mary has been really sick and drinking lots of tea but today seems to be recovered. yesterday we had the workshop 'Writers Hub' so she took lots of drugs and it went well. There were 11 people in total, including us. there are about 5 more people signed on to the writing live programme , but they had work commitments and other things so couldnt make it on tuesday. they will be coming to the peer review sessions though.
the workshoip itself, the handouts and writing exercises were pitched at the right level, thankfully, with many in the group either never having blogged about art, written any art criticism/critical writing, or know much about performance, so feedback and dialogue on the day were good and we have given everyone -whether they be students, performa staff, or professional writers/academics lots of templates and thoughts to go away with to help them blog better about Performa.
There was good discussion on the day too, which i am glad of, sparked by the fact that some of the writers on the programme may have been schooled in what i would call conservative art criticism of the old school, or the Academy. This sort of writing puts itself in service to the work, is well researched and critical, but often doesnt come from the personal, and as such it would never use familiar tones or the highly personal mode of 'I' in its writing. We will see how these voices come through on the blog as opposed to those who are more overtly embodied in their criticism. maybe the two forms of writing will go well together, there is no doubt that there will be readers who appreciate both style of wriitng.
an important part of the day was getting from everyone why they were there at Writers Hub workshop and what they wanted out of the writing programme over the course of Performa biennial. everybody's personal aims make an interesting read and we will be all set to try and support the writers in part way reaching those aims as the weeks progress.
the blog posts are already coming in thick and fast-often too many for rebecca alone to edit as many of the writers are inexperienced and need more condensed editorial advice or changes made to their texts. im sure this editorial challenge will sort itself out as people write more and see others texts and accessible styles of writing for the blog, we also plan to introduce writing surgeries where some writers will be invited (or they can drop in of their own accord) to go over their texts in detail and in person, then we can literally 'incise' the more problemaic bits of any writing whilst guiding them through general points.
the writers raised lots of questions re: what knowledge should you bring to the work, how much research should you do prior to writing? how to write a work that you know nothing about or dont understand. also , there were more prescient or specific points about what a blog was, what kind of blogging we were doing, what voices to use, also what were the challenges ofblogging about performance. i was glad i wrote a note about general points about blogging to give to everyone, but this is just a start and by no means answers the questions that were raised. we will no doubt continue these questions at our next peer review session 9th november. this session is at freemans restaraunt where the writers will be eating 'bring me the head of …' by by Serkan Özkaya which is a Performa Commissioned sculpture and a peice of food!!! yum. Author and Performa Director, Roselee Goldberg, will also be attending the next session, and she can give her feedback on the writing so far, and also give her views on writing about performance in general.
I will extrapolate from my copius notes from the workshop day at a later stage. until then-im off to a halloween parade. ive seen some pretty scary and wild costumes so far-and they were only on people in the lcoal supermarket doing their shopping! in addition, between people dressed as farm hand hicks, fat policemen and homeless people (particularly distasteful i thought) im not atall sure, as a brit, if some people are in costume or not!! better smile anyway, just to be on the safe side
til then
RLxxx
