From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair

Simon O'Sullivan author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Goldsmiths, University of London

Published:17th Sep '24

Should be back in stock very soon

From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair cover

The practices of magic and contemporary myth-making in relation to landscape, performance, and writing.

From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair is a two-part book bringing together fourteen essays broadly concerned with the “fiction of the self” and with practices and explorations beyond that fiction. Each part of the book approaches this theme from a different angle.

The first part, entitled “On Magic and Myth-Work,” deals with practices of transformation and with contemporary myth-making in relation to landscape, performance, and writing. The second part, “On Care and Repair,” gathers together essays that are more personal, but that also look to various technologies (or devices) of self-care alongside ideas of collaboration and the collective. Crucial throughout this exploration are questions of agency and self-narration, but also how these connect to larger issues around historical trauma, neoliberalism, and ecological crisis.

The essays reference many other texts and fellow travellers, and also draw on the author's own experiences (and teaching) within various art and theory worlds, as well as with performance, magical practices, gaming, and Buddhism.

"There’s a real deftness of thought here, and one that’s vitalised by its fluid movement between both artistic and theoretical resources, from the ‘cut-up’ literary exercises of William Burroughs to the experiments in fictional religion enacted by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth through the 1980s."
—Jamie Sutcliffe, Art Review

ISBN: 9781915983046

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

192 pages