PERFORMING WRITING

PERFORMING 

WRITING 

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Performing, Writing Symposium, Wellington 2017
I silently presented my paper...

I delivered my paper in the event, ‘Turn Four’. The introduction to this turn / event in the symposium, given in the curatorial statement, questions how voice performs its ‘textual cousin.’ The statement questions how our bodies sense rather than only hear, and how writing, when read through voice and mixed with breath ‘expands exponentially’.

It became a focus of my presentation how voice ‘expands exponentially’. The paper I had written on Olson’s ‘Proprioception’ which later formed my second and third chapters of my exegesis, was presented as ephemera. I used breath before I entered the room, using Morse code breathing (something I had previously invented) and breathed Olson’s, ‘heart by way of breath to the line’ in Morse code. I was miked into the room, and the audience heard my breathing before they saw me. I entered, wearing the tuigen cloak (shredded handwriting woven). On arriving at the podium, I turned to my paper, and mimed the whole paper rather than reading it out loud.

The participants, being sympathetic to writing and its performativity, engaged generously. I had arranged for each of the eight or so tables, with approximately four to six people at each table, to be handed a part of my paper (each page had been shredded in half). I also left the same material from the tuigen I was wearing, shredded handwriting on architecture paper, on their chairs (whilst the symposium was in a break). The audience participated by reading out loud their halved pages, others tried to join the pages and some started their own performances. When I had finished miming my whole paper, I then closed with the breathing. 

Afterwards, I received ‘gifts’ of other’s creations they had done whilst I had performed my paper (see images below).