Fabulation as Artistic Research Method: Ways of Engaging with Multiple Others

Fabulation

Through a hybrid seminar consisting of both lectures and workshops, the ArtEZ Professorship Theory in the Arts seeks to form a community centered around the theme of fabulation. During the seminar we will collectively inquire into the question of what fabulation can do in various art practices and how the concept relates to similar notions such as fictioning, myth-making, and storytelling.

The morning part of the program consists of a lecture by Simon O'Sullivan (Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths) on fictioning and myth-work, followed by an activity about how fabulation has played a role in the novel Onder Asfalt by author Maarten van der Graaff. In the afternoon, there will be practical workshops led by artistic researcher Martine van Lubeek and author Odette van Heesbeen.

Fabulation as Artistic Research Method - Ways of Engaging with Multiple Others

In recent years, the notion of fabulation has gained prominence in art practices, artistic research, and the environmental humanities. A major influence on this growing interest has been the recent work of Donna Haraway, who in Staying with the Trouble presents 'speculative fabulation' as part of a broader set of practices she calls ‘SF.’ However, the notion of fabulation can also be traced back to the work of Gilles Deleuze, who in turn builds upon ideas of Henri Bergson.

With both Haraway and Deleuze, fabulation is not presented as a strict set of methodological guidelines, but rather as a mode of engaging with the complexities of our current world; a mode of relating and reflecting through fictioning, that is committed to recognizing our complex entanglements with multiple others, both human and nonhuman. Fabulation offers a way to engage in modes of trandisciplinary storytelling and critical exploration that transcend conventional boundaries between fact and fiction, realism and fantasy, and questions traditional categorizations and hierarchies, such as those between nature and culture, the human and the technological. Importantly, fabulation looks toward the future, but it is not a naive vision of utopia. Instead, it calls for an active engagement with the complexities of the present—what Haraway refers to as 'staying with the trouble'.

Programme

• 9:30-10:00 Walk-in
• 10:00-10:15 Opening
• 10:15-11:15 Simon O'Sullivan on fabulation and related concepts of fictioning and myth-making
• 11:30-13:00 Maarten van der Graaff on his book Onder Asfalt (Under Asphalt)
• 13:00-14:00 Lunch
• 14:00-16:00 Workshops by Martine van Lubeek and Odette van Heesbeen
• 16:00-16:30 Closing