Myth Book, 2021 – speculating on a ‘theory-fiction approach’ 

The Myth Book was created from my thesis research, developed at Erasmus University, entitled “Speculative research in the contemporary arts: analysing the formation of discourse in The Religion Virus’ mythology”. In the thesis, I analyse Michael Dudeck’s creation of a queer religious mythology which reconfigures the relationship between sacrality and the queer sexual body, creates non-binary systems of categorisations and empowers voices marginalised in the past.

As a RASL dual degree student, graduating from Arts and Culture Studies at Erasmus University and Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy, I have approached the research as a project of theory-fiction and made use of both institutional contexts to contextualise the project as so. This means that while the research was delivered as my graduation thesis at Erasmus University, it was also presented as my practical artistic project at the Willem de Kooning Academy. This approach followed a recent interest on ‘speculative research’ within academia (Wilkie et al., 2019) to propose an analysis of the overlaps and frictions between contemporary forms of knowledge developed within the context of art academies and academia. 

ABSTRACT

This research is oriented towards the practice of speculative research in the field of contemporary arts, examined through a case-study of The Religion Virus, an artistic project from the Canadian artist Michael Dudeck aimed at the creation, performance, and documentation of a queer religion. Considering that speculative research is oriented towards the creation of alternative forms of knowledge, in the case study it is considered how the artist draws on speculative fiction to include absent queer subjectivities in religious mythologies and speculate on more inclusive futures. It is asked, what semiotic resources are employed for the articulation of The Religion Virus’ mythology, and how does Dudeck draw on fictioning strategies for communicating the invented mythology as a discourse? The method of Multi-modal discourse analysis, which considers the potential of multi- media representations to convey cultural discourses, is used to analyse a sample of ten artworks from The Religion Virus series. To answer the first part of the research question, the articulation of the mythology is analysed considering semiotic theories of representation. The term ‘invented mythology’ is used to refer to the representation of gender, sexuality and religion created by the artistic narrative, and ‘mythology’ refers to the second level of representation in semiotics, as envisioned by Roland Barthes. As a result, three main semiotic themes forming The Religion Virus mythology emerge from the analysis. They consist of ‘ritual and categorisations’, in which the sexual body is recontextualised as sacred in the narrative, ‘gender and sexuality’, in which a non-binary system of categorisation is created, and ‘alien past-futurism’, which refers to the empowerment of voices marginalised in the past. To answer the second part of the research question, the fictioning strategies used by Dudeck for conveying The Religion Virus mythology as a discourse are analysed considering discursive approaches to representation and a recent theorisation of ‘fictioning’ developed in the field of contemporary arts. The term ‘fictioning strategies’ is used to refer to mechanisms applied by the artist for conveying the invented narrative as a credible storyline to the audience, whereas ‘discourse’ refers to forms of knowledge considered as legitimate in a historical moment, as envisioned by the philosopher Michael Foucault. As a result, two main fictioning strategies used by Dudeck are identified. The first, ‘performance and performativity’, refers to the artist’s deconstruction of grand narratives in the performances to situate The Religion Virus as a similarly constructed mythology. The second, ‘institutions and institutionaling’, refers to the creation of fictional institutes and gatekeepers.

KEYWORDS: Speculative Research, Fictioning, Mythology, Semiotics, Discourse