Around 10 years ago I sat, bristling with excitement, listening to my favourite lecturer teach us about anti-art strategies. He showed us how artists adopted fictional personas to test the ‘idea’ of the artist, and how this affects the way their work is read by consumers; the work often being as fictional as the ‘artist’ that was supposed to have ‘created’ it. It was a cheeky idea, and I liked it.
I don’t remember whether my lecturer referenced memetics, or whether I stumbled across it and made the happy connection all on my own. Either way, 10 years later, it won’t leave me alone! And so to this article, an introduction to a book I have just started writing about The Use and Function of Memetics in Art (working title!).
