Currently in rehearsals with an international cast of performers and musicians, directed by Robert Wilson

See here for more details

 ”This writing is all just fake (copied from other writing) so you should go away and not read any of it.”

Kathy Acker, “Translations of the Diaries of Laure The Schoolgirl”, p. 104, Hannibal Lecter My Father, Semiotext(e).

A series of private ‘actions’ of the copying by hand onto laboratory filter paper a science research paper published in 1994 called ‘The Effects of Fibroblast Growth Factors in Long-Term Primary Culture of Dystrophic (MDX) Mouse Muscle Myoblasts’, written by Janet Smith and Paul N. Schofield.Although it’s not strictly a transcription,it is meant to play on the trans or crossing from one mode of knowledge to another, or one disciplinary area into another. In my case, as a non scientist engaged in artist practice in a highly sophisticated bioscientific context, my taking a form of that knowledge through a personal, explicitly performative and embodied process perhaps produces and maybe acknowledges some of the knowledges that get omitted from the conventions of the science paper. My digestion of knowledge by the writing. The simultaneous flickerings of readings and writing involved in transcribings.Or at least that’s the theory. The actual writing out of, the practice and process will yield some unknowables.

The use of transcription is also a punning of the biological process of the same name in which an RNA copy is synthesised from DNA, leading to gene expression. Highly relevant when discussing a genetic disease like Muscular Dystrophy. The play of words within genetics that relate to linguistics, speech acts and acts of writing makes me curious. This was initially sparked by Janet’s lab meeting white board drawings, in which she drew a cells interaction and intractions across it’s membrane borders, demonstrating it’s relations with it’s immediate environment and how that plays out within and without. She also demonstrated the transcription processes. Witnessing these action drawing, spatial and temporal, revealed many of the subtleties of her highly nuanced area of expertise.My copying actions are inspired by a few sources; one is Monica Ross’s 2001 performance of the coping of ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936) by Walter Benjamin. See http://www.justfornow.net/Another is the glorious post punk US avant guarde writer Kathy Acker who melded many source texts together in a kind of cut up practice. An early method given to her by her creative writing teacher David Antin was ‘don’t be afraid to copy it out,’ to find it in a book and work with that. ‘See Death (and Life) of the Author, Peter Wollen on Kathy Acker, London review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n03/peter-wollen/death-and-life-of-the-authorMatthew Goulish, US performance maker and writer who writes‘My writing involves rearranging, altering, adding to, subtracting from, the words of those who came before. I did not invest this method. I copied the idea of copying.’10.2 In Memoriam to Kathy Acker, Writing live writing deathp 117, 39 Microlectures in Proximity of Performance.Routledge. London and New York, 2000.Another would be the generative writing/drawing practices of Jordan McKenzie, who as used many approaches to writing to reveal, disclose and translate texts into drawing practices. For example Palimpsests see http://www.jordanmckenzie.co.uk/palimpsest.htmBarthes, Joseph Kosuth, Fluxus and many more.Slips of tongues and absent mindednesses.My approach is crude but I think its downstream issues might generate something interesting. Including the mistakes (mutations) and absent-minded flaws the transcriptions will produce. The idea of moving something through my very own physicality, digesting so to speak is perhaps another way of tying understand and come into an explicit relationship with.

The 8th Theses

When telling Jennifer Willet about the proposed action to write out research papers including Janet’s 1994 paper, she reminded me of Benjamin’s One-Way Street, The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen ThesesVIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.retrieved on 14th Oct 2009 from here.

Also referencing Monica Ross referencing Benjamin. Just for Now.

But actually my version is less a seeking for inspiration and more a wish to move though the body, my body, ’scientific discourse’ and to find ways to write back into it and around and in it’s margins. Jennifer and I discussed paper, what to write on - and where? My sketch book, a Muji notebook, brown wrapping, paper, acid free print makers paper? Each material surface creates a set of knots to the text and the actions, as doe the where? 

* And there is a footnote about getting taxis and suicide and tissue culture.

fertilised egg shell shattered and spilt the 3 day old embryo.

opened up egg showing a 5 day embryo in the top left hand corner

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