Taylor Le Melle and Daniella Valz Gen were the first artists and writers to undertake the Writing the City residency programme.
Writing the City was a series of residencies that consider the ways language, poetry, writing, sound and action can be used to assemble individuals for the purposes of dreaming, healing and resistance. The residencies explored writing as a way to activate publics, whether spoken, performed or printed.
For this first residency, artists and writers Daniella Valz Gen and Taylor Le Melle developed a series of workshops under the title What Are Words Worth / Sentient Value Systems at Church Street Library. The project is set out to expand reflections on:
The value of words.
The value of utterance.
What it means to witness and enact change.
How can we write with the city as it shifts.
The artists have responded to these questions through a series collective writing exercises, from which they planned to develop a zine about value and exchange.
What Are Words Worth / Sentient Value Systems collaborators included: Khairani Barokka, Christopher Kirubi, Wail Qasim, Nisha Ramayya, Azad Ashim Sharma and Rehana Zaman.
Writing the City
Writing the City was a series of residencies that consider the ways that language, poetry, writing, sound and action can be used to assemble individuals for the purposes of dreaming, healing and resistance. The residencies explored writing as a way to activate publics, whether that text is spoken, performed or printed. The project asks questions around activism and access, the social and documentary aspects of poetry, themes of authorship, collective work and identity and the role poetry plays in transformative pedagogy. Through workshops, listening sessions, performances and readings, Writing the City created a network of socially engaged artists, writers, poets, performers and publishers to discuss historic and contemporary poetics and publishing practices in the context of social justice.
