Study group of the 1981 Left/Write! conference transcripts in perspective of its reenactment.

Schedule
14:00 - 17:30 Study group (with buns and coffee)

Due to the nature of the text, the session will be held in English (though we can surf)

Register to participate here

Left / Write (Rescript)
New Narrative is an experimental writing movement that emerged in the San Francisco poetry scene in the late 1970s around writing workshops held at the Small Press Traffic bookstore by Bruce Boone and Robert Glück. The term was coined to describe experiments that used gossip, promiscuity, fax, lists, non-narrative elements, pieces of news and slanders as vehicles to write narratives. Emerging from the context of the civil rights, the black movements and the sexual liberation, New Narrative appears as a motley crew of poets, writers and activists who examine poetic forms that could address their lives. Through personal, relational and transgressive writings, New Narrative experiments generated an active and emancipatory approach to language.

In the aftermath of the first Reagan election, members of the movement envisioned a conference to gather grassroots poetry groups and to reflect about the politics of their life and work. The Left/Write conference, held in 1981 at the Noe Valley Ministry, SF, was an attempt to elaborate political solidarity through literary practices. Partly artistic, educational and political, the conference convened 300 writers over two days through workshops, discussions, exhibitions and events. The conference took place once and was never repeated.

Left/Write! (Rescript) is the first session of a series that examine the conditions of emergence of such event, through reenactment. Using the transcript of the conference, as a score for conversation, reading and organizing, the sessions will look into ways of learning from there and then in order to examine our commitments to here(s) and now(s).

About Simon Asencio
Simon Asencio (Brussels, Marseille) works with performance settings that question the notions of liveness, stage and audience. His work takes the form of exhibition scenarios, text-based ephemera and covert acts.