It’s almost five in the morning. And the light of the fainting dawn,
cold blue steel and with the tang and tart sharp taste of
the day being born from the dark.
And that emerges upon on the surface of time,
I livid too, I being born from the shadows, impersonal,
I who am it.
Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, page 66
Dear friends, guests and participants,
Welcome to the Água Viva programme. We are extremely excited and inspired to take this journey with you into the deep water, where creatures are bold, sassy and experiment with wonders. We envisioned this programme during lockdowns while writing experimental letters to each other [a few were written from that magical garden seen in the poster] as a survival instinct. Today, we feel it is the right time to invite all of you to experiment collectively.
We are interested in how Clarice Lispector lived through her experimentation in writing, and her way of writing bounded our collective and shaped our perceptions within the last years. That’s why we would like to dedicate this programme to Clarice, her fierce way of experimentation with language and words, her relationship with writing which inspired us to challenge the institutional expectations of writing in English as our second language, especially in arts, where we bloom.
Água Viva means both living/bubbling water and jellyfish in Portuguese, yet left untranslated in many English translations of the book, as the title refers to Lispector’s understanding of writing time—out of conventional time, Água Viva is to be in now, to be present, with the stream and free. Hard to be categorized in any genre, Água Viva for us is experimentation, poetry, letter, painting, essay, a collection of stories, and a fluid journey between fiction and reality that fascinates us thoroughly.
We believe Água Viva is based on these motivations;
- Discovering collective storytelling practices through a place, a dream, a sound, a memory
- Embracing the courage and fierceness of writers like Clarice Lispector, who opened the gates for all
- Importance of experimentation in arts and writings
- The joy and urgency of the act of storytelling through writing
- Importance of open-sourced, shared libraries and knowledge sources
- In international arts writing, creating spaces with care for other Mother Tongues
The programme invites alternative writing methodologies, different languages, imaginary worlds, new words, and lost yet-to-be-discovered stories. Acknowledging the limits of the private libraries’ and English-dominant knowledge structures, we open these online spaces hoping to provide new ingredients for new ways of telling and moving stories. Collective Cukurcuma is looking forward to holding the space with you all, listening to your stories and experimenting collectively within the Água Viva programme that will continue for the next six months in digital and physical spaces.
The research part of the Água Viva programme was kindly supported by Necessity funding, London.
ÁGUA VIVA PROGRAMME #1
The Emma’s [online workshop] by Rebecca Miller on Sunday July 10th, at 8 pm BST
The Emma’s, Disrupting OuLiPo Techniques
Date: July 10, 2022 Time: 8pm (BST, GMT+1) [8pm for London, 9pm for Berlin, 12am (GMT-7) for San Francisco]
Moderated by Dr. Rebecca Miller
Venue: online, Zoom link will be provided to all participants
RSVP: collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com
[Please RSVP for this workshop to receive the workshop guideline list and as it will be limited to 15 participants]
An acronym for Ouvirir de Litterature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature), a group of writers and mathematicians formed in France by poet Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais. Unlike the DADA and surrealist movements, OuLiPo rejects spontaneous chance and the subconscious as sources of literary creativity. Instead, the group emphasizes systematic, self-restricting means of making texts. For example, the technique known as n+7 replaces every noun in an existing text with the noun that follows seven entries after it in the dictionary (Poetry Foundation, 2022)
Dr Rebecca Miller: I am a multidisciplinary artist, arts-based researcher, and educator. I work with traditional and computational art mediums. Critical theory, Feminist Technoscience and nomadic practices in creativity, storytelling and the making of meaning are woven into my art practice. I believe in the arts in health movement and that the arts are essential to the health and well-being of individuals, society, and the planet. I am experienced in lecturing and online learning and pedagogy. I specialize in themes of art and computational technology, digital arts-based research, image manipulation, visual culture, and participatory arts-based research. Currently, I work as a tutor and associate lecturer at the Institute of Digital Art and Technology (iDAT) at the University of Plymouth UK and on my own art practice.
References
Bradotti, R., 2014. Writing as a Nomadic Subject. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(2-3), pp.141-145. [online] Available at: https://rosibraidotti.com/publications/writing-as-a-nomadic-subject/ [Accessed 29 June 2022].
Coolidge, S., 2017. Who Are the Women of Oulipo? [online] Available at: <https://www.catranslation.org/blog-post/who-are-the-women-of-oulipo/> [Accessed 29 June 2022].
Gleeson, J., 2021. Interview, Judith Butler: ’We need to rethink the category of woman’. The Guardian, [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith- butler-interview-gender [Accessed 29 June 2022].
Poetry Foundation, 2022. Glossary of Poetic Terms, OuLiPo. [online] Available at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/gossary-terms/oulipo [Accessed 29 June 2022].
ÁGUA VIVA WORKSHOP #2
The Emma’s [IRL workshop] by Rebecca Miller on Tuesday, August 16th, 6-8.30 pm BST at No Show Space
Date: Tuesday, August 16th
Time: 6-8 pm
Venue: No Show Space39 Temple St, London E2 6QQ https://goo.gl/maps/YCehu3QNckmoLad97
RSVP: collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com [Please RSVP for this workshop as it will be limited to 15 participants, thank you for your understanding.
The second instalment of The Emma’s workshop will take place in real life at No Show space in London. Having critically explored the Oulipo group in the previous workshop, this edition will focus on contemporary practices of literary constraint or generative engines. Such as work by Dodie Bellamy, Juliana Sphar and Stephanie Young’s Foulipo, and Joe Brainard. In 2015 Louis Bury, author of Exercises in Ciriticism: The Theory and Practice of Literary Constraint asked the question, “what does the phenomenon that I call the “recent efflorescence of American constraint-based writing” (P.18) mean about us as writers and poets even today in 2022? We extend this question to include international writing practitioners.
The participants from the first workshop are invited to bring their personal writing constraints that they conceptualized and the experiments they made following the workshop. Those that are new to the workshop will be introduced to Oulipian and contemporary literary constraints to guide them to design their own. Together we will explore ways that the experiments could be performed, collaborated with, and visualized within the gallery space. In this workshop, we will consider how constraints could operate in visual arts practice and identify artists that use these techniques. We will look at the subgroup Ougrapo (Ouvrir Du Design Graphique Potentiel) and Oupeinpo (The workshop of potential painting) as case studies.
Through methods of play, collaboration, and improvisation, we aim to generate innovative and performative text-based art experiments.
Participation Guide
- Please look at the links to texts provided in the references list below and familiarize yourself with the content.
- Please bring a text to work with. This could be a book, photocopy, or a magazine. This needs to be something you do not mind marking on, drawing on or cutting up. We will have materials such as coloured pens, pencils, and tape scissors that you can use for your work.
- Be ready to create your own artificial restriction in literature to experiment with.
- Please feel relaxed during the workshop; CC workshops are very informal, so we recommend you wear your comfortable clothes, enjoy the snacks, meet others and always feel free to ask anything you feel confused about or not clarified by our team and feel free to leave the workshop at any time needed.
- Bring a friend! Personal invitations are always the most special ones; please invite whoever you think might be interested in this workshop, as all our events are free and open to all!
References
Bury, L., 2015. Exercises in criticism: the theory & practice of literary constraint. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press.
Bellamy, D., 2015. When the sick rule the world. South Pasadena: Semiotext(e).
Bray, OP., (2016) Playing with Constraint: Performing the OuLiPo and the clinamen-performer. Performance Research: a journal of the performing arts, 21 (4). pp. 41-46. ISSN 1469-9990 website < https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/2730/>
Spahr, J., Young, S., 2011. “Foulipo”, in A megaphone: some enactments, some numbers, and some essays about continued usefulness of crotchless-pants and a machine gun Feminism. Oakland: Chainlinks pp.31-42. website
<https://www .academia.edu/20334748/A_Megaphone_Some_Enactments_Some_Numbers_a nd_Some_Essays_in_Which_We_Ponder_the_Continued_Usefulness_of_Crotchless_pants_an d_a_machine_gun_Feminism>
ÁGUA VIVA PROGRAMME #3
Worldbuilding with Kwaku Osei-Afrifa: collective experimentation within science fiction and fantasy
Date: 19th of October, 6.30-8.30 pm
Venue: Kupfer Project Space, Unit 5, The Textile Building, 2a Belsham St, London E9 6NG
RSVP: collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com [Please RSVP for this workshop to receive the workshop guideline, including the suggested reading texts and as it will be limited to 14 participants, thank you for your understanding.]
As the third session of the ongoing Água Viva programme organised by Collective Cukurcuma, writer Kwaku Osei-Afrifa will moderate a collaborative imagination experiment that will be centred around worldbuilding; we welcome all as our workshops are not structured strictly for writers.
Kwaku Osei-Afrifa is a writer and commissioning editor for Footnote Press living in London. Either side of a two-year stint as a chef, they worked at Canongate, Titan, and Unbound and Hodder & Stoughton’s new imprint: Hodder Studio. They have previously written for Manchester Evening News, Huffington Post, and the Bookseller. The Surf is their first novella, and a second is on the way, alongside about a million other things.
You can purchase the signed and limited editions of The Surf here – https://rebellionpublishing.com/product/the_surf-2/
Suggested reading list for this workshop;
1. The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke – http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/the-nine-billion-names-of-god-arthur-c-clarke/
2. A Scale Model of Gull Point by Kate Folk – https://granta.com/scale-model-gull-point/
3. Tower of Babel by Ted Chiang – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pnPAY22wNwnkTYYoW56xPM02mYeQdE_d/view?usp=sharing
ÁGUA VIVA PROGRAMME #4
Worldbuilding with Kwaku Osei-Afrifa: collective experimentation within science fiction and fantasy [Session II]
Date: 15th of December Thursday, 6.30-9.00 pm
Venue: Kupfer Project Space, Unit 5, The Textile Building, 2a Belsham St, London E9 6NG
RSVP HERE [Please RSVP for this workshop to receive the workshop guideline and as it will be limited to 15 participants, thank you for your understanding.]
As the fourth session of the ongoing Água Viva programme organised by Collective Cukurcuma, writer Kwaku Osei-Afrifa will moderate their second collaborative imagination experiment that will be centred around worldbuilding, including a mixture of interactive and written group exercises that will examine worldbuilding techniques practised in tv and film, and we hope to have created a world together by the end of the session with all participants. We welcome all as our workshops are not structured strictly for writers.
Kwaku Osei-Afrifa is a writer and commissioning editor for Footnote Press living in London. Either side of a two-year stint as a chef, they worked at Canongate, Titan, and Unbound and Hodder & Stoughton’s new imprint: Hodder Studio. They have previously written for Manchester Evening News, Huffington Post, and the Bookseller. The Surf is their first novella, and a second is on the way, alongside about a million other things.
You can purchase the signed and limited editions of The Surf here – https://rebellionpublishing.com/product/the_surf-2/
Suggested reading for this workshop (please make sure you take a look at the text before you arrive at the workshop);
1. Tower of Babel by Ted Chiang – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pnPAY22wNwnkTYYoW56xPM02mYeQdE_d/view?usp=sharing
ÁGUA VIVA PROGRAMME #5
Down the Wormhole with Evelyn Wh-ell: non-linear storytelling and collective experimentation using Twine
-as part of the Água Viva programme
Image: from Silent Hill 4: The Room (Team Silent, 2004)
Down the Wormhole with Evelyn Wh-ell: non-linear storytelling and collective experimentation using Twine
Date: 27th of April, 6.30-9.30 pm
Venue: Kupfer Project Space, Unit 5, The Textile Building, 2a Belsham St, London E9 6NG
Please register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/down-the-wormhole-with-evelyn-wh-ell-non-linear-storytelling-tickets-591271989437
As the first workshop of the ongoing Água Viva programme’s new season organised by Collective Cukurcuma, writer Evelyn Wh-ell is proposing an experimental story-telling workshop using Twine (free downloadable open-source software for making interactive/hypertext fiction) in order to build nonlinear narratives that expand ways of imagining ourselves, our histories and our worlds. The workshop will include a mixture of group activities, introducing participants to using Twine and its capabilities, and time for individual writing and experimentation with newly acquired skills. The workshop can also be adapted to be fully communal (so as to reduce the need for participants to bring their own devices), replacing individual writing time with a final group exercise in collective story-telling, using the capacities of Twine to play an extended game of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ to generate a narrative together.
The workshop will also introduce participants to artists/writers who use Twine, such as Uma Breakdown and Sammy Paloma, to create looping narratives exploring story-telling as an escape, entrapment, and a process of losing oneself in order to challenge linear narratives of gender transition which limit the possibilities for trans lives. We will also consider the ways in which Twine’s design and capacities also constrain our story-telling and think about how constraints can be generative sites for discovery and experimentation.
We are happy to reunite at the wonderful space of the Kupfer Project in Hackney for this workshop. We will provide (hot/cold) drinks, snacks, pens and paper but feel free to bring your laptop if that’s more comfortable!
Venue address: Kupfer Project Space 2a Belsham Street Unit 5, Textile Building London E9 6NG https://goo.gl/maps/SkEGjb2oT27GkE8V7
The workshop is for all. No experience in writing or Twine is necessary.
Twine: https://twinery.org
Evelyn Wh-ell (UK) is an artist, writer and researcher living in Cambridge. Their practice makes use of transforms and aesthetic strategies, working with parody and humour to explore the ‘traps’ of gendered subjectivity. Evelyn is also the author of Memoirs of a Child Plot Hole: How to Escape Yourself Without Even Trying, a work of experimental fiction published in 2022 by Sticky Fingers Publishing. They are the 2022 winner of the Michael O’Pray Prize for new writing on the moving image, and have been published by Art Monthly, Another Gaze, Cambridge Literary Review, World Picture Journal, and Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Evelyn is also CCA Derry~Londonderry 2022-2024 Research Associate, where they are developing a collaborative writing project about folk devils, queer masculinity, dress codes, screen violence, and predictions of one’s own impending death.
ÁGUA VIVA PROGRAMME #6
Artist Statement Workshop with Serra Tansel
The second workshop of the ongoing Água Viva programme’s new season: Artist Statement Workshop with Serra Tansel
Date: 11th of May, Thursday 6.30-9.30 pm
Venue: Kupfer Project Space, Unit 5, The Textile Building, 2a Belsham St, London E9 6NG
Please register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/artist-statement-workshop-with-serra-tansel-tickets-612290767167
“One can, one does [I do]
and one has to, at times,
put words into the mouth of the work,
and/or take them out again.
One’s eyes are situated next
to one’s ears.”
Marlene Dumas, Sweet Nothings
“What’s your art practice?” is a highly contextual question. The answer depends on the person asking and the growth potential of the conversation. Identifying the common thread that ties our work together can be challenging, as this thread may easily combine together seemingly unrelated elements. Many contemporary artists adapt to a wide range of contexts, media, and languages in their art practice. Their weekly schedules can include paid jobs, commissioned workshops, and activism, which may or may not be part of their art practice. With the challenge of distilling all of these dispersed activities, it’s easier to resort to generic statements to summarize our work.
Stemming from the need for more encompassing and personalised artist statements, the workshop will explore the various characteristics of our practices.
What is the form and function of your practice? Is it a container / a mirror / a safety valve / a wing / a lens / a flesh? What colour is it closest to, sunset colours / a petrol puddle? Is it sticky/clean cut? What’s the horoscope sign / the spirit animal of your art? Is there a song / a rhythm that your art moves with? What does it smell of?… Through role play and collective writing exercises, we will aim to find the tools to get to the core of each participant’s practice and create a statement that is suitable for both funding applications and casual conversation.
The participants are asked to choose 5 of their works and activities that they don’t necessarily perceive as part of their practice before coming to the workshop.
We are happy to reunite at the wonderful space of the Kupfer Project in Hackney for this workshop. We will provide (hot/cold) drinks, snacks, pens and paper but feel free to bring your laptop if that’s more comfortable!
Venue address: Kupfer Project Space 2a Belsham Street Unit 5, Textile Building London E9 6NG https://goo.gl/maps/SkEGjb2oT27GkE8V7
Please e-mail us for all your questions and access needs: collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com
Serra Tansel (b. 1989, Istanbul) lives in London. She is a member of the music collective Makkam and is one of the faces of Hayırlı Evlat. Her solo and group exhibitions include What Water Knows, Pilot, Istanbul (2022), Sinopale 7 and 8, Sinop (2022 and 2019); SH/FT, No Show Space, London (2021); SENKRON, Pilot, Istanbul (2021); Hayırlı Evlat, A Question of Taste, Pera Museum, Istanbul (2021); “Passion can create drama out of inert stone”?!, Peak, Elephant & Castle Shopping Mall, London (2020); HIGHER, Pilot Gallery, Istanbul (2020), Heavens!, Battersea Arts Centre, London and Bilsart, Istanbul (2019); Not Seeing Anything, Alt Bomonti, Istanbul (2017); Sera Tansel Unlimited, noshowspace, London (2015); Dünya Döner, Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp (2015); Water is on the House with Duval Timothy, Polistar, Istanbul (2014).
COLLECTIVE ÇUKURCUMA 