As it happens, I didn't attend an 8 am session because there was a bit of rehearsing to be done: the collaborative writing 'Spotlight' session that Ken and I had put together was at 9.30am and Susan Williams was presenting a paper about the ending (or not) of the Bristol Collaborative Writing Group. Ken and I were helping out with giving voice to members of the group who aren't here so we ran through that beforehand. For the session itself we were on the top floor of the Illini Union building (the best space to be allotted, even though the rooms are never quite the right temperature). We had a big audience. Susan kicked the session off (with her two little helpers) - and she went down a storm (I failed to arrange for a photo...sorry Susan, sorry other BCWG members.) We then had a group that Ken and I are part of - 'Encountering Deleuze' - with five of us present out of the seven who write, the paper spinning off from the workshops that Ken and I have run over the past couple of years.
I'm afraid I can't explain the closed eyes and odd posture.
Marcelo Diversi and Claudio Moreira (see a review of their book) spoke about collaborative writing as a radical and subversive practice within the academy, one that shifts the focus onto the cooperative and the inclusive rather than the competitive and individualistic.
And Elyse Pineau performed a piece about collaborating with 'absent others' - the 'relational efficacy of communing with ghosts'.
The special issue of International Review of Qualitative Research, which these papers will be part of, should be out next year.
The biggest cheer of the session was for the much-loved and much-valued Jane, who would have been part it. Well, she was part of it, materially present or not. Next year, Jane, was the message, next year!
Blimey, I've only got to mid-morning. Back with more of yesterday and some of today later.
Jonathan
This is the session I would have swam the Atlantic for, but sadly could not make. Thank you, Susan, for your collaborative solo. And thank you, Jonathan, for bringing to life this, and more of the QI 2012 experience.
ReplyDeleteWell let me chip in here folks.... What an energising session... My first QI presentation, in the 1st ‘proper’ QI session I’ve attended, and with Jonathan and Ken’s support, going 1st felt just fine. It was great to know that the three of us had communicated - no, communicated is too small a word - brought alive something of the Bristol Collaborative Writing Group’s journeyings together. It felt like just for a moment all in the room were embracing and being embraced by who we were and are. Beautiful...
ReplyDeleteAnd then what a powerful aliveness from the Deleuzian group - rich, tender, intimate, provocative - it provoked a healthy jealousy in me for your explorations, writings, beings and becomings.
Marcelo and Claudio - what can I say... I could have listened to your presentation, fiery and passionate, rebellious and full of such a deep expression of how unwilling technology and systems (and some of the people who inhabit them those spaces and places) are to face the truths about collaborative life.
And then finally Elyse - great to meet you after hearing about you - collaborating with those who aren’t present..., at least in any embodied form. Well doesn’t that just open the door to a richness of blendings of time and space, defying any comfortable boundaries. You took me to Rwanda..., seeing, touching, being with the many who live on in the genocide museum.
And of course I should say that Jonathan and Ken gave us all a generous, supportive, safe and exciting space... What a magnificent opening to QI....
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