
Independent writer Moosje Goosen will lead a writing workshop taking place on three Sunday afternoons in ADA. The workshop is meant for anybody with an interest in writing but might be of specific interest to those artists and curators who use writing as part of their artistic practice.
Dates:
Sunday May 13. 14:00 – 18:00hrs
Sunday May 20. 14:00 – 18:00hrs
Sunday June 17. 13:00 – 19:00hrs (Includes a simple dinner)
As Vladimir Nabokov said in one of his lectures: ‘Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.’ Writing is magic: any child in the process of learning to write the letter Aa Aa Aa, then b, c, and so forth, can easily remind you of this. We tend to forget that each letter was, initially, a drawing, crafted by the movement of our own hands: like any other drawing, these written lines can turn into a window to the world, this one or another.
At the same time, learning to write also means that letters lose their peculiarity, so that the written word is prone to become ‘just another’ outlet of language. In our everyday use of writing (beginning with school assignments, then, in our adult lives, the writing of e-mails, a grocery or to-do list, a message on a sticky note or ‘happy birthday’ on a postcard to an uncle) we learn to forget the pleasure of writing ‘wolf, wolf’, just to see where it – all the possible stories of a wolf – might lead to.
This workshop invites a re-cognition of ‘that crafty feeling’ of writing, as novelist Zadie Smith aptly calls it. By means of hands-on exercises, we will read and write collectively and learn what it – ‘wolf, wolf’ – could possibly mean along the way. After a four-week intermission of individual writing, the third and final session will be used for an in-depth group discussion of texts written by the workshop participants.
There will be a minimum of five and a maximum of eight participants in the writing workshop. Please reserve a place by sending an e-mail by the 1st of May at the latest to Esmé Valk (see contact details below). The cost for the three sessions is €75,-. Bring your own pens.
Moosje Goosen is an independent writer based in Rotterdam. She contributes regularly to Metropolis M and Frieze, and also writes in the framework of art exhibitions and events. She has written for, or in collaboration with a number of artists, such as Sara van der Heide and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, and is a research/writing member of the Uqbar Foundation, initiated by artists Irene Kopelman and Mariana Castillo Deball. For Uqbar, she is currently in the process of developing a book series, titled A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia, the first two volumes of which (on phantom limbs and dinosaur fictions, respectively) will appear next year.
Practical Information:
Sunday 13 May 2012 | 14:00 18:00
Sunday 20 May 2012 | 14:00 18:00
Sunday 17 June 2012 | 13:00 19:00 including dinner
ADA studios, Delftsestraat 9-B, Rotterdam
email: [javascript protected email address]
tel: 06 48448322