Between Image and Text: Experimental workshops with blackout poetry

Workshop
This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Monday 13 March 2023, 5.30pm to 7pm
  • Location: Online only
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

The often antagonistic relationship of image and text has been a subject of debate for many thinkers. Researchers in different disciplinary frameworks have provided different responses to the matter, while many artists and creative practitioners insist on the self-explanatory nature of an image. In this series of workshops, we will approach the literature on image-texts relationships in a hands-on manner.

By using blackout poetry as a creative methodology – meaning the exclusion of words from an existing text rather than inclusion – participants will have the chance to consider the following questions:

  • What are the implications and the complications of blacking out parts of a written text?
  • Can this process permit a closer engagement with the text?
  • And how can we rethink the image-text relationship by applying this methodology?

In preparation, participants will receive scanned copies of some short texts, which will be used during the session as the basis for creating blackout poems. Participants will require access to PowerPoint.

The workshops are held by the Humanities Research Centre, University of York (UK) and the Cultural Relations and Comparative Arts Lab, University of Thessaly (GR).

Follow us on Instagram to read the outcomes from each workshop: @f.p.e.w_ (Found Poetry Experimental Workshops)

Second meeting: On Sontag*

Monday 13 March 2023, 5.30pm to 7pm (GMT), online

Preparatory texts:

  • Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 66-84
  • Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verson, 2010), 63-100 (Chapter 2) [NB – focus on pp. 63-74]
  • David Levi Strauss, Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography (New York: Aperture, 2014), 84-85 (“On Susan Sontag”)

*Content note: The texts for this session examine issues around the representation of violence.

Sign up

First meeting: On Barthes

Monday 13 February 2023, 5.30pm to 7pm (GMT), online

Preparatory texts:

  • Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image”, in Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Health (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 32-51.
  • Roland Barthes, “Soap-powders and Detergents”, in Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage, 2000), 36-38.
  • Catherine Taylor, “The Photographic Image”, in Image, Text, Music (London: SPBH Essays No. 3, 2022), 51-53.

About the speakers

This event is organised by Dr Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani, Humanities Research Centre Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of York, and Dr Elena Anastasaki, Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Intercultural Studies, University of Thessaly.