Mythopoesis or Fiction as Mode of Existence: Three Case Studies from Contemporary Art

Abstract

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.