Situations of writing

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical introduction to a double issue of Journal of Visual Art Practice. The issue, titled ‘Situations of Writing’, explores the intersections of art practice, hybrid forms of writing, and knowledge production. It draws together a variety of contributions that variously delve into the complexities of writing with and around images, emphasising experimental approaches, and reimagining traditional scholarly publishing. This introduction situates the key problematics, drawing upon historical examples, but within the present-day context of academic, digital publishing. The editors urge practitioners to challenge conventional modes of academic writing, inviting makers, authors and readers to have a stake in an evolving landscape of art practice and visual culture studies. Setting out a combined exploration (and making) of form, content, and the structures of address, this special issue paves the way for new possibilities in scholarly research and knowledge dissemination.

KEYWORDS:

• Art practice
• experimental forms
• knowledge dissemination
• visual culture
• writing with images

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Looking at Images: A Researcher’s Guide (edited by Jane Birkin, Rima Chahrour and Sunil Manghani, 2014), available online: http://blog.soton.ac.uk/wsapgr/looking-at-images/.

2 See two book projects, Writing with Images and What is Interesting Writing in Art History?, available online: https://jameselkins.com/writing-with-images/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Birkin

Jane Birkin is an artist, designer and scholar. She is a Research Fellow at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (UK) and has worked in archives for many years. Birkin’s art practice and writing functions at the intersection of text and image, combining media culture and techniques of the archive, as well as contemporary discourse on art, photography and conceptual writing. She is specifically concerned with institutional description techniques that define and manage the photographic image, and her academic monograph Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration, was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2021.

Sunil Manghani

Sunil Manghani is Professor of Theory, Practice & Critique at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (UK). He is Editor of Journal of Visual Art Practice, and Managing Editor of Theory, Culture & Society. His books include Image Studies (2013), Zero Degree Seeing (2019); India’s Biennale Effect (2016) and Farewell to Visual Studies (2015). He curated Barthes/Burgin at the John Hansard Gallery (2016), along with Building an Art Biennale (2018) and Itinerant Objects (2019) at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern.