Ian Haig, Jeanelle Hurst, Bronia Iwanczak, Maria Kozic, Stelarc, Liz Stirling, Fiona Templeton, Linda Wallace, David Wojnarowicz and Nicholas Zurbrugg
The diverse works in Fuel were selected by curator, Jay Younger, in terms of a certain autonomy of practice, which she describes in her catalogue essay as "negotiating cultural discourse by creating an idiosyncratic practice beyond regurgitation of critically acclaimed theoretical positions." While the concerns of the work (AIDS, the city, language, the body, virtual reality, popular culture, survival, sexuality, humour, poetry, art theory and spirituality) are as diverse as their modes of presentation, a commonality of confrontation can be readily identified.
Avoiding the familiar doctrines of representation as cultural critique to which Younger refers when she speaks of a "regurgitation of critically acclaimed theoretical positions", the works of five artists – Zurbrugg, Wallace, Stelarc, Hurst and Wojnarowicz – show a critical practice that fuels future possibilities, including those for a more challenging theoretical discourse. Their work has a critical edge that encourages us to reassess histories that have been shaped through processes of structural coupling, leads us to question structure-determined (or embodied) systems (for instance the coupling of the cognitive, sense and immune systems of the body with operating and communicating systems of technology), and offers perceptions that may be useful for the future.
Visual poet/theorist Nicholas Zurbrugg's ironic FUCK THEORY: you know you always wanted to signposts the curatorial position. This computer generated and typographically pristine take-home graffiti stands as testimony to the ethics of appositional intellectualism. Seeking to open up the authority of the intellectual to problematisation and accountability, this object poses a crisis of authority for the theorist: the refusal of artists to be cast as Other in a client relationship to expert, professional authority. How is the intellectual's authority to