This writing workshop and discussion, led by Lucinda Strahan, will explore modes of nonfiction writing that respond to contemporary art by interrogating the dominant masculinist hegemon of theory and the conventions of both assessment and explanation that often constrict art historical writing.
Participants will discuss extracts from essays by Maggie Nelson, Dodie Bellamy and Rachel Blau DuPlessis in a group, considering art as an emotional prompt, a thematic trampoline and a narrative trigger for writing that explores both personal and visceral experiences alongside the intellectual and analytical.
The workshop aims to create a dialogue between how these modes of writing with, writing through and writing from art enable a more nuanced voice through which the writer can weave a more complex and productive engagement between writer and art work. Participants will have the opportunity to create a spontaneous piece of writing in response to a work in the exhibition, and will have the opportunity to read and share their early ideas in a welcoming and supportive space. Writers of all levels and experience are welcome.
SCHEDULE
10am–11am: Introduction and discussion
11am–12pm: Writing exercises responding to exhibition
12pm–1pm: Sharing and further discussion
PRESENTER BIO
Lucinda Strahan has published widely on contemporary art and culture in newspapers, journals and exhibition catalogues nationally. Her work has appeared in The Age, The Australian, ABC online, Crikey, The Big Issue and Harpers Bazaar, and her exhibition reviews have been published in UNmagazine, Broadsheet and RealTime. Strahan has a long-standing interest in visual and experimental writing and her creative works have featured in both art and literary contexts. Her literary-visual essay A Redacted History for dufunctmag.com was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. In 2017 convened a panel on Essaying the Literary-Visual at the NonfictionNow conference in Reykjavik, 2017. Strahan is Lecturer in the Professional Communication program at RMIT University and a researcher in RMIT University non/fictionLab. She is currently completing a literary-visual autobiography as part of a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong.
