After the Marathon

Well... we went out for pizza. Everybody was tired, no need to say, but we enjoyed. Thank you very much to our friends at Sfizio (http://www.sfizio.co.uk) who provided the Italian delicacies. Lovely place, lovely pizza and lovely people... And we even got a platter of free cakes!

THEWRITINGMARATHON is now concluded!

23:50 Apologies for the sudden interruption of updates. One hour from publication we started overheating and – also – our school internet connection didn't seem to work anymore. 

So there you are. We wrote a book in one day. I think it's also a good one. It will be available to a restricted number of beta/readers from monday and on sale starting from the end of the Easter holidays.

Thank you to all of you who have followed the marathon online. The writingmarathon is now over but the blog hopefully continues. There will be news about the book, about other publications, other activities and of course about the next writingmarathon. 

You can get in touch sending an email to    thewrittenstuff@gmail.com 

or leaving a post on this blog.

19:30 One hour from publication, all have handed in. Some of us, not yet tired of writing, are now writing their reflections on the day. It would be a good idea for everyone to post some comments about what happened today: definitely admirable teamwork.

18:47 Everyone is handing in their creations. The designer is going crazy. The editor is already. Everyone is trying to make sense of this whole day of writing. We are at the stage in which everything does makes sense – but the opposite to what was planned or initially thought.

17:58 The process of editing is frantic! In theory we are only 2 1/2 hours away from publication and most of us have not yet finished their pieces.

17:19 We realise that there is no real need for a meeting. Everyone is still extremely concentrated. A few of us have already handed in their finished piece. In the meantime, the designer and the editor are scuplting all the work by deciding on the sequence in which the pieces will appear in the book.

16:07 We've occupied two complete rooms and everybody is concentrating on their work.

15:30 After Oliver's presentation and discussion, we go back to working individually. Our next meeting is in one hour and our first drafts must be near to completion.

15:04 Oliver O'Keeffe is giving an extra presentation about his work as a visual artist. He separates the creative moment into the "idea" and the "aura" that emanates from the idea. This presentation provoked a discussion about how different moments, the past the present and the future can or not happen at the same time. His is an original and unplanned response to today's marathon's theme. Thank you very much to Oliver for preparing something to say in such a short time (1 hour and 4 minutes).

14:37 We meet as a group again in order to discuss some of the writing and thinking that has been produced individually during and immediately after the lunch break. During this meeting we decide who is writing what and we decide a sort of provisional structure for the publication.

13:47 Work is slowly resuming. The challenge is for us to respond to the four presentations in a very limited amount of time. We need to have the publication ready by tonight at 8.30pm (the end of our marathon). So all the writing, editing, illustrating and designing will happen in the next seven hours.

13:00 We break for lunch!

12:53 Noriko san discussed the work in terms of its relation to personal histories. The work was received by the students as a strong piece of work, concentrating their attention of absence rather than presence. There seems to be an implied narrative about what was once there and now is not anymore. There once was a woman there, there once were more clothes. One of the interesting dichotomies that the work enacts, is that the garment is made of the same material of which mothballs are made, mainly naphtalene, which is used for preservation of clothes, but it destroys itself at room temperature. Most of this artist's work, while talking (also) about the preservation of identity and memory, is made of degradable materials and can't be preserved.

12:02 The third Skype lecture will discuss this piece of work. I've been asked by the lecturer, Noriko Katayama from Japan, to show this picture before her presentation, asking the students to comment on it without knowing anything about it.

11:44 The second Skype lecture came in from the land of Vikings. Fred Sterner talked with us about places and anti-places. How do we interact with the space we live/walk/cross? How do we affirm our identity within commercial environments? Is shopping our only weapon, buying and displaying in order to recognise ourselves and each other or can we create pockets of resistance? And how?

10:33 Enrico Benco is the first of our Skype lecturers. He speaks about the uses of technologies in generating ideas. Are we able to have ideas without technologies? Once we use new technologies, are our ideas really new? He makes an example with music... is music new when it is generated with new technologies?

10:18 We start the Skype presentations!

9:22 From Christian's presentation:

"In 1935, Walter Benjamin discussed the consequence of the introduction of film, photography and lithographic printing. The concerns were loss of traditional craft and fear that with the new production technologies we would lose touch of the concept of original art and it would disappear. It is now time to revisit the questions tha tWalter Benjamin raised: how to reaffirm the positive potential and promise that lies in today's means of [re]production.

In this post-copyright era, society will have to rely on innovators, people with really good ideas (designers?) to enrich and sustain culture and society".

8:55 Christian Petersen is giving the first presentation.

THEWRITINGMARATHON is now open!

8.30am in the Context Studio, we can officially declare THEWRITINGMARATHON open!

Good wishes from an old friend!

Sounds really nice!

As I am not a student anymore, I'm not participating but hey, instead I'll share someone else's words on the subject with you here.

All the best and yes, see you online.

(Received at 12:38am, thank you Didem!)

The Writing Marathon starts in less than 10 hours!

Welcome to our blog. This site will be updated live all through Thursday 19th February 2009. Please follow our marathon and send your comments!

The theme of this year's marathon is "do our ideas really belong to us?"

This question can be read in at least two ways. 

a) Are we really original? How do we understand the concept of "new"? Where does inspiration end and plagiarism start? Do our ideas really belong to us or rather to the people who have inspired us (our past)?

b) What happens after the idea? How do ideas live on and how are they communicated? Do our ideas really belong to us or rather to the people who will experience them, or their result, after us (our future)?