Reading Journal
1. Syllabus
Performative collaborative qualities writing open source preliminary reading material Uncreative Writing Kenneth Goldsmith material qualities desire not produce new manage organise distribute texts divergent programmers writing machines generating executing assembling weaving fragments ideas originality speculate implications no longer significant relevance description PhD goals intention conducted three participants triadic experiment meaning live writing instability across iterations dyad engaged work conversation research supported commentator listens records conversation interpretation objective think through relationship between -one does not generally speak and write simultaneously – incompatible natural rhythms involving capturing alternating moving nonlinear recursive conversational open-ended statements documentary critical forms fluidly subjective-objective registers discussion about. [from syllabus text]
I’m curious to give PiratePad a try; see how it differs from other tools, what advantages and disadvantages it might bring to the process. Will this tool change the process significantly or is it just another crayon to up the number in the box?
2. Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, New York: Columbia University Press 2011. https://monoskop.org/media/text/goldsmith_2011_uncreative_writing/
The idea of writing presented by Goldsmith did not come across to me as that different from the direction my own writing has begun to take as it becomes a greater part of my studio practice. This lack of feeling as if what he proposes as the direction writing is and should take made me aware that the paradigm I am operating within is that of a visual artist for whom writing is a part of her practice and not the other way around. I do agree there is a difference. I understood Goldsmith’s statements as reflective of a small segment of writing, and what he advocates as is less about shifting the approach to the practice of writing than it is about altering the approach taken to reading, broadening reading within that small segment to become more inclusive of collaborative,collage, ’uncreative’ approaches to writing which have happened, been a natural part of, other segments of writing for a very long time. Taking this back to the visual arts, it is for me similar to the idea that ‘collage’ as a practice in the visual arts had its infancy in the early 20th century, the period in which it was ‘validated’, when in fact it is much, much older both as a technique and a concept.
The description of this book included the syllabus I do not quite agree that what Goldsmith is asserting is:
“that writers today begin to resemble programmers, working with ‘writing machines’, generating and executing texts, and as such assembling fragments, weaving together ideas in ways where originality no longer holds significant relevance.”
I am not a programmer, but based on discussions with those programmers I have known, I would say most would not agree with the above description of what they do; in fact, they have found themselves to be more like artists, writers creating original works in another language. Yes, using fragments and phrases like all writers do; but having the perspective that this does not exclude originality or creatively from the resulting work. Of course, this could be why we, painter and programmers circulated in the same orbit; just as the statement above is from the galaxy of academia and is reflective of the paradigm of that space. Shifting the paradigm within a space becomes a matter of recognizing what conventions must still be respected in the meantime in order to generate a changed space in the future.
Reading this book coincided with thinking of ways to be in dialogue with journal writings of my colleague, Claire Elizabeth Barratt, for the dialogue presentation of our work on July 26. Stripping out words that were slightly more personal to her practice, altering the format/structure to make the words more relevant to my practice I hoped to speak to the overlap and gaps in our mutual practice. The text, originally a purely personal became in its next iteration, through collaboration, universal. Convention is not to post Claire’s original text here without her permission, which I have not gotten. However citing Claire’s original text as the source, traceable to her blog, I am posting here my rewriting. The words are not original to me, and without Claire’s words I would not have given them the form I chose. But the words, in this form speak to her practice as well as to my own; hopefully to others too.
so many ways
folding folding folding
only a body
folding folding folding
over & over over
folding folding folding
another part
folding folding folding
fold & fold again
folding folding folding
if I keep
folding folding folding
I might
folding folding folding
into infinity
folding folding folding
a physical body
folding folding folding
another opening
folding folding folding
to cover
folding folding folding
is exposed
folding folding folding
mine is
folding folding folding
But
folding folding folding
disappear