To Write How? 2009 - 2010

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Timeline

November
10, 2010 		Mary Anne and Isobel facilitate a discussion on translation with the help of Ben Fitton's Text (You can find his text here) Questions?


January
19, 2010 		I facilitate a session on subject and object Sound file
January
26, 2010 		I facilitate a second session on subject and object Sound file
February
9, 2010 		Scott Schwager facilitates a session on dialogue. Sound file
February
23, 2010 		Mary Anne Francis facilitates a discussion on authorship link to notes Questions: What is an author?
February
24, 2010 		Email from Isobel - priming us for next week's discussion (on March 2nd - led by Barbara Zanditon) "This may well re-introduce some practical concerns/concerns about practice into the discussions, to balance our sometimes heady or abstract detours!"
Isobel also sent through a link to presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert - provocative thoughts on creativity/authorship.

Here are some of Barbara's (great) questions:

  • What happens when we write and what happens when we make? Or, how are writing and making different (philosophically, neurologically)(role of unconscious)?
  • What is the function of language in making? To shape our thinking? To help us conceive and clarify? To edit and inform? So for example, thinking critically about one's making and/or the larger context of one's making versus the making itself.
  • How do we negotiate the interface between the modes of writing and making?
  • What is writing's purpose in a practice of making?
  • What is making in a practice based around writing?
  • There is something else which is practice which combines text and image. For example, concrete poetry, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Laurence Weiner, Kandinsky's book of poems and woodcuts to say nothing of the wonderful worlds of advertising, the internet etc. How will/does the internet affect distinctions between writing and making?
February
26, 2010 		Email from Barbara Zanditon - priming us for next week's session with a suggestion that: (1) We all bring a short piece of writing that relates to your practice. "Either because it is

your practice or is about your practice or is relevant to your practice." (2) Map the writing's relationship to theory - where the knowledge resides (!)

February
27, 2010 		Email from Mary Anne - proposing that: We concentrate next term's TWH? on proposing and developing an edition for the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. It would focus on "writing as art practice, writing-writing, writing on art - all the variations we've discussed" in our sessions.
March
2, 2010 		Barabar Zanditon's cookie decorating session exploring the relationship between writing and making
link to notes 		sound file
March
3, 2010 		Aaron McPeake is laying the foundations for the TWH? publication You can a proposal for next week's session here: TWH? - Publication
March
8, 2010 		Isoble Bowditch announced that Harriet Edwards (PhD RCA) will be leading the March 16, 2010 session Harriet has been running 'Lateral Leanings Writing Experiments' which she describes as follows:
  • This hands-on Writing Experiment involves drawing into writing (literally), and comes out of a PhD project looking at lateral (or supra-rational) kinds of designing, thinking and making from (studio) processes. Its format is simple: the main theme is introduced (derived from previous interviewees' and participants' voices); this is followed by the three main activities of drawing, chatting over drawing and then writing. Due to the time limits, what tends to come up is on the level of hints, snatches, starts, glimpses, some insight, and ways into more drawing into writing. The writing can be anywhere on a spectrum between reflective and fictional.
  • Some of the workshop material may be used as part of the PhD project, with participants' consent.'
  • Harriet is proposing to keep the name of the workshop theme a secret because immediacy and spontaneity work best.
  • She will bring lots of paper and drawing implements but some of you may want to bring your own sketchbooks/ journals for drawings and words.
  • Mary Anne and I will also be participants in the session. I, for one, will find it challenging, I dont think I ever did learn to draw...
March 25, 2010 Ben sends an exercise to Katrine A double-page spread from Victor Burgin's The End of Art Theory. It includes the last page of 'Seeing Sense' and the first page of 'Re-reading Camera Lucida'.

Resources:

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
To Write How? Photo Album

Link to TWH? pages on the CCW Wiki

Did we do something useful? MA - thinking about the constraints and writing in a group - dynamics very different from what she engages in at home Kristen: How it's written matters - Rule: Include a metaphor that concerns sound or resonance. Content: Should she move with her boyfriend? Very funny - personal matter - this rule allowed for a particular kind of behavior/concern - observed she when from listening to sex - MA - Why did your writing takes such visual form? There's a kind of sarcasm here - trying to make it look at bit crazy - a bit of structure in it...The visual is underscoring the verbal - but sarcasm seems to suggest the visual element should under cut rather than underscore... Trish: Rule: Only use concrete nouns - Content: Risk assessment of her kitchen. Titled: Things in my kitchen that might hurt myself. Very funny - risk assessments are usually silly - forces the physicality - Isobel: Does the rule help or hinder. Did you choose risk assessment because it connects to the group - Questions around substitution - Is thing an abstract noun? There's something about censoring your thoughts - have to fit into categories - points of specificity - you still retain something...List maker - other kinds of inventories... Not to use any adjectives - Katrine - Subject: Parasite It's not breathing but otherwise living... So it enacts a kind of "parasitic"... Ben: No "You," no "I" Didn't work with the Lawrence Weiner: text had no "you" and no "I"... Aaron: Write an entire story in one sentence - subject - doubt...Did anyone feel that allowed them to say things ironically that they wouldn't be able to write otherwise? Isobel: Rule: Write about your content with as many words as you can that begin with the first letter of your name - Isobel's comment - I. Rule-light - write in the manner of an instruction manual - put your content into five rules to be followed...Imperative - instructions to the reader...Allain Rob Grulee...there's a declarative quality.... Random element is important. Writing about something in the relationship between form and content...Writing in the twitter...Something special about today's meeting: freshness - time and space To what extent does it improve one's writing The ruleness of practice What do we want? What are the expectations? How it improves your practice?

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