Output details

Nowhere Less Now, oversized version (of selected chapters) reprinted in: Abraxas: Issue #4, edited by Christina Oakley Harrington and Robert Ansell (Fulgur Esoterica), 192 pages.

This is a lengthy (189 page) narrative on the extraordinary work of Lindsay Seers. As a catalogue in the form of a fictional novel, it stands alone, but was originally meant to be read alongside the exhibition (first shown at The Tin Tabernacle 8 Sep – 22 Oct 2012 in London). Commissioned and published by Artangel, the organisation well known for producing groundbreaking work in unconventional places, this collaborative exhibition/work was additionally supported by the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia and the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE. Hagen’s novel/catalogue, Nowhere Less Now is a searing, provocative parallel account, which articulates a new form of ‘art writing’, one that relies on the relation of fiction to fine art practice. Lindsay Seers’ exhibition intersects a strange relation between the Tabernacle and naval history; in a similar vein, Hagen’s companion piece does the same move, combining thought processes of different times and cultures to produce almost hallucinatory accounts of art practice. This form of writing addresses several research questions inherent in Hagen’s overall work: First, how fiction in fine art practice can devise a method for imagining alternative models of society and thereby affect change; second, art can adopt terminologies from from speculative science in a way that can contribute to a paradigm shift in science and humanities and a move away from dogmatic realism; third, the idea of multidimensionality can tell us something about the organization of society, economy and living systems through fine art; and lastly, how fine art writing can contribute to our understanding of consciousness, spatiality, time. Hagen proceeded to develop the ideas on consciousness further in method, “The Anti-Materialist Ontology of Mystical Realism,” in Zētēsis: The international Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, Vol 1, No. 2, pp. 91-102. ISBN 978-1-873352-07-6