VAA Doctoral department invites to the keynote lecture „Fictocritical Encounters: Rethinking Criticality and Writing in Contemporary Art“ by dr. David Maroto, a new postdoctoral fellow at Vilnius Academy of the Arts.
Time: Tuesday, February 10, 2 p.m.
Place: Vilnius Academy of Arts, 102 auditorium, building C1 (Malūnų str. 3, Vilnius)
In recent years, an ongoing debate has emerged regarding the inadequacy of the critical language used to address contemporary art – whether manifest in the crisis of art criticism, the phenomenon of International Art English, or the conventions of curatorial prose. In this context, fictocritical writing appears as a potential escape from the impasse of the current textual model.
Fictocritical writing is a transdisciplinary practice that seeks to dissolve the traditional distinctions between fiction and criticism, theory and practice, research and literature. David Maroto’s postdoctoral research project focuses on the potential of this mode of experimental writing to produce a sort of knowledge that is embodied, situated, and animated by a playful attitude.
The project is structured as a series of encounters with salient authors, such as Michael Taussig, Lynne Tillman, and Chris Kraus. These personal interactions are aimed at unravelling their particular motivations by means of oral transmission, which are subsequently reworked into written form. The intention is not only to write about fictocriticism, but to write fictocritically. This is a practice-based research project, where writing becomes methodological and the research questions are explored through the production of a text that performs its own subject matter – blurring the boundaries between style and content, art practice and research.
David Maroto is a Spanish visual artist based in the Netherlands. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at Vilnius Academy of the Arts, with a research project called Fictocritical Encounters: Rethinking Criticality and Writing in Contemporary Art (supervisor prof. dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius).
This project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), agreement No. S-PD-25-23.
Previously, he completed a PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art, with a research project called The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts, which is the first to explore in depth the subject of the artist’s novel. It has been published in a two-volume book in English (Mousse Publishing, 2020) and Spanish (Greylock Editorial, 2025).
David has an extensive international artistic practice: residence in URRA (Buenos Aires); Vigil Gonzales Gallery (Buenos Aires); Havana Biennial; Biennale Warszawa; Kanal Centre Pompidou (Brussels); W139 (Amsterdam); A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam); Artium Museum of Contemporary Art (Vitoria); Extra City (Antwerp); S.M.A.K. (Ghent); EFA Project Space (New York); Pedrami Gallery (Antwerp); West (The Hague); The Opening Gallery (New York); SALT (Istanbul), a. o.
In 2011, he spent time at a residency in ISCP New York, where he met curator Joanna Zielińska and began a collaboration called The Book Lovers, a research project based on the creation of a collection and bibliography of artists' novels with the continuous support of M HKA (Antwerp). The Book Lovers explore the different ways in which the artist’s novel is employed as a medium in the visual artists, exactly as installation, video, or performance. The collection and bibliography are complemented with a series of exhibitions, performance programmes, publications, commissions, and pop-up bookstores. This collaboration has enabled them to engage with a host of international institutions, including Whitechapel Gallery (London); Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw); Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam); CCA Glasgow; Fabra i Coats (Barcelona); Palacio de La Madraza (Granada); Index (Stockholm); De Appel (Amsterdam); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw); Museum Huis van het Boek (The Hague), a. o.
David has published numerous artists’ novels, essays, interviews, and articles, and edited various publications, including Artist Novels (Sternberg Press, 2015); Tamam Shud (Sternberg Press, 2018); and Obieg magazine no. 8, 'Art & Literature: A Mongrel's Guide' (2018), as well as the paper ‘Valid Fictional Contributions to Non-Fictional Debates: Fictocritical Writing in Artistic Research’ (Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis). He has also written for Caja Negra Editorial (Buenos Aires); EXIT art journal (Madrid); and Artforum.
David also has ample experience as a guest lecturer at international art academies, such as Dutch Art Institute; Gerrit Rietveld Academy; XPUB Piet Zwart Institute; Sint Lucas Antwerpen; Master Institute of Visual Cultures in Den Bosch; Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais, Sierre (Switzerland); Glasgow School of Art; and Stockholm University, a.o. In addition to lecturing, he has designed and taught diverse courses, workshops, and seminars, such as the Collective Novel Workshop at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.
http://www.davidmaroto.info
http://www.thebooklovers.info
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Photo credits: Liza Wolters.
