AUTO//FICTION

AUTO//FICTION is an exhibition drawing on practices of art makers engaging with ideas around auto and fictioning. Speaking in the first person or adopting the position, within a text, of an ambiguous merging of author and protagonist (Nabokov, Borges, Lessing, Woolf) has, in recent times in academic discourse (Palmer, Cattle) and literature (Kraus, Nelson, Smith, Berlin), had a resurgence. In art practice, literature and academia there is a re-emergence of thinkers who utilise non-normative writing methods to challenge the role of traditional language. This resurgence is creating revitalised discourse around pertinent questions such as: What is the place of fiction in academic writing? What theoretical frameworks does auto-fictional writing offer and/or restrict? How can autobiography transcend the personal? Is the ‘I’ gendered? What is phallologocentric discourse and what is its place in art and literature today? How can it be challenged? If there is a renewed call to ‘ecriture feminin’ for the 21st century, what might that look like? Drawing from ideas stemming from New French Feminist theory (Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva) and looking to contemporary authors (Sally O'Reilly, Maggie Nelson, Chris Kraus) as well as leading artists who explore identities of self in their work (Charlotte Prodger, Beatrice Gibson) AUTO//FICTION is an invitation to practitioners, writers, academics and researchers to create inter-disciplinary discourse around writing and making in auto-fiction