This article explores the different kinds of traction science fiction might have on the real and, in particular, attempts to define a kind of experimental writing practice (when this is broadly construed) that is less about the future than an instantiation of it. It begins with a commentary on Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams, and their writings on utopia and sf, and then proceeds to Quentin Meillassoux's concept of an 'extro-science fiction' - or fictions about worlds in which science is impossible - before proposing that formal experimentation (and especially the illogical sequencing of sentences and use of atypical syntax) serves to present these other space-times. Experimental sf does not so much describe future worlds as fiction them within this one, offering a concrete 'non-literary' counterpart to the utopian hopes of Jameson and Williams. The final section offers a case study of, what I will call, 'science fictioning': the experimental sf 'novel' (that is also a theoretical tract and visual art work) Cyberpositive (1996) by the art collective (or 'collaborative artist') known as o[rphan] d[rift>].

This article explores the different kinds of traction science fiction might have on the real and, in particular, attempts to define a kind of experimental writing practice (when this is broadly construed) that is less about the future than an instantiation of it. It begins with a commentary on Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams, and their writings on utopia and sf, and then proceeds to Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of an ‘extro‑science fiction’ – or fictions about worlds in which science is impossible – before proposing that formal experimentation (and especially the illogical sequencing of sentences and use of atypical syntax) serves to present these other space‑times. Experimental sf does not so much describe future worlds as fiction them within this one, offering a concrete ‘non‑literary’ counterpart to the utopian hopes of Jameson and Williams. The final section offers a case study of, what I will call, ‘science fictioning’: the experimental sf ‘novel’ (that is also a theoretical tract and visual art work) Cyberpositive (1996) by the art collective (or ‘collaborative artist’) known as o[rphan] d[rift>].

My article is concerned with the investment in – and reality of – fictions. It looks at the magical idea of the egregore or of an entity, broadly understood, that is produced through collective investment and then speaks back to its authors as if it came from someplace else. At stake here is also an investigation into other kinds of agency – other ‘deep assignments’ – that are always already at work behind the fiction of the self. Important in this enquiry is an idea of writing – or re-writing – the self. Indeed, my claim is that various fields – from magickal practice to literary experimentation and from neuroscience to psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis – offer up important resources for this creative and pragmatic task.

Keynote lecture at ‘Aberrant Nuptials: Second International Conference on Deleuze and Art'.

This paper develops a concept of fictioning when this names, in part, the deliberate imbrication of an apparent reality with other narratives. It focuses on a particular audio-visual example of this kind of art practice, known as the film-essay or what Stewart Home has called called the "docufiction." The latter operates on a porous border between fact and fiction, but also between fiction and theory and, at times, the personal and political. In particular the paper is concerned with how the docufiction can involve a presentation of landscape, broadly construed, alongside the instantiation of a complex and layered temporality which itself involves the foregrounding of other pasts and possible futures. "Fictioning the landscape" also refers to the way in which these different space-times need to be performed in some way, for example with a journey through or to some other place as in a pilgrimage. The paper proceeds through analysing four case studies of this fictioning: Patrick Keiller's Robinson trilogy; Justin Barton and Mark Fisher's On Vanishing Land; Steve Beard and Victoria Halford's Voodoo Science Park; and the Otolith trilogy by The Otolith Group.

This article explores a trend in some British contemporary art towards ‘fictioning’, when this names not only the blurring of the reality/fiction boundary, but also, more generally, the material instantiation – or performance – of fictions within the real. It attends to three practices of this fiction as mode of existence: sequencing and nesting (Mike Nelson); the deployment ‘fabulous images’ and intercessors (Brian Catling); and more occult technologies and an idea of the ‘invented life’ (Bonnie Camplin). The article also attends to the mythopoetic or ‘world-making’ aspect of these practices and the way this can involve recourse to other times, past and future. Mythopoesis also involves a sense of collective enunciation and, with that, a concomitant disruption of the more dominant fiction of the self.

Through recourse to Gilles Deleuze’s short polemical essay ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ and the accompanying interview (in Negotiations) on ‘Control and Becoming’, this article attempts to map out the conceptual contours of an artistic war machine (Deleuze’s ‘new weapons’) that might be pitched against control and also play a role in the more ethico-political function of the constitution of a people (or, what Deleuze calls subjectification). Along the way a series of other Deleuzian concepts are introduced and outlined – with an eye to their pertinence for art practice and, indeed, for any more general ‘thought’ against control. At stake here is the development of a concept of fictioning – the production of alternative narratives and image-worlds – and also the idea of art practice as a form of myth-science, exemplified by Burroughs’ cut-up method. It is argued that these aesthetic strategies might offer alternative models for a subjectivity that is increasingly standardized and hemmed in by neoliberalism.

Abstract In what follows I put forward an idea of contemporary art practice as a form of myth-science, itself defined as a kind of fictioning of reality. The article draws on and develops ideas first put forward in O’Sullivan 2014. The term mythscience is borrowed from Sun Ra and Afrofuturism more generally (see Kodwo Eshun’s discussion, “Synthesizing the Omniverse”, in Eshun 1998, 154-163). The artist Mike Kelley, in an essay on Olaf Fahlstrom (Kelley 1995), links the term more particularly to expanded contemporary art practice. Most of what follows has been developed in relation to the collaborative ‘performance fiction’ Plastique Fantastique (and especially in conversation with David Burrows) and thus, in acknowledgement of this parallel research programme, interspersed throughout the text are images from our practice and, in particular, a performance itself titled ‘Myth-Science’. “Myth-Science” was performed in 2014 at the “Webewoche” exhibition/event, Stroom den Haag, The Hague and at the “Schizo-Culture” exhibition/event, Space Gallery, London (see http://www. plastiquefantastique.org/performance25.html). Plastique Fantastique, for this performance, involved myself and Burrows alongside Alex Marzeta and Harriet Skully. I hope that this local ‘scene’ might resonate on a more global level, but also that my comments will not be read as being solely tethered to this particular collaboration (indeed, my article intends the mapping of a more general trajectory in art). The article ends with a brief Coda on Felix Guattari’s concept – from Schizoanalytic Cartographies – of ‘fabulous images’ that offers another inflection on my theme. ...theres some thing in us it dont have no name... it aint us but yet its in us... (Russell Hoban, Riddly Walker)

This article explores the resonances between certain concepts of Deleuze and Badiou and a Western Buddhism that is figured, in Foucault's terminology, as a particular ‘technology of the self’. In particular Deleuze's readings of Bergson and Spinoza are brought into encounter with Buddhist doctrine and practice alongside a consideration of the figure of the bodhisattva who is further compared to Badiou's account of the subject. At stake in these enquiries and experimental conjunctions is the laying out of a particular – and liveable – diagram of the finite–infinite relation, or, we might say, a specifically Western dharma for a contemporary production of subjectivity.