Rodrigo Toscano, from “Pig Angels of the Americapolypse,” at PRESS: A Cross-Cultural Literary Conference at The Evergreen State College, 2008 (photo courtesy of poet Tom Orange)
for live action of this performative piece, performed at last year’s spring conference, watch an excerpt here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgHrE7OaXY
Dear All,
Welcome to Experiments In Text: Writing Off The Page.
[PLEASE READ TO END, IMPORTANT INFO PLUS READINGS]
I’m sure many of you have questions about this course, and so the first day of class (Wednesday, 6-8pm Sem II D1105) we’ll go over those questions. Here are a few things to start with:
General Schedule:
Wednesdays will be days for lecture and discussion of course materials, including (short) readings, large group work on collaborative projects, and guest speakers.
Saturdays will be peer collaborative work days: small groups will be responsible for building a collaborative “performative event,” to be performed, read, displayed, etc., in some way during the last week of the quarter.
Collaborative Performative Events: These collaborative projects I will talk more about first day of class, but the two main stresses here are: 1) WORKING TOGETHER, on a WEEKLY BASIS, will be essential to the material each group comes up with; and 2) each event will necessarily have to incorporate text – poetry, prose, found materials, etc – or, in other words, will have to address the central question of the course: what, absent normative definitions in poetry, theater, and the arts generally, can “performing the text” come to mean?
Course Readings/Syllabus: There will be weekly readings for this course, which will be short but at times quite dense. These readings are meant to interact with the way we, collaboratively and individually, understand and create things. They are not just supplemental, but are moments of possible discourse, deeper idea-making, appropriation, and development. “Readings,” will sometimes, in fact, be audio or visual files. ALL READINGS WILL BE SENT VIA EMAIL & PUT ON THE COURSE BLOG, except on a few occasions when such materials will be handed out in class (usually Saturdays). The first reading, to be done for Wednesday, is linked below. I will send you another email this week with a general syllabus (list of readings). There are, however, NO BOOKS TO PURCHASE for this course.
Expectations/Covenant: because I believe that course covenants, at times, can be as much of a cruch as they are helpful in our question to treat each other with mutual respect, I am inclined not to have one for this course. If, on the other hand, some of you would like to develop a course covenant, I am happy to help facilitate that. It should go without saying, however, that mutual respect is a must, as is regualr, timely attendance, given that this course is so dependent on collaboration. Moreover, it should go without saying that what will not be tolerated is any kind of discrimination–that based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation – anything. I expect that, as usual, those sorts of issues will not arise. I also expect everyone to regularly do the readings, have read the assigned readings by Wednesday’s lecture/discussion. Lastly, a sense of play, of taking pleasure in our own work, i.e., to be able to play when we are together, is, well, if not expected, then hoped for. Otherwise, why make anything?
Collaboration With Arun and Rob’s Program: in mny next email, along with a reading list, I will also be sending out information on, tentatively, when, and in what sorts of ways, we’ll be collaborating with Arun Chandra and Robert Esposito’s program. They’re looking at performance through the lenses of experiments in music and dance, with some text work as well. Our course will in some ways be the inverse: we’ll be primarily doing work in text arts (poetry, prose, hybrid work, etc), but will be looking at, appropriating, and working through, issues in experimental music and gesture.
Guest Artists: we anticipate having at least 2 guest artists come to campus, including performative poet, member and founder of The Nonsite Collective, and activist (and Evergren alumn) Rob Halpern.
I greatly look forward to seeing you all, getting to know you as the quarter goes on, and reveling in your creations. If you’re shy, that’s okay. As those who worked with me in previous courses this year can attest, we tend to be a friendly bunch and generate a mutually supportive atmosphere.
See you Wednesday at 6. Meantime, here’s your first reading for this first Wednesday (below).
Solidarity,
David
http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/enslin/enslin/enslin.html – Mark Enslin, Teaching Composition
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please feel free to read the whole thing, but what is required is everything except the section “Composing the Performance of Teaching.” You can either skim or skip that. Pay special attention to the first and last sections.