Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2012

In the article ‘Writing: Explicating and unfolding condensed textual practices in art and design’ Sean Hall explores and questions our contemporary relationship with time in relation to the practice of writing. Our modern world in a western context, has left us Hall argues, feeling ‘temporally impoverished’. This collaborative article deconstructs the term temporality and refashions it as temp(oralities). Our temp(oralities) is defined not only as the Caribbean artist/writer seeking to articulate a sense of time and/or timelessness, but also in the sense of the fragmented nature of time and the orality of the region that the Caribbean artist/writer always seek to interject into their work. Using Hall’s idea of time, and the notion that we are ‘all in search of lost time’ as our point of departure, this article aims to explore the relationship between temp(orality) and the Caribbean artist/writer. We engage with the absent and fragmented historical narratives of the region to explore how Caribbean artists/writers have attempted to articulate their own sense of time and/or timelessness. For the Caribbean artist/writer, modernity is paradoxical. It is both the violent movement away from traditional European and African ideals, and the awareness of the intrinsic nature between the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. What implications does this fraught relationship have on the artistic and literary representation of a Caribbean timescape? If as we are arguing, Caribbean artists/writers work in multiple temp(oralities) how does this affect how we the reader/viewer consume and understand their work?

The dyslexia literature places an inordinate amount of focus on dyslexia as a deficit. Where discussions of dyslexia as a ‘difference’ do emerge, we find there is an emphasis on ‘talent’ or ‘success’ as an effect of ‘coping’ and ‘avoidance’. The purpose of this article was for two dyslexic writers, Naomi Folb (NF) and Aby Watson (AW), to present an alternative to this discourse. Their exchange uses four self-defined obstructions agreed prior to the writing process. These introduce the dominant subjective position and, allow them to discuss how it subjugates and silences the dyslexic. The Introduction was written to music. This is followed by a critique of the others Introductions. The third part is constructed of questions one author posed the other, whilst the fourth section is made of the answers in dialogue to the others’ questions. The authors’ conclusions, the end of the article, surface within a catechism, in which the authors forbade one another from editing or using spellcheck. Hence, the discussion appears to lack closure. This reflects the authors concerns with the conventions of ‘linear’ academic papers, in the way it presents a prioritization of knowledge, and exploration of ideas and subjectivity, over ‘acceptance’. In this way, addressing the authors lack of ‘belonging’ becomes the subject, rather than the purpose of the article. The result reveals the deep and hitherto unexamined bias towards dyslexics.

Certain elements of contemporary design practice strike the authors as rather meager, especially in regard to the decision-making stage, allowing little or no time for contemplation and thus causing design to become a prompt reaction rather than an extended reasoning. This co-written article examines the lack of time in design practice and with it the lost appreciation of previous ways of thinking and making. Thus, it investigates ways of moving forward with craft, seeking to develop the bridging between designerly knowing and craftsmanship by reintroducing concepts of craft (dwelling, care) into current design practice. In doing this we hope to encourage designers to explore how previous knowledge can be utilized to develop an alternative mode of progress for design – leading us to propose an evolutionary approach to design.

Inspired by Janis Jefferies’ article ‘Mangling practices: writing reflections’, and a co-writing workshop led by Julia Lockheart, this co-written response was conceived from a collaboration between two new researchers and one retired design professional. The heart of our article contains three different personal and professional stories that have accompanied us on our ‘journey of enquiry’. Sharing our personal and professional stories led us to conceive our responses as a ‘narrative hologram’, created from multiple points of view and the interplay of self-doubt and conviction as we attempt to place ourselves within our research practice.

A call was sent out to participate in a writing workshop. Five strangers attended and connected through a shared interest in narrative and storytelling. Inspired by ‘Phi territories’, an article in the previous edition of JWCP, they formed the question ‘How is storytelling an embodiment of performative or tacit processes?’ and set about authoring a collaborative article in response. Despite being united by mutual interest, their visions of how to put those ideas into practice would diverge. How to mould something cohesive and impose form and order on multiple approaches to content generated by researchers of different backgrounds? An experimental collaborative process was developed, based on writing letters and replying to the next person in the sequence in a relay of call and response. This experiment would be overseen by an outsider member, who would not be addressed, nor write a letter, but who would receive a copy of each of the letters and create an intervention in response. And so the stage was set for the story to begin …

The authors would like to rethink the suitability of the metaphor rigour for design research and writing, and to propose a metaphor more suited to the purposes and possibilities of designing. We identify and reappropriate the inquisitorial approach and suggest inquisition as a more suitable metaphor for design,since it can encompass positive and optimistic qualities that designers need to develop their practice. This approach to research is one that designers can usefully adopt through their thinking and writing, and can be practically applied to their research practices. Moreover, we suggest that this approach is intended to better facilitate the designer’s research practice with writing and languaging as key tools in the design research process. This co-written article is a reflection on John Wood’s (2012:11–26) recent paper ‘In the cultivation of research excellence – is rigour a no-brainer?’ and his seminal article ‘The culture of academic rigour: Does design research really need it?’ (2000:44–57). As collaborators for many years, we also refer to our research, scholarship and teaching practices and the positive experiences of students’ purposeful writing as part of the Writing-PAD network’s debates (www.writing-pad.ac.uk and www.writing-pad.org/wiki the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=154/)).

STYLISH ACADEMIC WRITING, HELEN SWORD (2012 Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 240 pages, ISBN 978-0-674-06448-5, hardback, £16.95