Publisher's Synopsis
This is the first volume in a series, published in association with the Kent Institute of Art and Design. Each volume creates a site between academic scholarship and other forms, modes and genres of writing including essays in imaging in photography and other textual forms. In this volume, art is viewed as a presentation, not a re-presentation, of theory. The relationship between them is perceived as symbiotic. The interplay across art and theory is understood as contiguous, not homogeneous: neither are defined in terms of content or form but, rather, through a series of questions and arguments concerning their identity, however contingent or provisional, within cultural production and institutions of culture. Art criticism is perceived, here, as a place where art's meanings and definitions are transmitted, fixed, disputed and changed through interpretation and commentary, words and images.;"ACT" argues that serious art writing is only possible through drawing on a multiplicity of intellectual models and modes which include critical theory and literature. Each volume in the "ACT" series will provide new opportunities for discussing and determining the ever-changing boundaries between art, criticism and theory. "ACT 1" explores the conundrum posed when the pre-positions "about" or "on" are abandoned in an encounter with art and its representations.
