Creative Practice as a Way of Life

"This is a highly original contribution where poetry, street photography and auto-ethnography are mobilized to advance a reflection on artistic practice, celebrated as an underdetermined, emergent achievement. Showing a vibrant vitalist sensitivity, Tay follows Roland Barthes’ precept, ‘live according to nuance’, to discuss the complex nexus of urban capitalism, depression, and creativity."
Andrea Brighenti, University of Trento, Italy
 
“This short book combines scholarly rigour with artistic flair. It is set to become a classic example of artistic autoethnography both describing, presenting, and carefully analysing the creative process through the lens of the later work from Roland Barthes. A key read for scholars of Barthes, creativity, and the arts, as well as those interested in different lenses with which to approach social problems.”
Wendy Ross, London Metropolitan University, UK

This book combines autoethnographic reflections, poetry, and photography with the aim to bridge the gap between creative practice and scholarly research. Drawing on an innovative combination of different forms of knowledge, creative writing and street photographs are presented as means to reflect on the development of knowledge and self-knowledge through a thought-provoking dialogue with Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist work. What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in a world traversed by values of capitalism and artificial intelligence? What does it mean to teach creative practices in such an environment?

The urban landscape of Singapore, with the Jewel Changi mall, the Universal Studios, and Little India in the background, is the stage where the capitalist demands of modern city life grapple with the solitary act of writing poetry and taking photographs through the personal experience of the author. Capitalist realism and depression realism entwine with Barthes' notion of vita nova in a mesmerizing phantasmagoria that drags the reader to the bowels and secret pleasures of the creative process.

Eddie Tay is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Born in Singapore and resident in Hong Kong, he is also a poet and a street photographer.