Reading Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy has brought me great joy; its review, however, not so much. Almost written as a philosophical whodunit, the book "accelerates" this reader through to the final outcome only to have her find herself at the end of the book together with the authors back at the beginning—as they, and I, still have questions. Roleplaying games also demonstrate the ability we have, at least to some extent, to take on other fictions more generally.

At times the selection of material seems fragmentary and partial, the authors choosing those concepts and artworks which best illuminate their thesis. Like Deleuze and Guattari – a philosopher and a militant psychoanalyst who wilfully lost their individuality in the act of writing – Burrows and O’Sullivan have co-created an anti-conventional textbook in the spirit of sorcerous artist-activists. The paper proceeds through analysing four case studies of this fictioning: Patrick Keiller’s Robinson trilogy; Justin Barton and Mark Fisher’s On Vanishing Land; Steve Beard and Victoria Halford’s Voodoo Science Park; and the Otolith trilogy by The Otolith Group. As the kind of fictioning that is discussed by necessity moves away from what is already known, this fascinating and enriching journey, or performance, is strongly future oriented and thus maybe not surprisingly influenced by Deleuzian notions of becoming, including the interest in a "people to come. About how easy it is for them and their friends to enter these worlds, switch perspectives and so forth (and then also deeply experience various emotions within the game).This section is followed by a third and final part on ‘mythotechnesis’ and the related idea of a kind of machine fictioning, concerning ‘the ways in which technology enters into discourse and life’ (1) and attending to ‘technics of adaptation and cloning, as well as technologies of coding, compression and layering, and also editing, scanning, time-stretching and pasting ’(7).

It is certainly within the realms of art—broadly conceived—that we see explorations of and experiments with these other imaginaries (our own work focussed on Science Fiction and the more non-human imaginaries in play there [see Burrow and O’Sullivan 2018: 275-93]). This paper develops a concept of fictioning when this names, in part, the deliberate imbrication of an apparent reality with other narratives. Tijdens de totstandkoming van dit project dienden onze huizen als plekken voor productie, rust en het nadenken over de betekenis van ‘comfort’. In fact, following some neuroscientific accounts it seems as if its more accurate to say that we are always inhabiting a model—or even that we are a model within a model (see Metzinger 2009).

Er wordt gebruik gemaakt van verschillende media, waaronder ruimtelijke installaties, performance, historisch onderzoek, science fiction, beeldproductie, de herverdeling van middelen, het aangaan van nieuwe verwantschappen en humor.

In fact, both are—of course—needed, and, in fact, the two make the game, which is to say without the Game Master there is no world, or if there is, it is one that is chaotic, too spontaneous; and without the players the Game Master has simply penned a fiction. Lilly Markaki, Royal Holloway, University of London, LSE Review of Books ‘Fictioning’ here alludes to ‘an open-ended, experimental practice that involves performing, diagramming or assembling to create or anticipate new modes of existence’ and thus not to fiction writing per se, but the book turns out to be just as unputdownable as the best novel you can lay your hands on, or as hypnotic as Plastique Fantasique’s tunes for that matter. Its purpose is to define and map instantiations of a concept or practice to which the authors, inspired by continental philosophy, give the name of ‘fictioning’. These interactions include exhibiting and selling works, giving interviews, publishing books, or doing performances under their own names.

This whirlwind of references, of which the 26 pages long bibliography is evidence, is further combined with what the authors state as the book’s “necessarily different methods and speeds, operating on a variety of registers”, which they feel is due to the fact that it is a collaboration. It is, mercifully, a much easier read than A Thousand Plateaus, and is written with the calmness and lucidity of the best educators. These relate to three specific modes of performance fictioning, science fictioning and machine fictioning. For specialists in the fields traversed this may be frustrating and Fictioning is unlikely to satisfy those hoping to deepen their knowledge of the philosophers it addresses.

By using the term fiction as a verb we refer to the writing, imaging, performing or other material instantiation of worlds or social bodies that mark out trajectories different to those engendered by the dominant organisations of life currently in existence.Het collectieve project Fictioning Comfort bevat werken die een maatschappijkritische positie innemen door ‘fictioning’ (de handeling van verbeelden en uitbeelden) in relatie te brengen met verschillende gebruiken rondom ‘comfort’. Again, it’s not exactly that a material reality is altered—although there might be aspects of that reality that is changed—and more that a symbolic and imaginary (and emotional) change can take place.