The Tangent Factories: Graphic Narrative Production and Interdisciplinary Writing as Contemporary Painting Practice

The Tangent Factories is a graphic novel “mash-up”. The narrative is built out of existing lines from Philip K Dick’s oeuvre, cut-up and re-arranged to tell a different story. The direction of The Tangent Factories narrative is not one-hundred percent “random” like William Burroughs’ cut-ups. Dick’s words are used to tell a story very similar to that of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But the narrative deviates away from Dahl’s famous “Chocolate Factory”, telling the story of an eccentric information factory in a futuristic “After the Bomb London”. As the story develops aspects of Pollard’s life begin to overlap with the narrative, influencing the visuals. A bridge is formed between fiction and autobiography through moments of “synchronicity” (Jung). The visuals are “detourned” - built out of cut-up and rearranged found graphics, clip art, emojis, and "low-fi" doodles.

The paper delivered here will consist of a short reading from The Tangent Factories graphic novel. Pollard will then discuss/unpack some of the issues at stake within the work. Exploring some of the personal narratives, and the Jungian guidance system.

The central questions within this research are as follows:

• Can the blend of Carl Jung’s “Synchronicity” and Lauren Fournier’s “auto-theory” be useful in exploring new avenues for appropriation? - personalising the impersonal?
• Can experimental writing and graphic narrative production move contemporary painting practice into new territories?