Assisted Nonfiction

As•sis•ted Non•fic•tion /ə-'si-stəd nän-'fik-shən/ noun

1. An artist engaging in Assisted Nonfiction selects, researches, observes, and/or inserts themselves in the first person into a real-life event, circumstance, institution, or system, in order to stress and expose its operations and purpose from within, usually with little preconception of the outcome. Artifacts from and documentation of the process (which can be ongoing, i.e., “definitively unfinished”) are presented in a new context—that of the art exhibition—and potentially take shape across a variety of formats, including written or found text, sculpture, video, photographs, installation, and more.

2. Assisted Nonfiction, like Assisted Readymade, is a willfully oxymoronic term, in that both nonfiction and the readymade are by definition meant to exist in the world without artistic or literary tampering. This ambiguity is often embraced, and the artwork delights in inserting itself into the very folds of this abiding contradiction.

3. Assisted Readymades necessarily enlist nonart objects to perform as art; correspondingly, Assisted Nonfiction involves nonartists as collaborators. Negotiated into participation by the artist, they contribute unscripted but essential elements to the work. Whereas Readymades exist principally in space rather than time—which is reduced to a flash, the instant the artist chooses the object—Assisted Nonfiction extends temporally, beyond the real-time duration of the project, even infinitely.

—Gilda Williams, art historian. A term she coined to describe Jill Magid’s practice.