SM1012A: Writing & Creativity (English)

City University of HK, School of Creative Media Semester A, 2011/2012

Instructor: Nadim Abbas (http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm1012/)

Week	Date	Topic	Remarks
1	7/9	(Introduction) Surrealism, Automatism and the Unconscious
2	14/9	Fascination, Evil and that Obscure Object of Desire
3	21/9	The Word Virus Diagnosed
4	28/9	Writing and Subjectivity
5	TBC	-	FIELD TRIP: (Blind walk in the park)
6	12/10	Writing as Visual (Art) Practice
7	19/10	Writing as Political Praxis
8	26/10	Performativity and Technology	Deadline: Blind walk text
9	2/11	Writing Places	Deadline: Auto(matic)biography
10	9/11	-	In-class assignment: Image/Music/Text
11	16/11	The Logic of Sense
12	23/11	Science Fiction (Loving the Alien)
-	30/11	-	Deadline: Image/Music/Text
-	07/12	-	Deadline: Logbook/journal/blog Writing HK

Coursework (to be discussed in more detail during class):

Logbook/(dream)journal/blog (20%)
Auto(matic)biography (20%)
Blind walk text (20%)
Image/Music/Text (20%)
Writing HK (20%)

Weekly Schedule

Week 1:

(Introduction) Surrealism, Automatism and the Unconscious

-Definition of Surrealism from the First Manifesto of Surrealism (Andre Breton, 1924):

Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

-“Profane Illumination / Dream Kitsch” (Walter Benjamin)

*Workshop: Automatic writing, the Exquisite Corpse

Week 2:

Fascination, Evil and that Obscure Object of Desire

Andre Breton: Nadja
Comte de Lautreamont: Isidore
Ducasse: Les Chants de Maldoror
Georges Bataille: Story of the Eye
Roland Barthes: The Metaphor of the Eye

*Workshop: Fetish “confession”

Week 3:

The Word Virus Diagnosed

J. G. Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch
Tristan Tzara: Seven
Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries

-Collage and quotation

*Workshop: The cut-up technique

Week 4:

Writing and Subjectivity

Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener
Franz Kafka: Metamorphosis

Week 5:

FIELD TRIP

Blind walk in the park

Week 6:

Writing as Visual (Art) Practice

Dieter Roth: Roth Time
Brian Wallis (ed.): >Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists
Sol Lewitt: Sentences On Conceptual Art
Art & Language (Burn and Ramsden): The Role Of Language

Michael Craig Martin: An Oak Tree
Pierre Huyghe: Celebration Park
Marcel Duchamp: LHOOQ
Jenny Holzer: Truisms
Rene Magritte: est nest pas une pipe
Joseph Kosuth: One and Three Chairs
Tsang Kin Wah: Pretty $hit - Pi$$ Pretty

-Jokes, Puns, Wordplay

*Workshop: Concrete poetry and calligrammes

Week 7:

Writing as Political Praxis

Greil Marcus: Lipstick Traces
Alain Badiou: 15 Theses On Contemporary Art(w/ reference to Mark Lombardi
Barbara Kruger: Untitled (I shop therefore I am

-Letterism (Gil Wolman, Isodore Isou) -Situationists (Naked City)

*Workshop: Detourned speech bubbles

Week 8:

Performativity and Technology

J. L. Austin: How To Do Things With Words
Paul Chan: Alternumerics
Bruce Nauman: Please Pay Attention Please
Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries - http://www.yhchang.com/

*Workshop: Hypertexts

Week 9:

Writing Places

Samuel Beckett: The Lost Ones
Henri Michaux: I Am Writing To You From A Far Off Country
Chris Marker: Sans Soleil
Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil

*Workshop: The Time of Travel

Week 10:

In-class assignment

Image/Music/Text

Week 11:

The Logic of Sense

Lewis Caroll: Alice In Wonderland
Gilles Deleuze: The Logic of Sense
Raymond Roussel: Impressions of Africa
Michel Foucault: Death and the Labyrinth
Georges Perec: A Void
Alfred Jarry: Pere Ubu

*Workshop: Constrained Writing

Week 12:

Science Fiction (Loving the Alien)

Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Arkady & Boris Strutgatsky: Roadside Picnic
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris

Assessment:

-A deduction of one third of a letter grade (e.g., from B to B-) will be levied for each day of overdue submission of coursework assignments.

-Coursework submitted more than 7 days after the due date will not be awarded any marks. -You can find a description of the grading system at:

http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/arro/content.asp?cid=168#grad etable

Attendance/Communication:

-This course will run in a lecture/workshop format, meaning that your active participation and contribution is as important as the instructor's input. Four absences will result in the loss of one full grade when final grades are tabulated. Five absences will result in failure from the course.

-It is important to read your email often, as this will constitute our primary mode communication outside of class.