phd WORKSHOP

Alongside: Textures of Accompaniment in Research with SUSIE QUILLINAN

SYLLABUS

This talk + workshop session is oriented towards the practice of tracking research, with a focus on the relational architectures of accompaniment that make our research and creative projects possible. The talk introduces accompaniment as an orientation for creative research practice, in conversation with Latin American liberation theology, feminist solidarity practices, and Andean weaving practice and thought. In the workshop that follows, we will test out a set of practice-based theoretical tools for attending to the often-invisible work that sustains knowledge-making and for recognising the moments when a practice is being called to reorient. We will work with four textures of accompaniment — Dynamic Repetition, Minor Movements, Ghost Knots, and Weaving Holes — through short overviews, writing prompts and collective discussion. Participants are invited to arrive with their current PhD research or another creative project they are working on; no preparation is required.

Course goals:

- Be introduced to accompaniment as a critical framework for research and creative practice, and to the ways it can reorient the questions around which a practice is organised.
- Develop a working vocabulary for noticing and describing the relational, structural and often-invisible work that sustains research and creative projects.
- Engage with four textures of accompaniment — Dynamic Repetition, Minor Movements, Ghost Knots and Weaving Holes — as tools to think with when tracking and narrating their own practice.
- Reflect, through writing prompts and discussion, on a current research or creative project, with attention to the communities, material infrastructures and under-acknowledged relations from which that work emerges.
- Leave with a set of transferable practices for tracking both the ongoing, relational dimensions of research and creative work and the moments at which practices are being called to reorient.

Detailed content:

Please bring writing implements - notebook, tablet etc.

14:00 – 14:45 - talk

15:00 – 15:10 – Intro to textures of accompaniment as tools
for tracking research / creative projects

15:10 – 15:35 – Texture #1 – Dynamic Repetition

Brief overview followed by writing prompts.
7 minutes of writing based on prompts
Time for sharing (optional) and discussion of what came up / what we noticed

15:35 – 16:00 – Texture #2 – Minor Movements

Brief overview followed by writing prompts.
7 minutes of writing based on prompts
Time for sharing (optional) and discussion of what came up / what we noticed

16:00 – 16:25 – Texture #3 – Ghost Knots

Brief overview followed by writing prompts.
7 minutes of writing based on prompts
Time for sharing (optional) and discussion of what came up / what we noticed

16:25 – 16:50 – Texture #4 – Weaving Holes

Brief overview followed by writing prompts.
7 minutes of writing based on prompts
Time for sharing (optional) and discussion of what came up / what we noticed

16:50 – 17:15

General discussion, questions etc.