Wild Conversations Press is dedicated to the funding and publication of hybrid collaborative work. As an integral part of Iain Biggs’ strategy to reconfigure his former practice – he was originally trained as a painter and printmaker – the Press was a response to the fact that the traditional categories of ‘artist’ and/or ‘academic’ no longer matched the real complexities and tensions encountered by those earning a living as artists/teachers/researchers in Higher Education.
By facilitating collaborative work that does not sit comfortably in either the ‘straight’ worlds of the professional artist or of the academic, the Press is a practical response to Irit Rogoff’s proposal that the art and academic worlds be understood as virtual locations. While they have no “fixed and concrete location” in a literal sense - neither can be said to have “a mapped terrain with distinct boundaries”, for example - each is none the less a distinct location, “with a distinct cultural and linguistic tradition and a vehement sense of territoriality”.
Recognizing this, the Press seeks to enable wayfaring in the disputed territories between and beyond those traditions and the sense of territorality they generate.