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The Mechanical Copula

The book of short stories was produced during Fusco’s roles as Writer-in-Residence at Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2009-10) and Critic-in-Residence at Kadist Art Foundation (Paris, 2008-9), working on site, with contemporary art works from both institutions' exhibitions and collections.

Utilising fiction as a tool for critical art writing, the stories embody and explore an experimental relationship between text and visual work. Methodologically, the stories are concerned with acting concurrently 'with' rather than 'about' art, to present fictional figurations of the art works' conceptual content. One example of this process is 'How You Lost the Stars', a story written in response to Dutch artist Melvin Moti's film The Prisoner's Cinema, which narrativises visual deprivation through the the sensory subjectivity of the story's narrator.

The Mechanical Copula was selected by Editions Ere for their international literature translation series Collection Littérature étrangère. Published in French, as Copulation Mechanique, Paris: Editions Ere, translated by Maxime Berree and Emilie Noteris. ISBN 978 2 915453 88 1.

Supported by a Creative Development Residency in Cove Park, Scotland, 2010, and launched in at Artissima (Turin, 2010), The Goethe Institute (Dublin, 2010) and The Institute of Contemporary Art (London, 2011).

Texts from this book have been reprinted in a number of national and international publications including: artandresearch online peer-reviewed journal (2011); Beyond Utopia (Errant Bodies Press, Los Angeles, 2011); Blast and Counterblast (University of Chicago Press, 2012); City of Women (The LAB, Dublin, 2009); Forms of Imagining (Project Press, Dublin, 2010); Kadist Art Foundation website (Paris, 2010); Keine Zeit Busy (21er Haus, Vienna, 2012).