Site-specific Writing
A creative writing workshop featuring Joana Rafael

Cities and parts of cities are developed, shaped, and transformed with the help of culture and collective consciousness and, above all, understood or remembered by images that can convey a unique identity, certain style, practice, or meaning. What happens when the thought and praxis of narrating situatedness and specificity of a place enter photographic, literary and writing forms? How can writing engage materially with the analysis of sites, and be able to reconfigure the relationships between spatial theories, poetics, and practices? And carry or give meaning to a collective legacy?

This writing workshop proposes to explore narrative techniques and re-imagine an element from Nuno Cera's research and artistic exhibition. The list of participating elements may include: the city of Sines and/or the Central Tejo’s Ashpit 8 room, which houses the exhibition, the photographed elements on display or the photographic medium, but also the plinths, the projection screen, the exhibition sheet and publication, among others.

The aim is to emphasise key ideas or practices that define the chosen element and the spaces it inhabits, while discussing ways of communicating with different audiences through storytelling and narrative. The workshop will develop the spatial qualities of writing based on writing styles, methods of investigation and analysis of the interaction between material and contextual facts whilst putting ideas and objects in dialogue and proposing fictional responses to specific sites.

An orientation session to introduce the subject to the participants is conducted at the exhibition room and a walking workshop. During this workshop, participants are given theoretical input on the main urban theories and will be exposed to techniques and media they can use to narrate their histories and conceptual reflections.

Programme
10.00–10.15: reception
10.15–10.45: introduction
10.45–11.45: tour of the exhibition "Distant Lights" with the author Nuno Cera
12.00–13.00: walking seminar
13.00–14.00: break
14.00–15.00: masterclass
14.00–16.00: writing workshop
16.00–17.00: discussion

Joana Rafael is an architect practitioner, researcher, and writer. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures and an MA in Research Architecture (both from Goldsmiths, University of London); and completed the Metropolis Graduate Programme (frem the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona). Her work spans the disciplinary boundaries of architectural theory and practice, (issues of) ecology, material and digital culture, social sciences, and technology studies. Joana uses writing as a learning tool.