I generated the following questionnaire for facilitating a writing workshop last spring at SVA, for my course about "intense autobiography." Afterwards we discussed Bruce Boone's Century of Clouds. This past weekend I gave the questionnaire as a hand out at the Poetics of Healing mini-symposium. Nico Vassilakis responded and his response is also posted below:
What is Community? (a Questionnaire)
1. To what communities do you belong? Name them. What are
the defining features of these communities?
2. What distinguishes these communities from other communities?
What limits and unites their members?
3. How would you characterize the politics of these
communities? Illustrate with an anecdote or series of images. How would you
describe your relationship to the
politics of these communities?
4. How do you enact your political beliefs through a daily
practice? Provide a soundtrack or series of sounds rather than description to
express this enaction of belief.
5. How do you enact your beliefs through an art practice?
6. Describe a time when you rebelled or provided a challenge
against your community? How did this make you feel? How would/do you make art
based on this experience—to channel or mediate it?
7. To what communities do you belong in your dreams?
Exercise: Read over your responses and select language that
is interesting to you.
Use this language to compose a poem.
If you wish to share, mail your responses to
wildhorsesoffire [at] gmail [dot] com
Looking at seeing
Using alphabet to make objects
Using alphabet visually as language for seeing
The eyes and the eyes
Open
The ego of the eyes
I like what the eye likes
Share this
There is no power structure
We all see what needs seeing
We create so as to replicate and enhance the fascination visual alphabet holds for us
U, U, double U, double, double, double U
By getting it and getting it right
It continues by honing your intentional mark
We chose work
Chosen for its lack of repetition
To toss it far enough that nothing relates at such a distance
A community of happenstance
A confederacy of surprise
