Sprinkle lunacy over legs: A review of WoW workshop writing exercises

Abstract

In the summer of 2021 I organized and facilitated a short series of three online workshops to launch the Ways of Writing in Art and Design Research Network (WoW). This article reviews the collaborative writing exercises I devised for the workshops, designed to explore potential approaches to writing in/on/about/beside/with art and design beyond the conventional academic essay and in relation to the condition and experience of living and working through the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. The article adheres to academic convention in its presentation and format, while gently pushing against academic orthodoxies in its playful execution, as the text is interwoven with anecdotal asides, subjectivity, description and metaphor. Alongside familiar staples of academic art writing, such as Barthes and Csikszentmihalyi, I draw on a broader range of resources that include poetry and song lyrics. Rather than set out to efficiently argue or prove a point or position, the writing takes a more meandering path (it is littered with the academically maligned word ‘perhaps’) that resembles the ‘carrier bag’ approach of the gatherer, rather than the target driven spear trajectory of the hunter.