Dickinson, Robert Douglas (2019) Network Entelechy: Critical Writing on Contemporary Art in North-West England. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manch- ester Metropolitan University. Downloaded from: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/626273/ Usage rights: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Deriva- tive Works 4.0 Please cite the published version https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk Network Entelechy: Critical Writing on Contemporary Art in North-West England R D DICKINSON PhD 2019 Network Entelechy: Critical Writing on Contemporary Art in North-West England ROBERT DOUGLAS DICKINSON A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2 Chapter 1 Writing Contemporary Art: Changes in Critical Practice…………………. 15 Chapter 2 Writing Time: Art, Writing and Contemporaneity…………………………… 37 Chapter 3 Speaking of Writing: Understanding how Writing becomes us………. 61 Chapter 4 Networks, Contemporary Art and the Regeneration City………………. 82 Chapter 5 Writing and Making a Living………………………………………………………….. 107 Chapter 6 Entelechy at Work: Where do the Words come from?...................... 130 Chapter 7 Scrappy Notes and Weird Diagrams: Finding Time to Experiment…. 151 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 174 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 184 Network Entelechy: Critical Writing on Contemporary Art in North-West England ABSTRACT My research investigates the production of critical writing on contemporary art in north- west England. My methodology employs Actor Network Theory (ANT) in proposing connections between humans and non-humans - in this case writers, editors, artists, and curators, along with non-human actors including artworks, institutions, galleries and workspaces. Combining this with the concept of entelechy - the actualisation of potential – has enabled me to describe the way writing emerges, as well as the way writers develop. The aim of my research was to construct an experiment that revealed entelechy manifesting in the networked experience of a sample of regionally-based critical writers. Key to gathering information on this was my fieldwork, which involved interviewing a group of writers who also agreed to keep diaries describing their work patterns over two separate months in 2018. I discovered that the activation of actor networks not only produces texts but also contributes to an individual writer’s learning process, partially by enabling interaction with editors, artists and fellow writers, and partly by what I call “self-fixing” and “self- monitoring.” My research highlights in detail the way the writing process is marked by a rhythmic alternation between closeness to the text and distancing, and that for every writer all texts emerge from a different network. My analysis of the way writers speak about the writing process furthermore reveals “multi-subjective” instances surrounding difficulties that concern network function. Thus, my research not only describes how networks enable entelechy, but it also describes how potential can sometimes falter. This leads me to the conclusion that critical writing is produced through difficulty and not just despite it, and that the consequence of underpaid or “free” writing, where training is informal and sporadic, and “self-monitoring” and “self-mending” play important roles, is network entelechy. 1 INTRODUCTION Context Using an approach based on Actor Network Theory (ANT) and the work of Latour (1988a, 1991, 1996, 2010) and Callon (1986), my research situates the production of critical writing on contemporary art within networks connecting people, artworks, locations and objects. My research studies how these networks are mobilized to produce “entelechy” - the actualisation of potential. This was demonstrated in my fieldwork, involving ten independent writers based in North West England, whose work patterns I recorded in April and September 2018. Positioning the research alongside debates on the historical role and current direction of art criticism as articulated by theorists including Newman (2008), Gielen and Lijster (2015), Deepwell (1995), Rogoff (2008), Lippard (1971, 1995), and Phelan (1997), my research focuses on a geographic region where much critical writing on contemporary art is published in locally-based online journals, from which writers have frequently received little or no fee. However, many writers value this work as experience that will aid them to find paid commissions from printed art journals, or towards establishing a career in other fields connected with art. The research provides insight into the constant flow of documentation and reflection on contemporary art that enters the “archive” as theorised by Groys (2014), while my approach to entelechy reflects on Agamben’s ideas surrounding the concept of potential (1999). Further remarks on my theoretical framework follow below. In terms of structure, context and theory are examined in the early part of my thesis, while the later chapters, 5, 6 and 7, concentrate on interviews recorded during my fieldwork, enabling theory to open up and examine in detail the process of writing. The gap my research fills lies in the detail it reveals about the writing process as experienced by writers involved in my fieldwork, and in detailing the workings of separate networks that incorporate non-human as well as human actants in the production of every text. This research explains why it is possible for writing on contemporary art in this region to appear to be flourishing while many of its writers receive scant reward, relating them to the “precariat” referred to by Standing (2011). Evidence also suggests that 2 some UK cities are currently experiencing cultural growth, because conurbations like Manchester and Liverpool enable the sort of “grassroots and alternative culture” (Hardy and Gillespie, 2017) that property prices increasingly prevent in London. My research reflects the existence of this “grassroots and alternative culture” within the regenerating city that temporarily supports the survival of cultural workers including critical writers. Personal background to the research I have been writing about contemporary art for national publications since 2009, having previously worked in broadcasting, specialising in arts programming. My decision to concentrate on critical writing about contemporary art had much to do with the presence of so much new art in my home city, Manchester, and its neighbour, Liverpool - art which appeared in the competing crowd of museums and galleries that had helped to change the look of our city centres from the mid-1990s on. The rising visibility of contemporary art in the north-west has been reinforced since 1999 by Britain’s biggest festival of contemporary art, Liverpool Biennial, and since 2007 by Manchester International Festival, which includes a strong element of new visual art. At the same time, locally trained artists have been living and working here, based, frequently in old industrial buildings, as I describe in Chapter 4. The presence of art, and artists, have been accompanied in the north west region by a rising number of new critical writers. In 2015 I was asked to become a mentor and working group member for #writecritical, a scheme sponsored by Contemporary Visual Art Network, North- West, as part of the regional research project Art:ADDS (Art: Audience, Development, Discourse and Skills) that ran between 2014 and 2016 with the aim of improving opportunities for artists, young people and writers. The #writecritical scheme resulted in the publication a book (Robertson, 2016). Taking part in the scheme was a fascinating and thought-provoking experience for me and many others. Meeting the writers who took part in this scheme, as well as other mentors, led me to wonder how new writers, especially, can continue to survive and develop their writing skills. I also wanted to know how they go about writing, how they find the words to respond in new and original ways to new exhibitions and new experiences 3 in art, how and where they get work published on a regular basis, and how writers’ relationships with other people, and with art itself, combine to create words. My interest in discovering the reasons why so much new writing today attempts to engage critically with contemporary art in north west England led to the research behind this thesis. Subsequently, some of the writers who took part in CVAN Northwest’s #writecritical scheme have helped me in my research, by participating in my fieldwork, described below. I have also included occasional autobiographical comments within the research, including some of my own responses to the questions I put to writers participating in the fieldwork. Research questions My initial hypothesis was that critical writers make an important contribution to the circumstances in which art can be experienced by wider audiences, by producing text that evaluates, explains, and publicises art in cities where regeneration processes have done much to bring contemporary art to public attention in spaces like Tate Liverpool, or at events like Liverpool Biennial. But many writers, including me, had more than once been prepared to write about contemporary art, while expecting little or no financial reward from the publications which commissioned the text. Furthermore, there is little training available to anyone wanting