Exquisite Broken Circle: Suddenly a Chora

The 2013 summer's workshop grew out of the perfect combination of planning and poetry. Building from the experiences of our first summer workshop, and incorporating discoveries found through our recent work, we developed this summer’s workshop titled ‘Exquisite Broken Circle; Suddenly a Chora’. Structured through six disciplines; construction, drawing, film/photography, writing, theater and music/sound the workshop was conceived of as a disciplinary exquisite corpse. Each of these disciplines worked in parallel and in close proximity, directly interacting though a framework of shared questions and actions. 

During the eight-week intensive workshop, together, we sought to build a bridge; a bridge that is a stage, a drawing board, a film screen, a story, a place to act—a bridge between many disciplines. This bridge is co-constructed, as each step in its construction is developed as a series of shared questions across all of the disciplines. As we excavate the site, we ask: What is excavation in drawing? in film, in writing, in theater, in music. As we pour the foundations we ask what are foundations in drawing, in film, in writing, in theater, in music. As we raise the structure, we ask what is structure in drawing, in film, in writing, in theater, in music. As raise a new horizon, we ask; what is horizon in drawing, in film, in writing, in theater, in music? Week by week as we move thought the shared questions we co-construct a work, an emergent space between all of the disciplines. 

The final two-week session titled ‘Suddenly a Chora’ focuses on the interdependency and autonomy of the questions and culminated in a live performance built between all of the works. The hope is that through the shared framework of questions and actions we will create a disciplinary Chora; a space where a great diversity of telling and listening creates new questions and works. 

The structure of the workshop was at once simple and complex. In order to properly convey the idea, we offer you this introductory film on the right.