The Reading: Part One

The Reading is an art project conceived by Jane Chavez-Dawson, and operating in tandem with husband Mike’sRe-Covering installation. Over a seven week period, 72 creative writers are engaged in creating a text. Each participant writes for a three hour shift. They see only the final paragraph from the previous writer’s work, and are asked to follow on from this to create a group narrative. Authors are encouraged to use the ambience of the Untitled Gallery, where they are based, to influence their work, and their writing is projected in real-time to venues around Manchester, including Cornerhouse, John Ryland’s Library and the Chinese Arts Centre.

Other writers who have taken part in the project thus far include both Chavez-Dawsons, and Claire Massey, of Mad Hatter’s Tea Party fame, along with numerous figures from the Manchester lit scene. When the project is completed, the text will be edited for publication by the Manchester University Press. The object is to create a ‘textured text’, a piece of literature created by multiple minds in one location.

I took my place at the Untitled Gallery yesterday at 3 o’clock. The gallery is located in the cellars beneath the Friends’ Meeting House, near to the Town Hall. Outside, the sun is beating down, and people are noisily enjoying the beer tent at the Jazz Festival in St Anne’s Square. By contrast, the whitewashed interior of the gallery is cool and still. The writers are set up in a small alcove by the door, a keyboard and monitor set up on an old school desk. To my left, there is a series of reference books (thesaurus, grammar guide, dictionary). At the end of the long, narrow room, a screen is set up, onto which your writing is projected, and the walls are lined with the creations from Mr Chavez-Dawson’s exhibition. The gallery’s Director brings regular cups of tea, otherwise conditions are perfect for quiet contemplation.

I had spent some time in advance thinking about how to approach the writing. I decided that it would be best not to have a specific topic in mind, and to improvise a story rather than try to twist a pre-arranged idea to suit whatever paragraph I was given to work with. I did think of a couple of potential styles to use; the potential for using my day-job experience to produce three hours of corporate-speak, ‘cascading briefs’ and all, for example. It occurred to me that character names should be avoided, as they were unlikely to match up with names that had come before, or would follow.

As it turned out, the strangeness of the paragraph I had to work from negated any pre-conceived ideas of what I was going to be writing. I sat down to a word document topped with the following:

So the Stingers took over. Not just the Council but they repopulated
the whole species and made sure there were no Impotents to
weaken the swarms. Now everyone could defend themselves
against the humans. But, being a proactive kind of bunch,
their philosophy was a case of 'attack is the best form of
defence'. Not much was achieved in those years. Certainly
no cultural or social development. No security of safety from
the flip flop of death. Survival of the fittest and strongest was
not necessarily the best outcome in this case (sorry Darwin).
The species is persecuted even more now they actually hurt
people. We don't like that, that's our job.

I don’t want to post my work until the project has finished. In the meantime, maybe you could give us an idea of how you would have followed on from this paragraph?