Text means Tissue; but whereas hitherto we have always taken this tissue as a product, a ready-made veil, behind which lies, more or less hidden, meaning (truth), we are now emphasizing, in the tissue, the generative idea that the text is made, is worked out in a perpetual interweaving...1
0. Arriving together
Sitting in a circle, we start with a round of presentation. The facilitator gives the participants an overview of the sequence.
1. Embracing textuality
Text passages that reflect the idea that texts are textures woven from different sources are shared within the group.
Each participant is invited to get acquainted with a text passage and to read it aloud in a collective reading session.
After listening to all the texts, we enter a spontaneous collective reflection: we react, comment, respond, and discuss the passages.
In preparation of the workshop:
– gather a selection of quotes to distribute among the participants in step one (see PDF above as an example),
– select the source texts to be engaged with in steps two and five of the process.
This exposition presents a format designed to experience and experiment with writing as a process of weaving text material from different sources in a workshop setting.
The format consists of an iterative process that alternates individual and collective moments in five main steps. Depending on the specific setting and purpose, variations can be introduced at different stages of the process. In particular, different source texts can be chosen as a basis to engage with in step two (see below).
The workshop format intends to activate a shared experience among participants. It has been implemented in a variety of contexts in higher education and transdisciplinarity in the arts and is intended to be transferable to further contexts and situations.
The present exposition is thus conceived an invitation to further adopt and adapt the workshop format in different settings. By doing so, it aims to contribute to the fostering of communities of practitioners engaged in writing as an aesthetic practice of research across disciplinary boundaries.
The text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.2
2. Navigating source texts & gathering text material
The participants are invited to start from a selection of books, publications, texts, articles... and to navigate them intuitively rather than lineary, following their intuition and curiosity.
Short passages which catch one's attention while sifting are noted and gathered on a page.
In groups of three, participants exchange their source texts and repeat the same sequence of navigating & gathering text material.
3. Share & weave
In their groups of 3, participants read aloud to each other the text passages they have gathered from the source texts.
They briefly exchange about their gathered texts, and
compose a new text together from the text passages collected.
The composed texts are then shared with the whole group – by showing them and/or reading them aloud.
4. Re-write & reflect
Each participant returns to the text composed with their group, and re-write it – either completing it, writing in between gathered passages, or reformulating, recomposing... for a duration agreed upon.
After this sequence, the resulting texts are read aloud and reflected together – the reflection addresses how the re-writing unfolded and/or the new texts that have emerged from the process, observing, explaining when needed, comparing, confronting, noticing echoes, resonances, differences.
5. Echoes & traces
The sequence concludes with each participant choosing a passage from the texts that have been produced along the way and placing it in one of the textual sources from the beginning. The textual traces are left for someone else to find and engage with – the ending thus becomes a new beginning.