Please submit a listing, by project number and sub-number, of projects of interest (1), status enquiries for specific projects (2) and requests for further information on specific projects (3),  suggestions for amendments and additions to projects (4) & proposals for new projects (5), listing these,  to    todhartman@gmail.com

Updated 16 March 2014

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Project 1/3

The ‘rediscovery’ of a hitherto-obscure, and underappreciated writer from the past (or possibly the present, but more problematically), chosen, with some care, from the book stacks of the London Library. The production of a small (1-page or less) article re-introducing the figure and putting him/her into historical context, describing the work etc.  Then,

a)      Expansion of the biographical work on the subject’s life into a larger piece of literary criticism/history/theory, with view to publication

b)      Carrying out Project 1.3 as a regular writing exercise in and of itself, from which to possibly source material for other, larger projects

c)      Project 1.3 carried out a number of times, with a view to publishing a collection of short biographical pieces the theme of which are hitherto little-known literary (or philosophical or artistic…) figures.

d)     Project 1.3 as a joint project, structured as a mutual challenge (e.g. for example, one is told to find an 18^th century lesbian novelist rumoured to have psychic abilities and write the short sketch about her within one week; The one who is challenged to do this makes, in turn, a similar challenge – for example, to track down and frame and make sense of a nineteenth century poet who was also a sea captain….both pieces of written work must be finished and exchanged at a set date and time and place (possibly a secret location)).

e)      Putting the challenges and the products of the challenges into an edited volume, the progression of which is

1. Totally random, based on whatever challenges participants choose to set each other each time.
2. The subsequent subjects set as challenges must be about a person that the person one has written about could conceivably have encountered, or would likely have encountered, or can be shown historically to have encountered, at some point in his/her life.
3. A list of themes is drawn up beforehand, which structure the larger project/collection, and may be broad and theoretical and grand (death, passion, decadence….) or silly or about playing with words or derived from or intended to form some kind of code or message when put together. To determine the parameters of the next challenge, a theme from this list is chosen at random (it may only be used once), which the challenger must apply to some aspect of the piece that the challenge has just written.
4. As above, but with a list consisting of relational shifts rather than themes, to be applied directly to the subject of the most recent mini-biography in order to determine the identity of the subject of the next. Shifts might include ‘The absolute opposite/nemesis of’, ‘The exact same sort of person, but in their 20^th Century/18^th Century etc. incarnation’, ‘The same person, but if she had never married’, ‘if he had been born out of wedlock’, ‘if she had been Italian’ etc.
5. The content of the challenges must be derived from some aspect of, or the final words, phraseology, or ideas written in the previous responses (much like re-reading the phrase that the voice recognition has mis-recognised, again and again, to generate unexpected new material), but with potential for Oulipo-type sovereignty of words/letters etc. over conventional logic.

f)       Project 1.3, but with the proviso that both, or ideally more than two, participants write about the same subject, but not in tandem with each other. A first one-page literary biography is produced (or whichever genre/demographic is chosen). Then, the c next participant must fill in the gaps that are invariably left when condensing someone’s life to a single page. Next, the other, or a third, participant must provide the information that seems to have been omitted by the first two versions, and so on….the writing may well create the information gaps that it claims to fill (especially when dealing with a truly obscure, or simply rather uninteresting, subject), and it will likely involve more and more historical speculation as it goes along; the proviso/challenge is that it may approach, but must not actually enter, the domain of fiction.

g)      Project 1.3, variant e, but with the content and progression set out/conceived/planned with its most important aspect to be to describe a visual genealogy (which is rendered as a beautiful elaborate tree/web of connections and presented on the page) – the idea being to show ‘x degrees of separation’ between the various subjects. The progression could be set out beforehand by drawing up the ‘family tree’ first (involving some familial ties, but also vectors such as ‘would have definitely been in two separate countries on 16 March 1893’, ‘would not have been romantically or sexually attracted to’, ‘definitely, without a doubt, would never have encountered’, ‘hated’, ‘probably was afraid of’)  and then the challenge being to fill in these relational positions on the drawn genealogy with actual people whose existence one must discover and document.

h)      Project 1.3 done as an abécedaire,

1. With subjects chosen effectively at random on the strength of their potentially interesting nature and surname, through intentional selection and/or a challenge to come up with the more interesting subject of the two.
2. With subjects chosen as the result of mutual challenges with positive specific content – e.g., one is told to find an 18^th century lesbian novelist rumoured to have psychic abilities whose surname began with ‘A’ and write the short sketch about her within one week; The other participant, in turn, issues a challenge to track down a nineteenth century poet who was also a sea captain whose surname begins with the letter ‘B’, and so on.….
3.  an abécedaire, but of what turns out to be a very strange sort of alphabet……initially normal, it seems to hijack its own progression:

a.   remaining fixated on one letter, trying to move ahead, and doing so in fits and starts, but then seemingly unable to resist returning to the particular letter again and again…..

b.  ’accidentally’ jumping ahead and then having to go back and try and cover the letters it has missed, but then forgetting and missing some of them again.

c.  Seeming to ‘have a problem’ with or a phobia of one of the letters. First, ‘stalling’ in the letters before, repeating them in what it believes to be a covert fashion in order to avoid having to progress to the letter it seems to dread. Then, seeming to rally itself, reverse a little bit, and progress confidently through the letters preceding the undesirable letter, deciding to grit its teeth and push through, but then, at the last moment, simply omitting the letter and then stalling, as if confused or stunned, pathetically repeating the next letter again and again. It manages to proceed ahead slowly, but starts to make little half-hearted ‘dips’ back to the letters preceding the undesirable letter (entries that are largely pointless or not quite logical in relation to those of other letters, and which are hastily concluded), as if it knows it has no choice and must include this letter at some point and is trying to prepare itself again. Now, a new strategy seems to occur to it — that of going into reverse, as if it will be somehow easier or less painful to tackle the letter from behind, hoping that this way it won’t quite seeing what it’s doing and it will be over and done with before it knows it.  Yet, again, at the last moment, it cannot quite bring itself to come into contact with the unpleasant letter, and omits it when the time to include it arrives, and then stalls, pathetically, on the preceding letter, in a state of apparent distress.
     Note i.  This could be assembled as a supplementary project,

using alphabetized material to hand;

   Note ii. The unpleasant letter would not be entirely omitted in the  written text, but its incidence would be, it becomes clear only after a while, avoided wherever possible and kept to an absolute minimum — explaining what appear initially to the reader to be slightly odd or unnecessarily elaborate synonyms for certain very basic terms (that begin with or prominently feature the letter).

1.  See listing for Project 1.3.i.1

i)        Project 1.3, carried out in the variant of choice, but with the requirement that each entry be written in the form of an obituary, which must begin with the announcement of the subject’s death, and then work backwards. The whole project would have a slight (intentional) aura of the morbid about it.

1. [crossover with Project 1.3.h.4] For each subject, the depiction of the grave or some memorial-type column, emblazoned with the particular letter

1. Straying slightly into the area of fiction and literary creation, which is, properly speaking, the domain of Collaborative Projects List No. 1 only, (and overlapping with my Subaltern Studies project); entries are written not as actual biographies of a single individual, but as an amalgamation of a given set of traits, a (probably depressing/typical) ‘real’ stereotypical historical individual. which will be discovered/intuited working from some initial criteria for choosing a subject. The ‘median’ meta-subject will be described through
   1. The simple quantity (essentially) of occurrences of a given trait/fact/pattern/act/position etc. in the known biographies of individuals corresponding to the initial selection criteria.
   2. Same as above, but data gleaned in part from real biographical data and in part from the traits of characters who appear in literary fiction of the same period (this will include both the important characters and the entirely minor and ostensibly insignificant characters)
   3. The collection of entries will likely be either 1) bizarre, incongruous and unbelievable (if it turns out that adding together the most common traits and stereotypes produces a totally unlikely person) 2) Believable as potential real biographies. Whichever one of these two turns out to be the case, one should ‘help the writing on its way’ to these effects/results – either emphasising the bizarre, the humorous, the accidentally poetic, or polishing the gaps in believability/vital detail of the seemingly real historical mini-biographies.

Project 1/1                                     Collaborative Support

For all the description of complex collaborative projects, the main single aim of the entire workgroup is to assist members in producing good work and allowing and encouraging them to develop a uniquely impressive bibliography of their own published work. To that end, the main collaborative project is that of one’s personal work for feedback and advice, discussion of common topics and moral support, and, crucially, the setting of mutually agreed deadlines, when work must be finished and sent off.

Project 1/2                    Seminars, Workshops, Readings

Seminars, workshops and conferences

take place regularly. Members, who have research experience or academic knowledge or a particularly keen interest in the topic or theme of the event, are usually present at these meetings by invitation only (in the interests of fire safety and reducing crowding.). As many workshops and seminars are open to all as is possible.

The Reading Agenda and Reading Seminars

The current Reading Agenda is listed online and distributed to members at various intervals. It often provides the basis (although it is not unique in doing so) of readings seminars and workshops. The Reading Agenda is chosen a) as a function of the material that might be most useful for members’ current projects  b) with reference to the lists, provided by members, of the 100 or so main works ( in any genre) that one has not read but wishes to c) to observe various loosely-structured themes and d) taken as a whole, to make sense as a logical progression, and to allow participants reaching the end of the agenda/cycle to have ‘mastered’, or at least comprehensively reviewed, a particular delineated major area of thought/scholarship.

Reading Compendium

We are interested in creating a comprehensive record of all of members’ reading activity, whatever form it takes – from book-sized readings to academic articles, to an opinion piece in a newspaper, a book review, poems of a few lines, even an advertisement. In fact, the more heterodox, the better. One need only note title, author, publication, and when read. Or one may include a few jotted notes, a summary, a review, or links to reviews or related work. The idea is to create a resource to share and access and exchange bibliographic information quickly for those working on multiple writing projects with tight deadlines. (And to promote discussion, more generally). To participate, all one has to do is begin (or continue) to keep a reading journal/list, and be willing to submit a copy of it at various intervals for archiving and circulation.

Project 1/04                                     History/Epistemology

a)      Rediscovering ‘lost’ voices, which sounds like an academic cliché but here is intended simply as making the discovery of a figure from the past that one did not know of, or know anything about, and exploring that person’s life, work, and milieu, at one’s own pace, followed by a short description or resume or writing in any form about what one has found out.

b)      The same as above, but done in a completely inverted, contradictory fashion. The writer is not interested in promoting the ‘lost’ author’s work. Rather, he/she attacks the work and its author with a surprisingly angry violence, seizing on every weak point, pointing up what the writing failed to do, showing how this and all writing can be done much better with a computer, showing arrogant pleasure that the ‘lost world’ described in the book actually is destroyed, bringing in references from macho heavyweight authors who have little to do with the work in hand…..

Project 1/05                                     History/Epistemology

Timelines, Temporal Models & Maps

Project 1/08                             Historiograpy/Philosophy

(Cross-listed with Project 3/08)

The development of a historical timeline(s) – ones that are accurate, although quite unique and with clear subjective biases. The completed timelines is as much a research project as a visual art project, for one must find a visual way, almost necessarily 3-dimensional, to represent complex and abstract data, trends that co-exist, multiple events over a single time period….

a)      Individuals draw up a 1-2 page, entirely subjective and personal timeline, consisting of any sort of events they wish: (Exercise 1/08/a)

1. events throughout history that they believe to be the most influential or important
2. micro-level events taking place during their own lives which might have little relevance to anyone else
3. ideas about events taking place at dates in the near or far future.
4. A combination of these.

If working individually, you should prepare a short description of every entry on the timeline, indicating its relevance (unless this is obvious from the title), and then proceed to Project 3/08. If as a collaborative project, the timelines can be amalgamated into one (although copies of the original individual ones should be retained), before proceeding to 3/08.

b)      Individually, or as a group, the project focuses on a single idea (‘sovereignty’, ‘the idea of the normal’, ‘the idea of human rights’ etc.). A list is worked and re-worked over time, containing both the obvious historical junctures, as well as sources from literature, art, and social reportage, many of which will be unfamiliar to the viewer.  This is particularly important, for the idea is to introduce a whole new and surprising historical panorama around, and constituting, the seemingly familiar. (And the theme of the timeline may be broadly, or creatively interpreted. ). Then, proceed to Project 3/08

c)      Publication: Working in a group, participants draw up a related series of hitherto-unthought of processes, ostensibly irrelevant seeming factors, or abstract entities – in short, eye-catching, even bizarre elements to chart chronologically. A detailed timelines/chronological list is made for each element. Then, certain key relevant dates are taken from each timelines and put together on another timelines, where together they form a coherent and totally new historical narrative/progression, or show up and contradict received or implicit notions about chains of historical causality.  Other combinations, some random, some intentional…

d)      Participants bring together a series of elements that appear to be largely unrelated (e.g. the life of a woman working in a textile factory in Roubaix, France’s colonial project, the gradual identification of sexual life as private life, near earth-asteroid collisions, the history of Bard University….), and plot them all on the same timeline, creating a particular, new and entirely ‘real’ unified historical perspective. Elements may be totally random, or drawn up with a particular agenda or theme.

Project 1/09                                                                             TBA

We are currently waiting on NIH and USHR Ethical Committee Approval of our application for Research on Human Subjects. Project 1/09 will be announced as soon as approval and funding are formally secured.

Project 1/10                           Philosophy /Deconstruction

Participants are challenged to ‘deconstruct’ a given popular assumption, a hegemonic political idea, a ‘way of life’, ‘the American Dream’, ‘the invisible hand’, ‘Chinese Communism’, a political position, a figurehead, an actual or a fictional character etc. The aim is not to show so much that whatever given entity is morally bad, that it exploits given populations, etc., but rather FIRST, to show, somehow, an instance in which the topic under deconstruction can be shown to be self-contradictory, and SECOND, in the manner of Hobsbawm/Ranger’s ‘Invention of Tradition’, to show that the entity is at least in part ‘invented’ rather than natural, and that it is ‘invented’ to such an extent and by such people or processes that were this to be known, it could not effectively or logically exist in the sorts of discourse in which it is today embedded.

a) Topic or Topics in question are selected by group consultation and consensus

b) Topics in question are selected through planning and have a larger single connection, meaning or pattern when considered in relation to each other, resulting almost automatically in a potential publication.

c) The project is represented partially in a visual rather than a largely written form. (Project 2/10.).

Project 1/12                                   Philosophy /What is ‘x’?

à la Agamben’s ‘What is an apparatus?’, ‘What is the contemporary’, one would interrogate certain terms, one would effectively always be ‘interrogating the real’, but for widely different reasons. Sometimes to attack them (What is ‘political correctness?) (sometimes to interrogate:  ‘What is China?’) (Others to use it to think ‘What is obsession?’.  ‘What is ‘The Social’). (See, for example, Tod Hartman’s ‘What is the Big Society?’ ). The project(s) will be either

a)      Organised initially as a workshop, where participants discuss options, areas that they feel are deserving of the ‘What is’ treatment, and people choose their own topics, meet, exchange, comment on each other’s work, describe the work to everyone else, then possibly continue with a new theme. Here, the writing would have the possibility to form an encyclopedia-type book, organised by theme or alphabetically, with minimalist woodcut illustrations.

b)      The topics would be assigned to participants as challenges, and a challenge to produce an opinion that is highly unorthodox, but really just to see where other people go with the xs, what historical materials they draw on etc.

c)      Both options will allow the project to serve as the potential impetus for the creation of pieces that can be submitted elsewhere – to journals, anthologies etc. – or, in a group, as a possible compendium publication. Once and if the essays are worked and perfected, participants meet and set publication targets, either individually, or as a collection (or several smaller collections, with  more specific foci).

 

Reading Lists, Bibliographies

Project 1/13/A      Creating/Interpreting Bibliography

The production of an ‘ideal’ or ‘fantasy’ reading list, with a maximum of thirty entries or so, and a minimum of ten, organised around a set theme.

a)      Participants each produce a list around the same, pre-given set theme, noting both convergences and divergences, when bibliographies are compared. A final compromise list is produced, although participants are free to dissent and to have their individual lists displayed next to the group’s common list. (Exercise 1.13.a)

b)      Participants each produce a reading list on a separate theme according to their research interests, which must in turn fit into a larger, coherent macro-theme, decided in consultation with the group in advance. The larger theme may be: something so common as to be overlooked; a common concept revisited; a period; a new and unavoidable social/linguistic/political etc. trend which the bibliography is the first to cohesively pin down, and possibly to name; a name invented by the group out of intellectual necessity; a date, a period, a time, a place etc.

1. With bibliographies having more traditional themes or themes more engaged with common contemporary scholarship (a common concept revisited, a period, etc.), participants should aim to produce individual bibliographies that are both reliably structured AND contain a significant number of innovative and unorthodox entries that suggest new ways of looking at the familiar subject
2. With bibliographies having more innovative or unfamiliar overall themes, entries aim primarily to pin down and justify the theme that they are supporting, and only secondarily stress new and unorthodox readings (for there cannot really be a new and unorthodox reading of a bibliographical subject that one has just invented.

c)      Participants produce a list around topics selected by each other as part of a mutual challenge, which is then assessed by those knowledgeable in the particular area or larger field of study concerned.  (Exercise 1.13.c)

d)     Individually, or in groups, with themes selected by personal choice, or assigned externally, but usually one with some historical and contemporary elements, which is to some degree open to interpretation (‘Private Life’, ‘The Puritans’, ‘Typography’ etc.) participants create a 4-‘tiered’ bibliography. Tiers would typically include that which predates the subject and can be said to be influential in its formation; The historical period, milieu etc. in which the subject is based; the events, the intellectual currents, the science etc. that gave rise to a particular definition of the subject; The subject as an agent in the world, its effects and consequences, as well as the subject extrapolated to different theoretical and literary contexts, and into the future.

Project 1/13/B                              Decoding Bibliography

a)      Given a short ( one page maximum) bibliography, participants must figure out what, in particular, is the theme of the hypothetical work to which the bibliography is attached. (Exercise 1.13b)

b)      Given a short, or, possibly, somewhat longer, bibliography, participants must write themselves the chapter, section, or larger work that the bibliography is referencing, so that all of the entries are seen to be justified and appropriate – and necessary – to the text produced, which must be written in a style and from the perspective of a character that one can glean from the subject and the references chosen.

Project 2.3

Participants each complete, exchange, and edit an article for submission, tailored to or appropriate for one of the publications listed on the publications list (or, in exceptional circumstances, one that does not appear on the list).

Large-Scale and/or Ongoing Projects

Project 1/G/1 Inventing Geography/Urban Planning

Drawing on occasional help from all participants on all projects, Project 1/11 envisages the creation of a single, fictitious, vaguely European city, which, going by appearances alone, could convincingly exist. What will be created is not the city itself, but the vast amounts of data needed to understand the particular character of a large urban metropolis. It will be shown Vertically, down to the most minute emotional detail. Not horizontally (these minute details would only appear once as examples). Many maps will be involved, and the project will in fact, in its later stages, morph into Project 3/11 (Visual Arts). Characters will be created, or brought in. A whole national history, ‘typical’ of European history, will be written, or outlined. There will be a very wealthy class, and a very poor one. Indeed, a unique, if familiar set of social groups, , national/ethnic groups, and the social class hierarchies (bourgeois bohemians, disadvantaged people written about sensitively, the super-rich, ‘typical’ students, problems of the middle class being squeezed, a controversial new development. The city will have a particular mixture of minorities and immigrants, the product of its immigration policy, also outlined, as well as extreme-right wing anti-immigrant political parties. It has a unique architectural history, changing over the decades. Excerpts from various newspapers of different political and social persuasions will be presented. We will show its infrastructure, we will make layered, 3d maps to show the soil and sediment and geography; we will make models to show the insides of typical offices and homes. Larger scale models will show the elevations and geography, as well as demonstrating the city growth from its founding up to today. Popular catch-phrases, in-jokes, silly words that are in current usage in the city will be demonstrated. One will be able to hear recordings of people on the metro, people in a restaurant, indeed, virtually any scene that one wishes. An internationally recognised fashion centre, the city has several of the world’s top designers. Its population numbers over 1,000,000. It has universities, with several prestigious academics, giving international conferences, the programmes of which we will show, the welcome dinner menu we will show. We will trace inhabitants emotional stories with a surprising intimacy, often in film/cartoon, or comic book form. A weekly ‘What’s on’-type guide (which lists real gigs the dates on which they are not scheduled to play anywhere else) will appear. ….. ). In short, it will become an intricate, complex art installation, that, if successful, would be theoretically as if it can show that it is real to anyone who suggests that the city does not exist. All participants anywhere are invited to contribute to project 1/11. It could just be suggesting an overgrown stone stairway at the outside of a public park and a steep hill (which would then feature on someone’s ‘mental map’, or in a real local map of the neighbourhood.. In a sense, it’s an opportunity to ‘play god’, albeit with imaginary people and territory.

*Cross listed with Project 0/G/1, of which this forms the second module, and followed, in turn by Project 3/G/1 from the Visual Arts list.

Project 0/18

A work that takes ‘self-referential’ to a somewhat ridiculous extreme. In the form of (most likely) short entries or chapters meant to be informative, probably historical, and, in theory, telling what is a coherent and relatively interesting story, but where more and more crucial information is explained simply by footnote/endnotes references to other specific sections of the book, so much so that some entries seem to consist entirely of notes and numbered references.

Project 1c/3

Essays of ‘pure’ literary criticism.