Faculty Member, Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies
Director; Reader in Contemporary Art Theory
About
As strangers in a land we have not made, we increasingly find that the world is made in someone else's image. I want to better understand how creative people take control over and improve their cultural ecologies. How are we participating in, adapting and expanding the structures of contemporary art in a wireless world? How might contemporary culture be produced and disseminated in ways more tailored to our desires?
My focus is, from a geopolitical perspective, on the relative merits of new art practices, theories and their institutions emerging since the early-1970s. I'm concerned with how we might benefit from the lessons of the recent past, in particular from a re-examination of the demise of counter-culture in the early '70s. I've experimented with some of these ideas in a range of fictional approaches to writing as well as through curatorial and art practice. This has led to a more nuanced, polymathic model of the relationships between art history and theory, writing, curating and practice.
To escape the tyranny of the present, an engorged contemporary art field needs to diversify further still, to engage with new information technologies and with alternative structures. An interest in futures studies currently draws me to experiences that extend beyond the visual bias of art practice. Once seemingly polarised - sensual culture and information systems now seem to be converging into an omnipresent ambient culture.
Contact Information
http://www.neilmulholland.co.uk
74 Lauriston Place
Edinburgh
Scotland
+ 44 131 221 6188
