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Volume 17, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 1753-5190
  • E-ISSN: 1753-5204

Abstract

The practice research project (), presented in partnership with the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), brings together participants of interdisciplinary writing and creative backgrounds for the duration of one exhibition to explore new ways of writing and responding to art. To date, the project has worked with 47 participants including novelists, essayists, artists, curators, critics, dancers, musicians, designers, architects and academics, whose works are published by ACCA in four experimental digital volumes available on their website. The works produced in this programme have exceeded expectations in their diversity and inventiveness. They include writing that is critical, personal, poetic, essayistic and autotheoretical, performative and polyphonic: all speak to the diverse relations of knowledge and experience at play in an encounter with art. As the research and project leader of (a role that includes research design, workshop facilitation, writing, editorial and curatorial practices as well as partner relations), I am keenly aware of the importance of situation, embodiment and spatiality to the richness and variety of texts the project has produced. This article explores the concept of art writing as posthuman ‘nomadic’ subject by critically reviewing a selection of works from volumes 1–4 (2018–22). I will outline ’s project and practice methodology, paying particular attention to space, situation and sensory attunement as a way into writing and a work of art. Rendell’s is drawn upon to identify the specific situation of the art writing subject; then, honing in on expressions of desire in certain works, the Deleuzian subject-as-assemblage and its spatial configurations will be raised. It is this dynamic ‘becoming subject’ that underpins Braidotti’s nomadic writing and thinking modes. Reading these texts through Braidotti's posthuman nomadic subject, I will propose that offers a container not only for new ways of approaching art writing, but also for mapping ‘adequate cartographies’ and figurations that account for the complexity and multiplicity of contemporary writing subjects and positions. Here the reader will find important insights and methodological ideas that can be taken up beyond the field of art criticism. Creative practitioners with an interest in situated knowledge and writing-with space, place and objects will find use in understanding how this expanded art writing project enables diverse expressions of ‘nomadic’ intersectional subjectivity.

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2026-03-18
2026-04-13

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/content/journals/10.1386/jwcp_00069_1
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Art writing as nomadic subjects
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 17, 167 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/jwcp_00069_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jwcp_00069_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jwcp_00069_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): creative writing; expanded field; nomadic writing; posthumanism; site writing; situated knowledge

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