The art of letters: An epic journey of intimate thought and exchange

Abstract

A call was sent out to participate in a writing workshop. Five strangers attended and connected through a shared interest in narrative and storytelling. Inspired by 'Phi territories', an article in the previous edition of JWCP, they formed the question 'How is storytelling an embodiment of performative or tacit processes?' and set about authoring a collaborative article in response. Despite being united by mutual interest, their visions of how to put those ideas into practice would diverge. How to mould something cohesive and impose form and order on multiple approaches to content generated by researchers of different backgrounds? An experimental collaborative process was developed, based on writing letters and replying to the next person in the sequence in a relay of call and response. This experiment would be overseen by an outsider member, who would not be addressed, nor write a letter, but who would receive a copy of each of the letters and create an intervention in response. And so the stage was set for the story to begin … Keywords affect embodiment form/content letter writing performance storytelling