BLIND(cite) What is social writing, reading, thinking?
Sally Olds
8 Oct–11 Nov 2021
This three-part workshop poses the question: what is social writing, reading, and thinking in the essay form? It starts from the premise that the essay is a social, leisurely form with a social, leisurely history. Our readings, discussions, and writing will revolve around concepts of leisure, class, production, luxury, sociality, collaboration, gossip, and intimacy.
Week one looks closely at the craft, form, and history of the essay, with an emphasis on its communal, collaborative iterations. In week two, we focus on social writing: when researching and writing people, scenes, interpersonal dynamics, and communal life, what tools are at a nonfiction writers’ disposal? Week three, on class, explores themes of wealth, luxury, and excess
Each workshop will consist of mini-lectures from the convenor, Sally Olds, as well as from guests working with these concepts and techniques. We will spend time talking about readings, and learning and practicing social writing and research. Over the three weeks of the course, participants will produce a short text that responds to the workshop’s themes, and that draws on ways of researching and writing introduced throughout.
This workshop series will be fully online and is open to anyone living in so-called Australia. Workshops are intended to be social and welcoming, rigorous and low pressure. All who are interested in the ideas and approaches listed here are invited to apply.
Dates:
27 Oct, 7-9 pm
3 Nov, 7-9 pm
10 Nov, 7-9 pm
*Please note, places are limited and applicants must be available to take part in all three sessions.
Applications close midnight, 15 October 2021.
Expressions of Interest are now open for BLIND(c)ite: 'What is social writing/reading/thinking?' with Sally Olds.
This three-part workshop poses the question: what is social writing, reading, and thinking in the essay form? It starts from the premise that the essay is a social, leisurely form with a social, leisurely history. Our readings, discussions, and writing will revolve around concepts of leisure, class, production, luxury, sociality, collaboration, gossip, and intimacy.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Sally Olds is a writer from Queensland living in Narrm/Melbourne. Her work has been published by Sydney Review of Books, un Magazine, AQNB, the Institute of Modern Art, collected in anthologies, and shortlisted for awards. She has collaborated extensively with Precog, a club night held in Narrm, and taught creative writing at the University of Melbourne. Her first book is coming out in 2022 with Upswell.
Chantelle Mitchell is a curator and writer, currently Secretary for BLINDSIDE, advisor for SEVENTH Gallery, and independent producer. Her work has appeared in Plumwood Mountain, Axon Journal, Marrickville Pause¸ The Lifted Brow, Heart of Hearts and others. She has delivered performance lectures for Bus Projects, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Chantelle is one half of Ecological Gyre Theory with Jaxon Waterhouse, an interdisciplinary research practice seeking to continue the momentum guiding the ecological turn which has come to dominate the humanities in the 21st Century. As part of EGT, Chantelle has been published in eflux, art+Australia, presented for ACCA, ANU and Oxford University. Upcoming engagements include presentations for the Norweigan Petroleum Museum and KTH University of Sweden, residencies in Sweden and Broken Hill, with forthcoming exhibitions for the University of Melbourne and Edith Cowan University.