Marita Fraser presents new research into notions of Care in Fine Art methods, in particular, the role carelessness plays in opening spaces of refusal from which artists and art writers draw from, to create new spaces of resistance in practice. This presentation draws on expanded practices which connect to resistance and refusal as method and material to unpack the materiality of what constitutes carelessness as care.

This presentation examines how by aligning carelessness alongside radical refusal, the practices of Yvonne Rainer, Carla Lonzi and others locates us as readers, listeners, audience in radical proximity to a multitude of bodily spaces that resist patriarchal and capitalist structures. Through her own practice of performative, poetic and fictive writing and a method Marita describes as a “speaking with”, she looks to come close to what carelessness in careful art practices might look like.

This presentation asks how then might refusal operate within movement practice, textually, and in the body? Where does concern for care sit within spaces of refusal, what is an act of carelessness that enables new forms of Care?

This paper is one of two papers and a conversation with Dr Zoë Mendelson (Head of Painting & Printmaking, The Glasgow School of Art) entitled “Viral With”.