McCannon, D., 2011.

Manifesto of Illustration

This piece of work consists of a series of statements, typographically designed, which offer a provocative set of positions from which discourses about Illustration practice could start.
The piece was written after participating in a Writing PAD workshop run by Juliia Lockheart, with input from Chris Glynn in the form of developmental drawings and discussion. The Writing PAD network seeks to interrogate the place of writing within the Art school environment, and explore new paradigms for thinking critically about the status of writing. The piece paradoxically challenges the status of language as a tool for thinking, but uses ‘the language of the oppressor’ to do it.
It consciously rejects the idea of a long essay, and it’s presence in an academic journal is as a piece of writing somewhere between poetry, a manifesto and a piece of critical thinking.
Dissemination
The piece has been exhibited and performed at the ‘Illustration and Writing’ Symposium at MMU in November 2011, and was published in the Journal of Writing for Creative Practice, produced by Intellect Books in the same year. It has also been featured on the ‘Illustration Research’ website. IR is an international network of academics engaged in research about and through illustration.
http://illustrationresearch.co.uk/index.php/2011/11/09/to-artademics-a-manifesto-2/