Guest lecture/Gastvortrag „Poor theory: art and participatory cultures in the “post-truthacene“ mit Owen G. Parry

For a long time, artists and entertainers have willfully employed cheap acts of fakery, deception, and mythmaking as a means of instilling awe and wonder in audiences, or as a way of critiquing and subverting institutions of power. But do such fictive approaches in art still hold up? What is art’s role in the “post-truthacene”, a time of disinformation, planetary crisis, and infinite distraction?

These are key questions surrounding Parry’s artistic research, which has an ongoing engagement with participatory internet cultures, pop celebrity and the occult. Thinking ecologically through post-truth contexts and Parry’s own projects, this lecture explores examples of the vernacular internet with radically opposing ideologies – from the queer fanfictions of boyband fans, afro-futurist image-worlds of science-fiction, and the magic spells of TikTok witches and wellness gurus; through to the viral memes of anonymous shit-posters, and paranoid conspiracy theories of Pizzagate and Qanon.

On re-deploying the practices of digital folklore in artistic research and performance settings, we will begin exploring methodological clues for surviving the “post-truthacene”; calling forth new realities or finding new ways of relating to one another.

Dr Owen G. Parry is a London based artist-researcher. He completed his PhD in visual cultures at Goldsmiths in 2014 and is currently Lecturer in Critical Studies Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Parry’s practice and research includes performance, installation, moving image, writing and alternative pedagogies. It explores the connectedness of visual art, performance, and queer cultures with pop fandom, vernacular theory, and digital folklore. Recent projects include A Performance Hangout exploring performance in the age of infinite distraction; Conspiracy-gate exploring art/practice in post-truth era; and Fan Riot, exploring fandom as a subversive community that drove the internet.

Parry has published widely in academic journals including Journal of British Art Studies (forthcoming 2024); Performance Research (2023; 2015); Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (2023); as well as in edited collections including Fandom as Methodology (MIT 2019); and The Creative Critic (Routledge 2018) among others. His work has featured in public programmes internationally in UK, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, Canada, South Korea, and USA.

www.owengparry.com

Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Lehrveranstaltung Kunst- und Kulturtheorie: Partizipative Kunst und Politik der Partizipation von Joonas Lahtinen statt.