JAWS: Journal of Art & Writing - Art & Design Activism, Oct 2022

My work involves writing textual scores to be performed live by participants on site. In my work, there is the use of different layers of borrowing, a term which is used to describe the method used in my approach to both practice and related research. My approach to borrowing is similar to re-enactment as argued by David Evans on page 16 in Document of Contemporary Art: Appropriation (2009). Borrowing is to decentralize the power from the singular ‘I’ and share it with others. In this article, one of my projects, In the Process of Knitting a Netting, a live performance activated verbally by local participants in two locations on the Kent coast over four weeks in 2021 as part of Estuary 2021 Associated Programme, is being articulated to identify the crossover between my practice and the theoretical discourses: diffractive methodology by Karen Barad, the notion of ‘working with’ by Donna Haraway, Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘being singular plural’ and the Barthesian Scriptor. Breaking down the process of borrowing through references to these writers, the article analyses the outcome at each mediation, exploring the process involved in making the work. By allowing the process to reveal itself, it is perhaps possible to provoke future small-scale social actions through art practice.

Set as a series of psychoanalytic sessions and presented as part case study and part transcript, ‘Hysterical correspondence; A play for voices’ is a fictional correspondence between a hysterical protagonist named Ms B., her analyst S. E. B. and Dr Y., an academic who specializes in fine art critical and contextual studies. The three voices are indicated by three different fonts and colours. By the end of the article, it becomes clear that all three voices belong to the same woman. This article questions whether an art practice that functions as a site of performance of hysterical symptoms can be useful as a form of release in the place of bodily symptoms. Can an art practice exist as a symptom of hysteria, and if so, can this artwork, which is an act of refusal, be put to good use within feminist research to enable greater understanding of hysteria and to reduce dismissive rhetoric around the female experience?

This report discusses the role that design fiction could play in service design using a case study provided by MA Service Design students at University of the Arts London, in which service design is applied to the designing of public services. Design fiction is currently not recognized as a service design tool, though it has become a part of service design education. This article documents the use of design fiction as a communication tool to connect with users in challenging circumstances and provides a framework with which to develop service design in order for services to better meet users’ needs and to reach more people.