The Fictive Museum Clair Le Couteur PhD by Practice in Fine Art Royal College of Art Submitted March 2018 Revised May 2019 Front Matter: 1,143 Thesis, Notes & Bibliography: 49,030 1 Slide 413.0: Model of The Fictive Museum (Image courtesy of the John Affey Museum, 2018) 2 AS IF A simple in silence In some imminent hovers 3 insinuation coiled in irony or the mystery hurled down screamed vortex of hilarity and horror on the brink of the gulf without sprinkling it nor fleeing and draws from it the virgin clue AS IF Slide 296.0: Stéphane Mallarmé, A Throw of Dice, VI (In Meillassoux, 2012, Appendix 1.) 4 Statements and Acknowledgements Submission This text is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a PhD by practice in Fine Art. Copyright This text represents the submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art. This copy has been supplied for the purpose of research for private study, on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Authorship During the period of registered study in which this thesis was prepared the author has not been registered for any other academic award or qualification. The material included in this thesis has not been submitted wholly or in part for any academic award or qualification other than that for which it is now submitted. All quotations from other sources are clearly attributed, and included in good faith for the purposes of research. Signature: Date: 11.06.2019 5 Acknowledgements Thanks to my supervisors Jaspar and Margarita for their patience and restraint throughout this long process. Thanks also to my examiners, Maria Fusco and Sarat Maharaj, whose fresh perspectives caused me to rethink, re-edit and restructure this text, producing a far more streamlined and accessible outcome. The label for the key concept in my thesis – associative constellation – emerged from discussions in the Viva. Special thanks to Sharon Kivland––this revised submission could not have been completed without your guidance and support. This research project and so much else besides would have been impossible without the unfailing love and support of my family, particularly my grandmother Pamela Le Couteur, who welcomed me into her home during my time at the Royal College. She and my parents have always believed in the value of education, and it is thanks to their generosity that I have been able to pursue my studies. My partner Carli has been the most uplifting, loving, and understanding companion a non-binary person could wish for. That I have finally been able to pull these scattered thoughts into any coherence is due in no small part to her thoughtful attention and perceptive questioning. Hopefully I can now not only put down the floor in our hallway, but also regain the ability to consistently finish my sentences. This page would not be complete without expressing my debt of gratitude to the late Rev. Adam J. F. Origen, who first brought the John Affey Museum to my attention at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in September, 2012. We did not always see eye to eye, and I am aware Rev. Origen felt by the end that we had failed in our promise to make Affey’s museum a reality. I can only repeat here what I said at our last meeting: JAM is real to me. 6 Abstract At least since Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise (1935-68), artists have been making work claiming the label of Museum. Marcel Broodthaers, Claes Oldenburg, Ilya Kabakov, and Michael Blum explore this form, alongside David and Diana Wilson and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk. Assembling artefacts and labels in carefully authored contexts, these works fuse museum poetics with the means of literature and conceptual art, operating as fictive museums. Adapting the concept of fictive art from Antoinette LaFarge, the thesis develops the fictive as an as-if cognitive mode, problematising distinctions between literal and figurative, and revealing meaning to be an inherently spatial matter. This research identifies, (mis)labels, and takes part in the fictive museum as a genre of contemporary art practice, accessioning it as a performative method to ask what fictive museums can do. The John Affey Museum (JAM) explores alternative modes of museum poetics to address the same questions. Using social media as performance platforms to restage research-as-practice, JAM forms a collection~assemblage of things: references; images; writing; performances; sculptures; academic publications; temporary exhibitions in gallery and performance spaces; and a long-term installation in Warrington Museum’s ethnology collection. JAM is accompanied by a museum catalogue in the form of an anthology of quotations, and by this thesis, comprising twenty short essays or (mis)labels for the fictive museum. The thesis proposes a sculptural, diagrammatic approach to knowledge production: an Image of thought (Deleuze), reimagined as associative constellation in fictive space. 7 Section Plan Statements and Acknowledgements 4 Abstract 6 Section Plan 7 List of Slides 8 Visitor Guide 9 Drugged with History and Art 32 A Chain of Flowers 43 A Line Joining Moments 51 Making Uncomfortable Parallels 61 A Minor Paranoia 70 A Sudden Change in the Pattern 79 The Myth of a Museum 89 A Consensual Hallucination 97 Crystals on a Chandelier 105 This Form That Thinks 113 Looping Topology 122 Mappings Between the Pairs 131 An Unbridgeable Chasm 140 A Constellation Saturated with Tensions 148 The Fictive as an Operational Mode 156 A Theorist’s Fiction 164 The John Affey Museum 172 The Museum is the Performance 181 Drawing Conclusions 189 Bibliography 199 Appendix A: A Collection of Fictive Museums 220 Appendix B: Mary Beard Interview 222 Appendix C: Antoinette LaFarge Interview 225 Appendix D: Craig Sherwood Interview 241 Appendix E: A Proposal for Decolonising the Label 263 Appendix F: A Note On Our Typeface 278 8 List of Slides Slide 413.0: Model of The Fictive Museum .......................................................................................... 1 Slide 296.0: Stéphane Mallarmé, A Throw of Dice, VI ........................................................................ 3 Slide 4E7.0: Daniel B. Reibel, Registration Methods for the Small Museum ...................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Slide 39.0: JAM logo, based on the nautical chart symbol for part-submerged wrecks .......... 13 Slide 041.0: Roots Between the Tides (2016) ................................................................................... 14 Slide 157.0: Roots Between the Tides (2016) ................................................................................... 15 Slide 102.6: JAM Accessioning Dice, 50th Anniversary Edition .................................................... 16 Slide 772.2: Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever ....................................................................................... 17 Slide 93.8: Drugged with History and Art ........................................................................................ 31 Slide 4210.1: A Chain of Flowers ........................................................................................................ 42 Slide 811.1: A Line Joining Moments .................................................................................................. 50 Slide 129.2: Making Uncomfortable Parallels ................................................................................... 60 Slide 131.1: JAM.RBTT.805;5 ~ Green Eye / The Cursed Gaze ................................................... 61 Slide 19E.1: A Minor Paranoia .............................................................................................................. 69 Slide 18X.3: A Sudden Change in the Pattern.................................................................................. 78 Slide 514.2: The Myth of a Museum ................................................................................................... 88 Slide 250.5: A Consensual Hallucination ........................................................................................... 96 Slide 322.1: Crystals on a Chandelier .............................................................................................. 104 Slide 920.1: This Form That Thinks ................................................................................................... 112 Slide 211.7: Looping Topology ........................................................................................................... 121 Slide 223.4: Mappings Between the Pairs ........................................................................................ 130 Slide 24E.1: An Unbridgeable Chasm ............................................................................................... 139 Slide 1655.5: Pentagonal Loop ........................................................................................................... 147 Slide 170.1: The Fictive as an Operational Mode .......................................................................... 155 Slide 2728.3: A Theorist's Fiction ...................................................................................................... 163 Slide 26X.0: The John Affey Museum ................................................................................................ 171 Slide 15X9.3: The Museum is the Performance ............................................................................. 180 Slide 281.2: Drawing Conclusions ...................................................................................................