I could cite numerous influences and interests that have led me to create the Virtual Scholars site, but perhaps I can best trace its genesis (however unwittingly then) to the time I spent with Rodrigo Velasco, trapped, as we both felt, in the mono-culture of a certain English town (located in a halfway part of the country).

We collaborated on a document that I think neatly captures our many conversations and deliberations (See: ‘In the Study of the Letters in Red’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2005, Vol. 4, No.1). Based on and indeed incorporating elements from Rodrigo’s beautiful Letters in Red, we put together a photo-essay, written in what might suitably be described (after Barthes) as a ‘novelistic’ style. It offers an overtly fictional telling of the pleasure of scholarship, as a kind of ‘intellectual travelogue’; a form which all too sadly is increasingly under threat. Nevertheless, I was heartened recently (out of the all too predicatable confines of a conference I attended) I met someone who has written in such a fashion, though notably under a pseudonym (See: The Decadent Traveller by Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray [Pub. Dedalus]). I have in mind to obtain a copy sometime soon…

Since Rodrigo and I took our separate departures (both glad of course to leave that dreary town), I have been at something of a loss… I must accept those who really can share in exploring ideas (and the world) all live miles and miles away, across seas, being ferries, planes and bus-rides away… I thoroughly miss the opportunity to just sit down and talk in that unstructured and unguarded manner one can with a true friend… I miss the opportunity to explore what I call virtual scholarship…

See also: ‘Experimental Text-image Travel Literature’ in Theory, Culture & Society, 2003, Vol.20, no.3, pp.127-138