Commune of the Viable Essence: Creating Myth in Artistic Studio Practice through Fictional Narrative

This PhD examines fiction as a tool for practice-based research. To do this I have written a fictional narrative describing the Commune of the Viable Essence (CoVE). A floorplan has been designed as architecture for CoVE which can be seen as scaffolding for the research: a modular eco-structure based in the American desert with pods, gardens, kitchen and a shop. Inside the imaginary commune, characters are searching for the ‘viable essence’, a term coined by the art critic Clement Greenberg, interpreted in this research as a substance that holds both spiritual and material properties. Each pod in CoVE represents an area specific to my research, such as healing or ritual and each character has an influential reference to my own practice. Characters are allocated to pods randomly using a spinning wheel I have designed. Studio work is then generated by observing the character’s imagined interactions, discussions and material experimentations in response to their allocated space. Using this written narrative to navigate concerns within my practice, I will research how fiction and materiality operate together. This research investigates Greenberg’s term ‘viable essence’ and his concept of flatness in painting. This is an enquiry focussed on paint as a material alongside Greenberg’s idealism for medium specificity (mediums acknowledging their essential elements), and CoVE’s search and interpretation of that meaning. Thisresearch investigates fictional technologies in contemporary arts practice and research under the term ‘Fictioning’ in reference to David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan’s 2019 Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy. Within Fictioning the categories this research most identifies with is Mythopoesis; the construction of myth through fictional worlds, and Parafiction; fictional artworks that are presented as true, referencing Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s 2009 ‘Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility’. These theoretical texts are investigated, contextualised within the contemporary art field, put into practice and tested as the imaginary commune is activated.