A Dead Writer Exists in Words, and Language is a Type of Virus by Linda Stupart

"Virus" synthesises four years of performative and traditional research—engaging a range of contemporary artists, institutions, and writing practices to reformulate possibilities for art criticism and institutional critique within artworlds. This practice-based research offers new possibilities for embodied art criticism. The work makes visible, interrupts, and challenges the violent and patriarchal structures of the artworld, offering new modes and practices of feminist and queer artmaking, critique, and resistance. As well as the novella, "Virus" comprises sculptural elements, videos, performance, and a series of prints of spells written for/against the artworld. This research contributes to performance art, situating itself on the borders of ritual, language, and performativity. The spell works are at the centre of a ‘re-emergence’ of witchcraft in art, and new possibilities for performance-as-criticism. "Virus" is a singular output in multiple fields—literary criticism; experimental writing; contemporary art; eco-feminism; queer theory, and objectification studies—and its multidisciplinarity contributes to each of these fields. Its assertion as an art object, in the form of writing, is an integral moment for the conception of the ‘Art Writing’ discipline. The spells appeared in a major survey show of feminist art touring the UK (‘Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance’, 2018–19), as well as survey shows about witchcraft and contemporary art in Vienna and Cornwall. Stupart performed spells as research outputs at the University of Melbourne; 4S: Society for Social Science annual conference, Sydney; Edinburgh University; Reading University; and as an exemplary of practice-based research in the BCU PGCert lecture program. "Virus" is the subject of two conference papers: Ass. Prof. Helen Hester (‘Towards a Theory of Thing-Women’, 2017) and Dr Holly Pester (‘Common Rest’ 2016). It is on university reading lists including: Royal Academy of Art, Copenhagen; Reading University; University of Cape Town; Queen Mary and Goldsmiths, London University; and LCC.

L I N D A S T U P A R T

A D e a d W r i t e r E x i s t s i n W o r d s a n d L a n g u a g e i s a T y p e o f V i r u s

In 2016, I launched my novella Virus alongside a solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa Gallery.

The exhibition consisted of sculptural elements; three videos; two performances; and a series of prints of spells written for/against the artworld. Virus synthesises four years of performative and more traditional research – engaging with a range of contemporary artists, institutions, and writing practices to reformulate the possibilities for art criticism and institutional critique within artworlds. This practice-based research offers new possibilities for embodied art criticism.

In the past they had tried to tell them, warn them (worn thin). At every single conference or lecture around the world they’d say:

HI HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT HOW YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE BUT YOU’VE ONLY CITED WHITE MEN HEY HOW ARE YOU GONNA STOP THAT HEY WHAT KIND OF FUTURE IS THAT?

But every body grows tired eventually, even this one. The same words, again and again, wearing out their throat their blood their muscles knotting, stomach filled with black oil, fingers tapping on the seat of every lecture theatre. But, no, nobody can say they didn’t try to warn them…

A dead writer exists in words and language is a type of virus. Information is at once this resistance, and what it resists— its own dead form, communication. Words are microbes, molecules, maggots. A dead writer also exists in the devastated by cancer rotting corpse; in death.

Still I Rise: Feminism, Gender, Resistance (group, traveling show 2018 - 2019)

EXHIBITIONS / PERFORMANCES / WRITINGS

I,I,I,I,I,I,I, Kathy Acker (The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 2019)

ACT 1 (Nottingham Contemporary, 2018 - 2019)

Linda Stupart, Virus, (excerpt from the book and a wall drawing, 2019)

Magic Circle (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, 2019)

ACT 2 (De La Warr Pavillion, 2019)

Other Exhibitions / Performances / Writings

HUMMADRUZ (Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, 2019)

a spell to bind all male conference panels (2018 MacGeorge Visiting Speaker, University of Melbourne)

a spell to bind all male conference panels (4S: Society for Social Science annual conference, 2018)

VIRUS (Public Feelings, Dissident Acts symposium at Goldsmiths, London, 2018)

Visiting artist, ‘Contested Spaces’, (part of the program at Goldsmiths, University of London and Tate Galleries Critical Pedagogies MA course)

Spells as resistance (Moving Performances: exploring the politics and spaces of voice and unruly emotions, University of Oxford, Oxford, 2016)

ACT 3 (De La Warr Pavillion, 2019)

writing & speaking

about & with the

work

Holly Pester, ‘Fanfic Tactics in Experimental Criticism and Radical Epistemologies in Linda Stupart’s Virus’, conference paper at Alternatives to the Future , University of Tartu, Estonia

Helen Hester, ‘Towards a Theory of Thing Woman: Linda Stupart's Virus’, conference paper at The Horizons of Horror at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, Germany.

Simon O Sullivan, ‘From Science Fiction to Science Fictioning (or, What is the Traction of Science Fiction on the Real?)’, Futures and Fictions, eds. Henriette Gunkel, Ayesha Hameed and Simon O’Sullivan (London: Repeater, 2017).

Jamie Sutcliffe, ‘What We Do is Secret ’,Frieze online, 15 February 2017.

Gary Zhexi Zhang, ‘Other Minds’, Frieze online, 17 July 2017.

Chris Fite Wassilik. 'Keep Talking: the Death of the Unreliable Narrator', Originally published in Art Monthly 397, June 2016

Felix Kawitzky. 'Interview with Linda Stupart', ArtThrob 30 June 2016

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