Led by artist and writer Kate Armstrong

Saturday 4 April 2009, 10.30–17.30
Sunday 5 April 2009, 10.30–17.30

This weekend creative writing workshop invites participants to examine cultural narratives within the urban landscape. Under the guidance of artist and writer Kate Armstrong, participants combine visits to the Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009 exhibition and the city streets to explore ideas around travel and 'cultural crossings' to develop written responses to a contemporary experience of mobility in a global culture.

Kate Armstrong is an artist and writer whose work engages the physical and narrative experience of networks. Her location-based writing projects, which engage with the physical fabric of urban experience and which approach the living city as a compositional element in the work, have been exhibited internationally. She directs Upgrade Vancouver, an organization which supports and investigates intersections between art, technology and culture, and is an adjunct professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. Her book, Crisis & Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture, was published by Michigan State University Press.

Programme: Saturday 4 April

Workshop One: Present Tense.

During a visit to the Tate Triennial exhibition participants will experiment with writing as an experiential activity in the present tense. The idea is to inspire a consideration of time in relation to cultural production.

Workshop Two: In Situ

Using a stream of consciousness method, participants will record everything they see, feel and hear from a single position in the urban environment. This will include the presence of objects or messages, scraps of overheard conversation, physical qualities of the cityscapeand their own mental impressions.

Programme: Sunday 5 April

Workshop Three: Mapping and Walking

Participants will examine walking as cultural activity as well as creative approaches to mapping, and consider emerging narrative models in a historical context: from Baudelaire’s Flaneur to the present trend of docu-fiction and psychogeographic novels.

Workshop Four: Mobility and Time

In this session participants will set out to the city to undertake two short narrative exercises: one in which the experience of mobility is considered; the second in which time is explored as manifest in the space of the city.

Workshop Five: The Journey-Form

Finally, the course will consider Bourriaud’s notion of the "Journey-Form". Using strategies developed in past sessions, the participants mission is to create a narrative in the form of a map that explores the dynamic space of the city.

Tate Britain  Duveen Studio
£85 (£65 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments

  

This event is related to the Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009 exhibition