Studio 06: Writing Rough

Studio brief

What are the outer limits of the essay? Write on the edge of the possible in a rich, researched and evidenced discussion which creatively explores the expanded field of the essay.

This studio is designed to take risks within language, format, and subject; to explore the ways the essay seeks to embody knowledge and make connections in ways only the essay can. Who are the practitioners historically and writing today that experiment with the possibilities of the essay form? This studio is particularly in interested in matters of form. How should your form delivery, of the voice, of text-type, of formatting, map onto your subject? What kind of intelligibility is intended, to what purpose, for what audience? Who are the practitioners historically and writing today that experiment with the possibilities of the essay form? How is it possible to analyse and evidence critical thought, but also to bring rhetoric and poetics to bear on the subject?

Take Risks. Write rough on the trail of a new world of language and form.

And we will enter your work in a prize for experimental non-fiction.

Suggested readings, resources and preparatory activities 

• Bachelard, G. (2002). Earth and reveries of will: an essay on the imagination of matter. Dallas, Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.
• Berardi, F. (2019). Breathing: chaos and poetry. Los Angeles, Calif, Semiotext(e).
• Bernadette Corporation (Collective). (2005). Reena Spaulings. Cambridge, Mass, Semiotext(e).
• Benjamin, W., & Eiland, H. (2003). The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Pr. of Harvard University Press.
• Carson, A. (2005). Glass, irony, and God. New York, New Directions Books.
• Carson, A. (2005). Economy of the Unlost: reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
• Debord, G., Wark, M., & Kendall, S. (2009). The foundation of the Situationist International (June 1957-August 1960). Correspondence. 1. Los Angeles, CA, Semiotext(e).
• Fisher, M., Ambrose, D., & Reynolds, S. (2018). K-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016). London, UK : Repeater.
• Freytag-Loringhoven, E. V., Gammel, I., & Zelazo, S. (2011). Body sweats: the uncensored writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press.
• Gaddis, W., Birkerts, S., & Tabbi, J. (2005). Agapé Agape. London, Atlantic Books.
• Glück, R. (2016). Communal Nude: collected essays. Los Angeles, Calif, Semiotext(e).
• Hilder, J. (2016). Designed Words for a Designed World: The International Concrete Poetry Movement, 1955-1971.
• Jamiu, B., Ihejirika, U., & Dairo, E. (2018). Selves: an Afro anthology of creative nonfiction. Silverprints Digital Solutions, 2018.
• Johnson, B. S. (1999). The Unfortunates. London, Picador.
• Paik, N. J., Hanhardt, J. G., Zinman, G., & Decker-Phillips, E. (2019). We are in open circuits: writings by Nam June Paik. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2019.
• Kwapisz, J., Simmias, Simmias, Simmias, Theocritus, Dosiadas, & Vestinus, L. I. (2013). The Greek figure poems. Leuven, Peeters.
• Kraus, C. (2011). Where Art Belongs. Los Angeles, Calif, Semiotext(e).
• Kraus, C., & Mattar, M. (2015). You must make your death public: a collection of texts and media on the work of Chris Kraus.
• Land, N., Brassier, R., & Mackay, R. (2018). Fanged Noumena: collected writings 1987-2007. Falmouth, Urbanomic.
• Lee, L., & Hirschhorn, T. (2013). Critical Laboratory: The writings of Thomas Hirschhorn. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
• Perloff, M. (2012). Unoriginal genius: poetry by other means in the new century. Chicago, Ill, University of Chicago Press.
• Perloff, M., & Bayot, D. J. Y. (2015). Poetics in a new key: interviews and essays. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
• Perloff, M. (2005). The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Evanston, Ill, Northwestern University Press.
• Pynchon, T. (2014). Gravity's Rainbow. New York, The Penguin Press.
• Smithson, R., & Holt, N. (1979). The writings of Robert Smithson: essays and illustrations. New York, New York University Press.
• Schwartz, O. (2016). ‘Humans Pretending to be Computers Pretending to be Humans’.
• Tatsumi, Y., Tomine, A., & Nettleton, T., (2013). A Drifting Life. Montreal, Drawn & Quarterly.