Site | Plot | Hole : writing outside-in

This is an invitation to Site Plot Hole: writing outside-in, a symposium on site-specific writing. What does it mean to write as object instead of writing about an object? Across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, there is an increasing interest in understanding the non-human processes that unfold beyond the reach of disciplinary convention and habitual modes of thinking; to plot holes instead of the wholesome narratives that cover them up.
In this symposium we want to understand the hybrid methods and strategies practitioners employ to write their site across poetry, architecture, art, and geography. In the first panel, geographers and artists will discuss how they combine both textual and extra-textual strategies in addressing theirsite, the place of writing in their practice, and how they conceptualise the site of their practice. In the second panel, we will hear how poetry, as a different kind of writing can inhabit these sites, and ultimately how poetic and critical languages can be harnessed to move beyond habitual modes of reading and writing. 
12.15 - 13.00 Lunch 
13.00 - 13.15 Opening remarks
13.15 - 14.15  Panel 1: writing the object Dr Amy Cutler Dr Sasha Engelmann Ilona Sagar Daniel Paiva
14.15 - 14.45  Discussion
14.45 - 15.15 Break 
15.15 - 16.15 Panel 2: writing as object  Dr Carrie Etter Nancy Campbell Claire Cox
16.15 - 17.00 Discussion Speakers 
Nancy Campbell 
Nancy Campbell writes poetry, art criticism and narrative non-fiction. A series of residencies with Arctic research institutions between 2010 and 2017 has resulted in many projects responding to cultural and climate change in the polar regions and water conservation. She is currently working with the Canal & River Trust and The Poetry Society as the UK’s <A HREF="http://www.waterlines.org.uk/blog/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Canal Laureate</A>. Nancy’s first poetry collection <A HREF="http://www.enitharmon.co.uk/product/disko-bay-nancy-campbell/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Disko Bay</A> (‘a beautiful debut from a deft, dangerous and dazzling new poet’–Carol Ann Duffy) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2016 and the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial prize. Her latest book, The Library of Ice, a blend of cultural history, nature writing and memoir, <A HREF="http://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Library-of-Ice/Nancy-Campbell/9781471169311" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">is published by Scribner UK</A>. Her many artist’s books include How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabetwhich received the Birgit Skiöld Award, and is now reissued in a <A HREF="http://miel.bigcartel.com/product/how-to-say-i-love-you-in-greenlandic-an-arctic-alphabet-nancy-campbell" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">new edition</A> by MIEL. Nancy is dedicated to developing innovative literature projects to engage audiences with environmental issues. She was a MarieClaire ‘Wonder Woman’ in 2016 for activities including Arctic Book Club and <A HREF="http://nancycampbell.co.uk/work/artists-books/polartombola/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Polar Tombola</A>, an interactive live literature event. Her work has been supported by Arts Council England, The Worshipful Company of Stationers, and the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust, among others. Nancy’s writing on the visual arts appears regularly in the Times Literary Supplement and many other journals. <A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bill-Jacklin-Graphics-Nancy-Campbell/dp/1910350400" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Bill Jacklin: Graphics</A>, co-authored with Jill Lloyd, was published in 2016 to accompany the artist’s exhibition at the Royal Academy. For some years the editor of international art magazine Printmaking Today, she remains on its editorial board.
Claire Cox 
Claire Cox is a funded research student at Royal Holloway who started part-time in September 2106. She is currently researching her poetry-practice PhD thesis Voices from the Epicentre: the Poetry of Disaster.She has a BA in Drama from Loughborough University and an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University, where she was awarded the Blackwell’s Prize for best student. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Magma, Lighthouse, Envoi and Butcher’s Dog, and also <A HREF="https://poetryschool.com/poems/war-baby/" TARGET="_blank" TITLE="'War Baby'" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">'War Baby'</A> and '<A HREF="https://poetryschool.com/poems/eye/?no_frame=1" TARGET="_blank" TITLE="'Eye'" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Eye</A>' online at Poetry School’s website. In 2017 she co-organised Poetics of Home: Conference on Place and Identity, hosted by the Institute of English Studies in conjunction with the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre and RHUL English which explored notions of home, identity and displacement. Claire is also co-founder and Associate Editor with <A HREF="https://www.brookes.ac.uk/poetry-centre/ignition-press/" TARGET="_blank" TITLE="ignitonpress" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">ignitonpress</A>, a recently-established poetry pamphlet press based at Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre. Her research interests include poetic inquiry, disaster studies, the literary aesthetics of trauma and the poetics of climate change.
Amy Cutler
Amy is a cultural geographer, curator, writer, and film-maker. As a curator she works frequently on the production of immersive and live cinema and exhibition events provoking and changing the public conversation around ideas of space, geography, nature, and nonhuman others. She has two degrees in English literature from Oxford, a PhD in Geography from RHUL (on poetry, ecology, and British landscape politics), and was an Environmental Humanities postdoc at the University of Leeds' English department, during which time she was selected by the AHRC for their Natural History Museum event and national shortlist of fifteen early career researchers doing the most inspiring work in arts-science collaboration. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Geography department at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she works at the <A HREF="https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/geography/centre-for-geohumanities/home.aspx" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Centre for the GeoHumanities</A> and teaches on geography, narrative, and cultural imaginations of nature (including experimental approaches to nature documentaries and dark ecologies). Sasha Engelmann 
Sasha Engelmann collaborates with contemporary artists on environmental sensing and politics. In particular, she studies communities of creative practice engaged with atmospheric and environmental questions. Her work contributes to the growing discipline of the GeoHumanities, a field animated by practice-based collaborations between geographers and artists. Between 2013 and 2016 Sasha conducted site-based, immersive fieldwork at <A HREF="http://tomassaraceno.com/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Studio Tomás Saraceno</A> in Berlin. This fieldwork included joining the large contemporary art studio as a practitioner, and collaborating with Saraceno and his team on exhibitions, residencies, conferences and especially the <A HREF="http://www.aerocene.com/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Aerocene</A> project. Sasha remains a collaborator of Studio Saraceno and has organized launches of Aerocene sculptures in Lancaster and London, among other sites. Sasha has significant experience in interdisciplinary pedagogy: together with artists Jol Thomson and Ivana Franke, architect Natalija Miodragovic, critical theorist Alan Prohm and artist Tomás Saraceno, Sasha designed and delivered a new curriculum for teaching art in the Anthropocene at the Technical University of Braunschweig.  Sasha has presented seminars at the <A HREF="http://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Anthropocene Curriculum</A> and the Technosphere Project at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, and has coordinated numerous public events related to art-science collaboration, the Aerocene project and 'aërography' at venues including the Institut für Architekturbezogene Kunst, Germany; 21er Haus, Vienna; and the Royal College of Art, London.  Carrie Etter
American writer Carrie Etter has lived in England since 2001 and taught Creative Writing at Bath Spa University since 2004. She has published three collections of poetry: "The Tethers" (Seren, 2009), winner of the London New Poetry Prize, "Divining for Starters" (Shearsman, 2011) and "Imagined Sons" (Seren, 2014), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry by The Poetry Society. She also edited the anthology "Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets" (Shearsman, 2010) and former student Linda Lamus's posthumous collection, "A Crater the Size of Calcutta" (Mulfran, 2015). Individual poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New Statesman, Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other journals worldwide, and her short stories have appeared in several anthologies as well as numerous journals.
 
Daniel Paiva
Daniel Paiva is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of University of Lisbon, and a visiting PhD student at the Royal Holloway, University of London. His doctoral study entitled “Urban sound: territories, affective atmospheres and public policies” is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/108907/2015). Daniel Paiva is also a team member of the research projects Agora, NoVOID, and Saberes Geográficos. At the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of University of Lisbon, Daniel Paiva has taught Social and Cultural Geography and Urban Geography in undergraduate courses. His current research interests lie within cultural geography, and include sonic geographies, urban studies, geographical thought, and creative methods.
 Ilona Sagar 
Ilona Sagar, lives and works in London. Using a diverse range of media spanning moving-image, text, performance and assemblage, she has formed a body of work, which responds to the social and historic context found in the public and private spaces we inhabit. A significant aspect of her practice is the broad cross-disciplinary dialogue generated through collaboration with a range of art and scientific disciplines; including dance, architecture and neurology. She has a practice that explores the link between language, surface, technologies and the body through our increasingly mediated encounters in social, political and experiential space. Illusion and material [dis]honesty set the stage for works which seek to seduce, alluding to something familiar yet other. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at South London Gallery, Correspondence O (2017); HereAfter residency White Building SPACE Studios, London (2017); Solo Show, Pumphouse Gallery, London as part of The Ground We Tread (2016); solo show: Hesitant Desire Shall Flourish In A Soil Not To Strong, Art Licks Weekend with DKUK and Ballad of Peckham Rye (2016)

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