The act of writing in Coni Text

The critical exegesis of this thesis considers the history and approach of Performance Writing, once the name for a course, now a conceptual art practice. To date, many instances of performance writing approaches have focussed on site-specific events, and the media used to elicit writing, along with the body as movement. However, I return to Charles Olson’s Black Mountain College Charter: “The Act of Writing in the Context of Post-Modern Man,” because his charter was drawn on some forty years later by the Performance Writing course at Dartington College of Arts. Olson’s ideas are often assumed to solely pertain to breath and voice given his “Projective Verse” manifesto, but a lot of his work was about the act of inscribing. Furthermore, referring to Olson’s “Projective Verse” and Proprioception, along with his ideas of objectism, all written during Olson’s time as rector at Black Mountain College, a clearer understanding as to the act of inscribing is examined. Not to overly theorise, something performance writing resists, but to deepen my practice, I consider various positions which underscore a focus away from the dualism of writing versus speech, toward the act, materiality, and textuality of various kinds of writings. The act of inscribing written texts has been historically under-read. Approaches in performance writing offer spaces to further develop understanding toward writing acts, non-alphabetic inscription, and its textual and material event. Similarly, the historical under-reading between interpretation and practice is addressed through this research from my own creative endeavours while working closely alongside understanding performance writing approaches. My research led me to closely consider notions of writing, its materiality and action, and how these aspects transact as interventional spaces in any given performance writing approach. These ideas which emerged through the field of Performance Writing are contrasted and further examined against other practitioners and relevant fields such as asemic writing and concrete / visual poetry. The creative component of this thesis is held in the digital archive, www.conitext.com which includes the Reign of Contexti performances, the play, “Text Icon” and other various events, art works, films, and exhibitions, created as part of my research. The work housed in the archive www.conitext.com is also discussed in detail within the exegesis, and is given its own dedicated chapter.