Open Dialogues at Samtalekøkkenet, Copenhagen

Open Dialogues was invited to give a presentation about our work and lead a two day writing workshop for Samtalekøkkenet (The Dining Kitchen) in Copenhagen, February 2011.

The Dining Kitchen is a monthly evening of performance art and conversation, which includes performances from international artists, debate between audiences and artists, and dinner for everyone.

Fragment from presentation prompt 'Purposeless Writing!' c. Rachel Lois Clapham

Fragment from presentation prompt 'To Score!' c. Rachel Lois Clapham

Mary spoke about the evolution of Open Dialogues’ work, which began as a response to a (perceived) lack of critical writing about performance art, and has become progressively more concerned with experiments in text and performance.

Fragment from presentation prompt 'How is not performance writing?'' c. Rachel Lois Clapham

Rachel Lois took part in the presentation through a series of textual and/or grammatical interventions - a range of A4 sheets with words, phrases or symbols on them. Mary interrupted her own speech to walk to the other side of the stage and perform Rachel Lois’s contributions.

Samtalekøkkenet workshop

The Workshop

The Dining Kitchen asked Open Dialogues to put together a workshop for critics, academics and artists in Copenhagen. Over two days, Mary led a group of 10 people exploring different styles of writing in relation to performance, including: reviewing, reportage, eavesdropping, drawing, performing, listening, speaking, script writing, scores, live writing. The group has since been taking part in live writing sessions in response to Dining Kitchen events.

More on our critical model here

All material c. Open Dialogues 2011