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 21 February 2014
Project
Two or more separate prose poems/stories which keep SEEMING like they are going to converge, but never quite do. Could be done with any number of narrative strands, possibly taken from already existing material. Will contain seemingly clarifying but in fact ultimately more confusing, but lovely, linocut illustrations.
Project 0/5 
A series of bêtes noires each of which constitutes a movement, a separate prose poem, or a section (however small). Entries go from the universal/known, political, cultural, to the very particular and small micro-level, often bizarrely so. The compendium may be in the style of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, with small chapter-style entries/essays. Or, it might recall Flaubert Dictionnaire des idées recues, with a larger number of short entries that may be as short as a single line. It may also alternate between these formats.
Project 0/6
An abecedaire, in French or English. Sinister or silly like Edward Gorey’s abecedaires, completely random, or focused on a specific theme, possibly in a ‘faux naive’ way. Or, perhaps, an abecedaire of something like “Stalking” (e.g. ‘B’ is for the bushes that I hide in, ‘G’ is for Grange Road, Pinner, where her mother lives, alone…), the describes stalking someone in a very matter of fact way, but also revealing a lot about the narrator. Or some other practice or activity that is not usually presented in that sort of positive, upbeat, neat didactic fashion.
Project 0/6A
An abecedaire, but one that turns out to take the reader on a very strange, and somewhat pathetic attempt to get through the alphabet. Given a relatively straightforward theme, the abecedaire progresses normally at first, but then, for unclear reasons, appears 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. The unpleasant letter will not be entirely omitted in the written text, but its incidence will 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).
Project
The compilation of an encyclopedia, probably based on Exercise A/0/7/a below. But a very strange encyclopedia. One in which seemingly ‘normal’ topics and entries exist alongside ones that are extremely obscure, incoherent, illogical, laughably off-subject, or not even clear what the word or topic they are writing about is supposed to be…(but all of which are the fruit of genuine effort on the part of the writers, not intentional parody or humour)
Project A/0/7/a Participants are assigned, or choose, or have chosen by means physically determined by arbitrary chance (topic-name that emerges after several rounds of Chinese whispers, etc.), a topic on which they must write a short-medium length encyclopaedia article.
Project A/0/7/b Manifold, creative, unorthodox and complex rules and processes by which a topic to be written about in an encyclopaedia entry is produced/revealed.
Variant i of Project 0/7: Topics/words selected by google search result prominence within a given parameter.
Project 0/8
A volume in which the pieces are actually credited to the real names of real well-known figures whose style they are meant to mimic. With the goal of creating uncertainty amongst the readership as to whether or not the pieces are ‘real’ or not. The volume would be ‘published’ by a maverick new publishing house, of which the attempt to make people think it actually publishes an impossibly impressive list of famous authors would only be one venture in its astoundingly ambitious and (simplistically) ‘ruthless’ programme.
Project B/0/8/a
Participants are randomly (or deliberately) assigned characters (either ‘types’ or specific individuals (Žižek, Germaine Greer etc.) , which they must then write ‘as’,
a) whilst writing an article, essay, story etc. on a topic that they would anyway or already are working on or have specialist knowledge in (i.e. producing a ‘real’ piece) or
b) on an assigned topic
c) on a topic that they intuit their character ‘would’ naturally be writing on. As a practice for the compilation of (journal) Project 1 (J/1), or with the eventual production of a volume (Project 0/8) composed of the entries produced over the course of subsequent workings of the exercise.
d) A ‘totally incompetent’ article, which, if followed and believed to the letter, might lead to disastrous or farcical consequences
Project 0/9
A family history that is ‘pathological’ in its failure to accord the reader, given initially ostensibly ‘obvious’ opportunities in the subject matter, to convey anything but the most banal and predictable (and statistically/historically accurate) anecdotes and information.
Project 0/10
A collaborative compendium, with each entry written by a different person, and consisting of a character portrait of the person (the actual person, or the type of person, or a person having the given traits) that the author most hates, the person that the author instinctively detests, finds annoying, stupid, immoral, cruel, brutal, crass, destructive of the good. The character will be described in his/her minutiae, everything that they do/say etc. that causes or could cause offence, the object being to inventory and perform an archaeology of interpersonal hate/dislike. the person that the writer thinks that if anyone does not deserve to live (or whoever most approximates this; entries do not have to be uniformly condemnatory. The writer will make the case as to why that person deserves to die, either a) weighing up the pros and cons logically or b) invoking someone whose life was seen to have positive worth, who has died, in whose place a case is made that the detested person should have died.
Project D/0/10/a Exercises in the manner of Queneau’s Exercises de Style. Passed on from one person to the next with the brief for the required next stylistic incarnation, or completed by all simultaneously working with different instructions to stylise a text.
Project D/0/10/b Starting from the completed exercises, with their multiplicity of forms and styles, the reader is then challenged to work out what the original, basic phrasing was.
Project E/0/10/c Based on Queneau’s Exercises de Style, the same mini-story, apparently banal, of a paragraph or so, but re-told again and again in different stylistic variants. For example:
a) Through the perspective of a series of different mental illnesses.
b) With different underlying motivations and hidden agendas and insinuations
c) Told through the voices of new characters generated in projects elsewhere
Project 0/11
A scholarly guide or introduction to an apparently well-known (but fictional) writer or philosopher or intellectual figure, in the manner of The Cambridge Companion to Emile Zola, with a series of medium-sized chapters written by different, ostensibly well-established ‘specialists’ on the subject. We will write through the characters and imagined styles of the fictional academic experts who contribute to the volume. The project may be completed with each chapter having a different author, or authored entirely by one or two people. Chapters have entirely different (and subjective) agendas:
a) Telling the stories/novels of the fictional author, in a way that is both bizarre and intriguing, and leaves cliff-hangers and burning questions and makes one want to read the other sections for clarification
b) New, controversial evidence presented on the personal/sexual life of the subject
c) An angry refutation of the above
d) Letters/correspondence, which both create an enigma and tell a story/create curiosity to know more in their own right
e) An elaborate rebuttal of some point/claim made by other academic in some earlier journal, the content of which the writer assumes the reader is already completely familiar with, and so provides little details of, which we can then only piece together by reading and extrapolating.
f) A re-rebuttal of the above
g) A chapter that begins in a standard academic fashion, but then becomes bizarrely autobiographical, more about the person writing it than the actual subject of the book.
h) A chapter in which the contributor tries, farcically and unsuccessfully, and very unconvincingly, to relate the subject’s work to a list of predictable, fashionable theories and thinkers: Foucault, Agamben’s state of exception, neoliberalism, Latour, Gramsci, Walter Benjamin (again and again), Žižek, Badiou, Ranciere, Judith Butler….
i) A chapter that seems to have been misplaced here from some other book about something/someone else.
j) A contributor who is breathlessly enamoured, enthusiastic and worshipful of the subject, who is clearly omitting anything remotely negative about the subject, so much so that it becomes obviously false (or twice false, that is, false in the context of the imaginary guide and its subject), that they end up unwittingly suggesting or revealing something negative about the subject that we wouldn’t otherwise know.
k) Variant of above: a chapter exclusively concerned with ‘disproving’ some negative rumour/aspect of the subject, which actually ends up substantiating it.
l) A ‘personal’ friend/associate/peer who submits personal recollections on and opinions about the subject. Possibly losing his mind or becoming senile, saying blasphemous things about the book’s subject, or nonsensical or bizarre or totally unrelated things; if done as an interview, show confusion and unease of younger interviewer, trying to ‘put things back on track’.
m) Someone who so blatantly and clearly has a self-promotional agenda (the theory or term that they coined, which they are determined to apply to the book’s subject; they have original research they consider to be the most important) that it becomes farcical.
n) A (short) chapter that is written that employs all of the worst banalities and clichés and pretensions of bad academic writing.
o) A contributor who is dead set on ‘queering’ the subject of the book (on discovering that he was secretly gay), despite perhaps little evidence to suggest this, and seemingly unrelated evidence, signs, readings of texts, to support this. Chapter begins with explanation, as if for child, that ‘gay and transgender people were often treated unfairly and not given very many rights’ [at the time of the book’s subject’s lifetime]. Chapter then concludes with subject’s valiant struggle as a persecuted minority.
Project 0/11/B
The introduction to the edited volume described above, with each contributor and their chapter summarised in some detail, so that the introduction encapsulates the humorous/bizarre nature of the edited volume, and can work as a stand-alone piece.
Project 0/11/C
Project 0/11 b, c, k, l, m and/or others, but presented entirely in the form of the messages and replies posted on an email academic listserve about the subject.
Project 0/11/D
Project 0/11, but with the subject as a hitherto unknown figure who, it soon becomes clear, seems to anticipate, experience, think of, and achieve everything that a well-known, iconic, figure such as Foucault did – mirroring the career of the latter, and encapsulating the thinking and the ideas and the stereotypes they are most known for, in microscopic, minute detail.
Project 0/12
One character, whose traits and biography and sensibility will be established in advance by the consortium of those working on the project. In coordination, or, not in coordination at all, each writer will produce an entry in prose fiction detailing how the character is caught in power structures, controlled by hegemony/apparatuses, socialised by ideological state apparatuses, constituted by power etc. etc., and seems to have no free will. Each entry will illustrate an aspect(s) in which the character seems to exercise free will and personal agency, yet it will be demonstrated that their decisions are already made for them and their ‘choice’, agency, will etc. comes from power structures external to them (these may be sociologically accurate, but they may also be elaborate, unlikely, extravagant, bizarre, unexpected…the goal is not to produce a grim manifesto about of how we are all controlled by power, but to draw out the literary – and humorous — possibilities of such an idea. Also as Exercise A/0/12/B.
Project 0/12/B
Project D/0/12B/a As above, but contributors write on different personages of their choice, working in isolation from each other. The aim then is to reunite the texts produced, note the common themes, convergences, and divergences, and use this to literally map out the power structures surrounding ‘an’ individual. Cross-listed as Project 3/12 (Visual Arts)
Project 0/13
Morality Tales
Project 0/13/A Hilaire Belloc’s morality tales, re-written for, and very specific to, the contemporary moment.
Project 0/13/B A series of morality tales, or parables, or limericks, which start out in a sensible, protestant-work-ethic, early-to-bed, a-penny-saved sort of way, but then start to veer off and become bizarrely dark and twisted, or incorporate some other unexpected agenda, or reveal a particular neurosis, fetish or obsession on the narrator’s part.
A biographical dictionary, but consisting of unexpected and somewhat unusual subjects. Entries vary greatly in size, from very short, to multi-page essays, and involve, in addition to the basic facts of the subject’s life, a great deal of speculation and elaborate re-creation. (The closest analogue would be the Roberto Bolano book on fascists in the Americas.) The dictionary could be organised in several ways:
a) Consisting entirely of fictional personages, who nonetheless bear a resemblance to real ones, or who embody the typical qualities of individuals of their given period and milieu
b) Consisting of real, but marginalised, overlooked, invisible people (whose importance for a biographical dictionary may be questionable). People who are identified only by a name in a telephone book, a mention in an article from 50 years ago. Here, one could imagine, or one could go only on the information that one has, which may be farcically limited (talking about the telephone book, how people might call her, there doesn’t appear to be a spouse, but phone calls were expensive in 1956…..)
c) Consisting of characters that appear, briefly, unimportantly, in various well-known works of fiction (the hotel desk clerk, the passer-bv, the distant relative who is alluded to once). Taking these characters and imputing a life to them, considering perhaps the life that would be entirely ‘expected’ for them in the roles that the authors of the books have chosen (which a real person could probably not conform to), and also, perhaps the actual lives that such minor characters might have really enjoyed. (A bit like the project of giving the subaltern a ‘voice’ – but different because taken to an entirely fictional, and at times bizarre, level
d) Consisting of the biographies of well-known personages, whose basic information is given, and about whom the entry then speculates, in a surprisingly intimate fashion.
e) Consisting of the biographies of well-known personages, interspersed with those of the subjects from b), above. And/or a)
f) Subjects are chosen because of their relation to a specific, particular theme, using any of the above formats.
g) A more numerous, encyclopaedia-format version of Project 0/15
Project 0/14/a——- Project 0/14, but if working with two or more people, each person receives a set of parameters around which they must write the entry (a place, a real person they interacted with, a historical event etc.)
Project 0/14/b——- Participants provide each other with primary source material (e.g. a telephone book, a visiting card, a signature, a document), as in Project 0/14/b
In both cases, appropriate categories, and cross-listed categories, should be invented for the entry, as in an encyclopaedia.
Project 0/16
A series (or collection or edited volume) of in-depth essays, LRB or NYRB style, ‘well-written’, in a ‘typical’ long-review sort of way, so as to be as much a review of a particular given work, as a discourse on the author of the work, the history of the subject, and the state of the field in which it is situated. Although, as in Project 0/15, the works and their authors are entirely fictional. Each essay creates a life in writing, details the fictional reviewee’s opus and intellectual trajectory, his/her relations to real people and real events so that the made-up life is technically plausible and historically likely (possibly), and takes on quite a lot of the reviewer’s character’s personality and personal agenda.
Project D/0/16/a——-
Participants produce short reviews of given fictional titles written by fictional authors and academics. Reviews must be plausibly realistic, something that one could see in the LRB, NYRB etc. They should give a coherent summary of the author and work under review, but are free to talk about that, to talk about the larger subject or issue, or to talk about themselves (the reviewer). The particular character of the reviewer, and the ‘type’ of writer he/she is, should appear over the course of the writing and be recognisable, whether subtle or stereotypically x.
Fictional Titles are supplied from a list; each participant writes about an individual title.
For the Exercise D/0/16/a commencing 18 February 2014 (ongoing, new participants are encouraged to join), the following titles have been ‘selected’ for review:
- The End of the Affair, 1968-1989: The end of the dream of unlimited plenty and the return of scarcity at the dawn of the neoliberal era. David M. Sykes. Morgan Fowler Professor of Geography, Cornell University. Berghan Books, 591 pp. £34.99
- The Selected Letters of Penelope Vyne, Vol. 2: The Tumultuous Years, 1931-1955. eds. David M. Kronenberg & Lydia Vyne. Chatto & Windus. 290 pp., £25.00
- Endless Vectors: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Paul Corneille-Kohn. Daniel Fustenberg (Middlesex University, Dept of Philosophy). Verso. 244 pp., £12.99
Project D/0/16/b——-
As above, but participants set titles as challenges for each other; each participant write about a particular different title.
Project D/0/16/c——-
As above, but focusing on one, or several titles, participants alternate, writing a series of different reviews (by different ‘reviewers’) of the same title(s), each one drawing on the information that has already been supplied in the previous ones, so that a panorama, an entire spectrum of opinion, is created around each fictional title. The collection is then presented as a piece of ‘primary material’ fiction.
Project D/0/16/d——-
As above, but focusing on a single title, participants (ideally 3 +) , working simultaneously and in isolation from each other, produce different reviews of what are effectively different titles and authors (given that the ‘facts’ and information they will have created around the one title in question will differ from and contradict that created by other participants). The collection is then presented as a compendium of experimental or ‘multi-vector’ fiction.
Project 0/17
A few collected essays, similar to Project 0/16, but focusing on a single fictional author and a single one of his or her works. Each essay assumes a readership entirely familiar with both, and the idea is to gradually make the reader more and more curious what the actual plot of the book being discussed is, to try and reconstruct it from the clues dropped in the review essays, which keep almost giving enough information to make it clear, but then at the last minute mentioning points that ‘turn the tables’, and, whilst obvious in retrospect, make the reader re-think what was assumed to be the story up to that point. Requires all project members to effectively outline an entire novel, to proceed from.
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 0/19
A Guardian style interview in the ‘everything that I know’ format, with paragraphs opening with bolded statements – either of fictional person, or person who is so farcical they don’t make sense, or several ones, which, given that they are supposed to be separate, actually get angry at each other. Project 0/19/a——-Participants are given a few key facts, or a few words filled in blanks, which they must use and around which they must create a character and that character’s ‘public’ voice whilst being interviewed, as well as the character’s back story that looms over the interview, the mention of real historical and contemporary personages and events, and, specifically, figure out what would logically make such a person of such interest as to be profiled in a major national newspaper. (Or make figuring out this information tantalisingly close, but never quite clear), The goal of the exercise is to create an ‘All that I know’ article that could conceivably be a genuine one. Can be used for character generation, for us in other projects
Project D/0/19/b——- Same as above, but with the proviso that all the characters/dialogues produced from the exercise must ‘know’ each other, or be connected socially or professionally in some way, however tangential (Thus, further widening our stock of fictional characters, places, situations, for use in other work).
Project 0/20
A typical American Academic Magazine like MLA, with breezy typical introduction by current chair, then intense article about stereotypes and essentialism in our discipline, then interview with distinguished scholar, then book reviews, then about engagement with public (with some bizarre ideas)….but with the aim of leaving the reader completely in the dark as to what the discipline is.
Host Publications
General Work Projects
Project 0/1
Exchanging one’s own (non-collaborative) work by certain agreed-upon deadlines with one or more people.
Project 0/2
Planning one’s own prospective or ongoing work in consultation with others, with or without a timeframe.
Project 0/3/a
‘Challenges’ or agreements to complete project exercises or other pieces of short fiction or other prose for each other with certain strict instructions/parameters, with very general or loose themes, or with no requirements at all – as an incentive to eventual publication.
Project 0/3/b
‘Challenges’ or agreements to produce pieces of writing of varying lengths in different forms (e.g. instruction manual, speech, death threat, interview, script, list). Potentially with aim of eventual publication, or exploration of new genre.
Project 0/4
Character portraits, in general – of real, imagined, composite, or ‘stereotypical’ characters, in different forms, to be exchanged for feedback by given dates.
Large-scale Projects
Project J/1 (Journal Project 1)
A ‘made-up’ literary/art journal in which none of the contributors or their writing is ‘real’. Most importantly, the journal has no clearly discernible and particular political aim of statement, and no obvious overall commercial strategy or goal or programme (e.g. to amuse, to provoke controversy, as experimental literature etc. etc.). The idea is for the reader to be unsure whether something is ‘real’ or whether it’s not. The idea is NOT simply be to parody the various stereotypical ‘types’ of writers and their (bad) writing that seem prominent in ‘real’ such journals (although there might be some element of that). Some of the contributors’ work will be bizarre, some ‘accidentally’ very moving and sad. Much of it will parallel reality so closely that it will seem as if it has to be ‘real’. Contributors will appear in multiple issues; there will be editorials, regular features, guest-edited sections. As in the ‘real’ world, writers will have a ‘niche’ that they write about (although at times the niche may be so specific as to be bizarre)…. (In fact, it may not be clear if all the writers and all the writing is being done by one person (me), or if there actually are different contributors writing as different ‘characters’ (and thus effectively almost constituting ‘real’ contributors writing.). As in other journals, there will be various controversial issues that the journal will deal with (but not in any particular way that would mark it out as different from other magazines) – current events (e.g. the state of multiculturalism, surveillance, actual world news as it occurs…) and/or intellectual issues (e.g. ‘what are the limits of freedom of expression’, ‘the state of contemporary French philosophy’ etc. etc.) – which will vary depending on what sort of journal it ends up becoming/mimicking. It will include photography, interviews (both made-up ones with famous people, ones with made-up people that it is implied are very very well known in rarefied literary or academic or national literary circles; in some cases, characters will copy a real figure’s like and works so exactly that it can only be them (apart from, some very minor and insignificant detail)) Nothing will be predictable, or quite resolved or unambiguously ‘humorous’ or ‘fake’. So closely, in fact, will the journal meticulously mirror and engage with controversies, issues, debates that are going on at that very moment in the ‘real’ world, that it will seem bizarre/confusing that it could not be a ‘real’ journal…and, indeed, in many cases the writing will be ‘real’ in all but name. The issues, features, exposés, reportage, will mostly be very ‘good’ – i.e. potentially applicable to ‘real’ issues, well thought-out, intelligent, eloquent…..so that it can be read as a legitimate commentary on ‘real’ events (perhaps even more effective for its lack of total obligation to reality). Possible variants/diversions of this: Art features, profiles of artists, art criticism, both of imaginary (but so close to the ones going on now one would be hard pressed to see the difference) exhibitions and possibly of real exhibitions, but on work or artists or events that aren’t actually part of them. (Could be a way to introduce talented new artists with a pseudonym.). Possible: Criticism could at times be very harsh (if deserved)…or, it will start out focusing on the exhibition, but then lose interest and write about something else. Book reviews – of real books, of ‘fake’ books, of ‘fake’ authors who seem to exactly fit real ones, of imaginary books that very very closely resemble well known/controversial new releases or writers…or some that harshly parody the ones that are very bad. The journal could get a bee in its bonnet about someone (real), develop a bêtre noire hatred of them, be insulting and denouncing them in every issue….so that the person’s (presumably someone horrible who deserves negative publicity) attempt to retaliate becomes an audience-catching story in itself. The journal, or one or more obsessive ‘contributors’, could take the persecution to a ridiculous extreme – and readers would have no idea what shocking or bizarre moves have taken place by the next issue….
Project J/2
Variant of J/1. Again, as above (or potentially a special issue of above) a ‘made-up’ journal that could, if one didn’t know better, be entirely real. Yet every element, from the words in the writing, the issues and themes chosen and which are given prominence, the identities of the contributors and their opinions and styles of writing, even the design and format, will entirely dictated by the single variable of statistical prominence as a google search result. That is, articles will be generated by a list of what is being written about the most (in terms of number of articles, words generated, search queries, or statistical prominence within a particular list of publications (which ones will depend on the journal’s yet-to-decided niche) at the given moment that we happen to focus on), and the statistical profile of the people who are writing about them and what sort of opinions they tend to have. Poetry and prose fiction, and its authors, will be constructed in a similar fashion (the idea and selling point will be that everything is ‘objective’ and simply generated by reality with no intervention or construction on our part; in actual fact, we will have some creative leeway and exercise some selection and narrowing of the parameters, if only to ensure that the material that is put together – the sum of many parts – ends up being coherent. Likewise, photography and possibly other visual art, and identities and ‘signature styles’ of the artists (down to the pose and sartorial sensibilities ‘they’/we display when photographed as part of a ‘profile’ article) (and possibly ‘their’ websites?) will be based on probability within the quantity of data that we amass from other publications. This will probably necessitate narrowing the field of on what specifically data is collected. This might be to align the journal in some more specific direction (i.e. focusing solely on literature, on visual art, or issues based around specific themes, or, perhaps, because we want to include a given theme because we think it is important, or simply because we think it has become newly clichéd, inane, unintentionally amusing and/or worthy of this kind of parody/not-parody). For example, we might want to control the identities of the contributors: so, should we want to create one female 40-year-old academic literary critic who writes in the journal, or one vaguely nymphomaniac established America male writer popular in the 70s, we would collect data on 20 or more such figures (or less – whatever is available – doesn’t matter if it ends up more or less recreating one single real person) and distil a new character from that data. (In the case of writers who ‘contribute’ regularly and/or have columns, data selection would be correspondingly narrowed to specialities and talents/limitations/particularities). Likewise, if some new government policy has created a furious public reaction, one would gather a selection of opinion pieces (corresponding generally to one particular side of the debate, if there are sides) and extract the ideas, words and sentiments that recur most frequently, as well as the distinguishing traits and demographic profiles of the writers as far they can be discerned and transpose them directly into the new piece. This could create an intriguing ambiguity paradox if, say, one wanted to include a ‘memoir’ of a particular artist/literary figure/politician who has just died, written by a ‘close friend’ (which could only be 2 or 3 clearly identifiable people (e.g. Thatcher’s daughter, and her former secretary), and alternately seems like it is one of them, but is actually none of them).
Project J/3
Project J/1, but as an annual or bi-annual book-like production (like Granta or Paris Review). If annually, could be centred around the idea of the previous year and what happened, controversies, etc., or fixed emphatically on the contemporary moment.
Inventing Geography/Spaces Projects
Project (0)G/1
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. YT, TH, RZPN *Cross listed with Project (1)/G/1, of which this forms the first module, and followed, in turn by Project (3)/G/1 from the Visual Arts list.
Projects (0)/G/1/b-∞; c
b-∞: Any of the elements listed above, as well as any not listed. c: Drawing up a master list, to be updated regularly, of all of the elements and components of (0)/G/1. It is possible that this list itself will be a piece of writing with an intrinsic value and/or an independent piece of visual art
Spoken Word/Performed Projects
Project P/b2
Introducing a famous/eagerly anticipated/notorious speaker, who, it transpires, is running slightly late, then, as the introductory speaker plays for time, becomes overwhelmed with anxiety, begins to talk about him/herself in an uncomfortable way, begins to tell a narrative that has nothing to do with the speaker ostensibly about to be introduced. Study video clips of introductory speakers in the particular genre/demographic/discipline that the special guest speaker ostensibly represents in order to retain the clichés and most commonly used phrases and sensibilities and stereotypes of that particular milieu. Variant 1i of P/b2: For long periods, the non-attending speaker in question seems to fit the description of certain specific real well-known figures in the particular genre/niche/community where the performance is taking place, yet the audience is consistently confused as details are periodically and occasionally introduced that mean that it cannot quite be that person. Variant 1ii of P/b2: The non-attending or tardy speaker in question is identified as a specific, real; celebrity/figure/well-known local character etc. Variant a of Variant 1ii of P/b2: After all this, it finally seems like the surprise is going to be that the celebrity actually will put in a surprise appearance. Yet, they do not.
Project P/b3
A dialogue, or the reading of a straightforward script, but with one, several, or all characters possessing a ‘theme song’, which must be played, loudly, and for a certain minimum duration, each time said character either appears on scene, speaks, or carries out certain actions. The theme song music – which it is apparently impossible to turn off or curtail — becomes so unwieldy and distracting, that readers are forced to shout over it before it is finished, garble, and then finally change and unintentionally improvise different lines due to the confusion the theme song music causes – so that (in a full version of this) a different, perhaps totally opposite, performance or message is being conveyed from the one originally intended.
Collaborative Writing Workgroup 
