**THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT**

‘…when we’re writing music, that’s what’s important, and when we’re writing ideas, that’s what’s interesting. And I would like to extend it to as many things in my life as I can — to cooking, to answering the telephone…’ — John Cage

Writing and performance have long, perhaps always, been intimately linked. The most obvious relationship between the two may be the script and its enactment — how can one have a reading if there has not previously been some writing? — but there are many other connections, some of which might be considered even more fundamental. Performances that might seem spontaneous — whether they occur with the gallery, or everyday life — are likely to be based upon actions previously learned and rehearsed, and whether or not these have literally been written down in advance, they have been inscribed into the communities to which we belong. Even those performances that are most ‘lifelike’, and might be considered most ordinary, draw our attention to the repetitions and rituals of our everyday lives. Alison Knowles’ performance The Identical Lunch (1969) was developed from her habit of eating the same lunch — ‘a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast, with lettuce and butter, no mayo and a cup of soup or a glass of buttermilk’ — at the same time every day. When Knowles acknowledged this daily ritual as the performance it was, and invited others to join her, it enabled her to notice the differences that occurred within the repetitions, and to pay attention to the uniqueness of the moment, and the actions that occurred within it.

This two-day conference will bring together practitioners in live art, performance, dance and the visual arts, with poets, choreographers, essayists, historians and others considering writing and performance in aspects both broad and particular. What are the most urgent considerations in our understanding of contemporary performance and its relationship to writing? How important is writing — especially with regards to the possibility of repetition and to ritual practices? If, to follow Richard Schechner, every performance is a ‘twice-behaved behaviour’ even when seemingly unscripted, how might the body be inscribed and, as such, is every act a palimpsest? How might literary or linguistic theories or practices inform a performance that may not itself be verbal?  Writing / Performance aims to consider, celebrate, and criticise this expanded field of performance practices in contemporary art. 

SCHEDULE

Thursday 30 January

10.00: Registration

10.30-10.45: Welcome , Introduction

10.45-12.15: Enchantment and Affect

Isabella Streffen: 'Proposals for Enchantment'

Erica Scourti: '8 things to be scared of instead of death'

Richard Layzell: 'Untitled'

Jeremy Millar: Chair

12.15-12.30: Coffee + tea break

12.30-12.40: William Cobbing: 'What Are Words Worth?'

12.40-13.00: Sean Ashton

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.00-15.00: Tai Shani in conversation with Juliet Jacques

15.00-15.15.: Coffee + tea break

15.15-16.45: Political Bodies

Nisha Ramayya: 'The discharge of something long held - in the body: Translation, Performance, and Sacrifice

David Grundy: 'Trying to keep things together: Dance and Text in the work of Ishmael Houston-Jones'

Marita Fraser: 'Feminist Frottage: "Speaking with" off the page'

Emily LaBarge: Chair

16.45-17.00: Coffee + tea break

17.00-17.30: Shirt

Friday 31 January

10.00-10.15: Ken Hollings and Rathna Ramanathan: 'Ideas Are One Thing, And What Happens Is Another'

10.15-11.45: Scores

Rebecca May Johnson: 'The Recipe as Event Score? Performing Disobedience in the Kitchen'

Neil Luck: 'Writing as Composition: a musicological reading of the script as score'

Roberta Minnucci: 'Performing the Score: Writing, Music and Dance in Kounellis' performance Da inventare sul posto (To Invent on the Spot)

Chair: Irene Revell

11.45-12.00: Coffee + tea break

12.00-13.00: Sally O'Reilly and Keith Jarrett

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.00-14.30: Sophie Jung

14.30-15.00: Jonathan P. Watts and Adam Linder: 'Some Proximity'

15.00-15.30: Ian Saville

15.30-15.45: Coffee + tea break

15.45-17.00: Roundtable discussion

17.00-18.30: Drinks reception