Art Writing as Reparative and Interdisciplinary Pedagogy

This presentation will consider Art Writing as an interdisciplinary and reparative form of research-led teaching. Understanding art writing as an interdiscipline that encompasses post-critical forms, performative praxis, creative non-fiction and resurgent practices of auto and life writing, I will introduce the Master of Letters in Art Writing, a flagship programme I designed and now direct, at The Glasgow School of Art. This studio-based writing programme is unique in its shaping of an editorial, publishing and events-based pedagogy, a model that is interrelated with my own practice as a writer, editor and researcher. Students are challenged to bring about their own reality: to be the field as much as learn about the field, to consider the critical and evaluative function of art writing and its dialogic methodologies. Drawing on specific examples from recent projects, including a two-part open studio masterclass based on an enquiry of expanded forms of ‘Biographical Fictioning’ and the founding of The Yellow Paper Press, the programme-led publishing project, I will outline why site, community and context of production are crucial to research-informed teaching and events-based curricula. This paper will reflect on the value of such practices as sites of para-academia representing a democratisation of theory and literature with a profound attention to equality, diversity, minor literature and intersubjectivities.