writing we say, look out for three kinds of performances: 1. a conducting of communication between the living and the dead; 2. an illuminating (an invoking) of some problem, concept, or object; 3. a critique of another academic's writing. Through these performances a bond is tied between small groups that make up the friends of critique, for we are relatively speaking, a community few in number: whether in one building, city or nation, or dispersed globally and connected by the internet, we may as well be on an island. And in fact, we think this island is well known and has a name (we have written about this before); our community has at least one foot on Immanuel Kant's "Island of Truth" (whatever post-or anti-Kantian protestations we make) (see Burrows and O'Sullivan 2019: 103-24). This is a place Kant also describes as a "land of truth" surrounded by a "broad and stormy ocean, the true seat of illusion"; the latter, according to the philosopher, portending adventures which can never be concluded or escaped from (Kant 1998: 337-8). Despite Kant's warning, we suggest it is this "Island of Truth, " the ground drawn by The Critique of Pure Reason (1998), that is hard to escape from. Here, we are not declaring we feel bound by Kant's correlationist notions; rather, we are specifically concerned with Kant's "Island" as a fictional device that shelters academic communities on the robust terrain of critique, at a distance from others lost in a fog of dubious metaphysics. The academic seems affronted and we explain that we do not question whether epistemic traditions have value; rather our question is whether some of the "Island's" customs ensure, despite our best efforts, that our community lives high above and far from objects of critique. We do not want to live like this, like isolated 3
Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology
The Kantian Catastrophe: Conversations on Finitude and the Limits of Philosophy, 2017
This article explores a trend in some British contemporary art towards 'fictioning', when this na... more This article explores a trend in some British contemporary art towards 'fictioning', when this names not only the blurring of the reality/fiction boundary, but also, more generally, the material instantiation -or performance -of fictions within the real. It attends to three practices of this fiction as mode of existence: sequencing and nesting (Mike Nelson); the deployment 'fabulous images' and intercessors (Brian Catling); and more occult technologies and an idea of the 'invented life' (Bonnie Camplin). The article also attends to the mythopoetic or 'world-making' aspect of these practices and the way this can involve recourse to other times, past and future. Mythopoesis also involves a sense of collective enunciation and, with that, a concomitant disruption of the more dominant fiction of the self.
Days were spent in fumes from the copying machine, from the aerosols and inks of the 'banner prod... more Days were spent in fumes from the copying machine, from the aerosols and inks of the 'banner production department' -bed sheets vanished -banners appeared, from the soldering of audio, video, and lighting leads. The place stank. The garden was strewn with the custom made cabinets of the group's equipment, the black silkemulsion paint drying on the hessian surfaces. Everything matched. The band logo shone silver from the bullet-proof Crimpeline of the speaker front. Very neat. Very fetching.
published in: Situational Diagram, eds. Karin Schneider and Begum Yasar, New York: Dominique Lévy... more published in: Situational Diagram, eds. Karin Schneider and Begum Yasar, New York: Dominique Lévy, 2016, pp. 13-25.
Uploads
Books by Simon O'Sullivan
The book explores what these new kinds of writing do. What is particular to them or what do they add to those already existing styles and genres (and especially the academic essay and article)? Key here is that each form of writing works in a performative manner or as a device that enables a shift in perspective. A case is made for their urgency in relation to contemporary issues and concerns and for their importance in terms of being both from and for more marginalised communities.
The book concludes with a discussion of machine writing and especially our collaboration with artificial intelligence language models.
See: https://shorturl.at/54qzZ
Yet exactly who they are, where they are and what they are up to, becomes increasingly uncertain as the book draws us into the mist, exploring and experimenting with notions of narrative and plot, psychology and self, performance and place.
Like the characters themselves, readers are unlikely to come out as they went in.
The Ancient Device is both a novel and an exploration of what the author calls the ‘fiction of the self’. The title of the book refers to this fiction that we all necessarily inhabit, but also to performance as a kind of device (and, indeed, the book as a device too). At stake in this exploration is also the development of an idea of ‘myth-work’ and how narrative and the laying out of imaginary landscapes and figures can work as a form of repair.
See: https://www.triarchypress.net/ancient.html
The first part, entitled “On Magic and Myth-Work,” deals with practices of transformation and with contemporary myth-making in relation to landscape, performance, and writing. The second part, “On Care and Repair,” gathers together essays that are more personal, but that also look to various technologies (or devices) of self-care alongside ideas of collaboration and the collective. Crucial throughout this exploration are questions of agency and self-narration, but also how these connect to larger issues around historical trauma, neoliberalism, and ecological crisis.
The essays reference many other texts and fellow travellers, and also draw on the author's own experiences (and teaching) within various art and theory worlds, as well as with performance, magical practices, gaming, and Buddhism.
See: https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/from-magic-and-myth-work-to-care-and-repair/
'This is a book about loops, the fictional and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past that never was and the people yet to come-and how to occupy them, to live in the in-between, summon demons, talk to cats, compose new temporalities, all in the name of building a future so alien that none of us could even imagine what it might be like.' Laboria Cuboniks
Papers by Simon O'Sullivan
The book explores what these new kinds of writing do. What is particular to them or what do they add to those already existing styles and genres (and especially the academic essay and article)? Key here is that each form of writing works in a performative manner or as a device that enables a shift in perspective. A case is made for their urgency in relation to contemporary issues and concerns and for their importance in terms of being both from and for more marginalised communities.
The book concludes with a discussion of machine writing and especially our collaboration with artificial intelligence language models.
See: https://shorturl.at/54qzZ
Yet exactly who they are, where they are and what they are up to, becomes increasingly uncertain as the book draws us into the mist, exploring and experimenting with notions of narrative and plot, psychology and self, performance and place.
Like the characters themselves, readers are unlikely to come out as they went in.
The Ancient Device is both a novel and an exploration of what the author calls the ‘fiction of the self’. The title of the book refers to this fiction that we all necessarily inhabit, but also to performance as a kind of device (and, indeed, the book as a device too). At stake in this exploration is also the development of an idea of ‘myth-work’ and how narrative and the laying out of imaginary landscapes and figures can work as a form of repair.
See: https://www.triarchypress.net/ancient.html
The first part, entitled “On Magic and Myth-Work,” deals with practices of transformation and with contemporary myth-making in relation to landscape, performance, and writing. The second part, “On Care and Repair,” gathers together essays that are more personal, but that also look to various technologies (or devices) of self-care alongside ideas of collaboration and the collective. Crucial throughout this exploration are questions of agency and self-narration, but also how these connect to larger issues around historical trauma, neoliberalism, and ecological crisis.
The essays reference many other texts and fellow travellers, and also draw on the author's own experiences (and teaching) within various art and theory worlds, as well as with performance, magical practices, gaming, and Buddhism.
See: https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/from-magic-and-myth-work-to-care-and-repair/
'This is a book about loops, the fictional and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past that never was and the people yet to come-and how to occupy them, to live in the in-between, summon demons, talk to cats, compose new temporalities, all in the name of building a future so alien that none of us could even imagine what it might be like.' Laboria Cuboniks