Experimental Narratives

How do we speak the unspeakable? Or express what
we can't yet understand? Innovation in performance
disciplines has almost always been preceded by
periods of personal, social, or political
upheaval, requiring the artist to traverse
previously uncharted realms in response. In this
sense, experimental work can be understood as work
that strives to recontextualize one's place within
a world that is no longer/was never familiar, is
possibly even hostile, violent, or otherwise
unapproachable. By exploring themes of alienation,
intuition, wordplay, anarchy and liberation,
together we will ask: how might experimental
narratives guide us through a process of
unlearning traditional notions of structure, form,
viewership, analysis, story and even language and,
as a result, open our work to deeper realms of
expression and connection? Part reading/viewing
practice, part conversation space, and part
generative lab, this semester-long course we will
highlight narrative works by a variety of
experimental writers and artists such as Kathy
Acker, Anne Carson, Hilton Als, David Wojnarowicz,
Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Kane, Michaela Coel, Nan
Goldin, Gertrude Stein, Okwui Okpokwasili,
Marguerite Duras, Carolee Schneemann, Virginia
Woolf, and more. Centering each week around a
reading and/or viewing experience, together we
will engage in group discussion focused on
revealing the conceptual and aesthetic strategies
employed by these experimental artists, as well as
the connections that persist across various
artists, disciplines, and histories. While not a
traditional writing workshop, this course is
nevertheless designed to be a fertile environment
for new ideas and impulses and, ideally, will
instill greater confidence in refining our own
artistic practice through the process of authoring
ourselves into experimental lineages that offer a
new sense of belonging and creative potential.