Too good to be entirely true (A coda on the pleasure of archives and avant-garde publishing)

Abstract

ABSTRACT How do we engage creatively with archives, in addition to or alongside reading for ‘historical evidence’ or beyond the usual discovery-recovery paradigm, giving ourselves fictional or speculative permissions? This coda thinks about embodied research, performance as publishing, feminist and queer avant-garde legacies, taking up the work of small-press editors and contributors, and bringing that work into mediated circulation again, in a form of homage and even performative séance. How can artworks archive intimacy and desire? Para-fictional, para-academic, and speculative forms of research and creative practice can act as playful and rigorous enquiries into how we read or ‘use’ the past. Reading becomes a form of listening and engaging with other voices on the page. It is about making (new) work happen rather than historicise it.