I thought things on the Internet would last forever, but even the Revolving Writer website is gone. This is what the project was all about.
INTRODUCING CHARLIE BYRNES AND REVOLVING WRITER: BLUE CREATIVE STREAKS AND MORE
Let’s
start from the beginning: someone just wet the bed. Her name is Aisha, she
speaks about herself like a sort of unwanted being, seems to be obsessed with
“the history behind names”, is a Virgoan and her story has no beginning and no
end. This was edition #1 of Revolving Writer. Basically a website, but in primis an international collaborative
project started in 2006: writers, artists, musicians and architects had the
prompt, or rather the initial commission, like when a site specific artwork is
being produced. Then, a selection of characters identified by a Polaroid shot,
and finally, their imagination and creativity. Two months as the elaborating
time with the received material, about 60 days to think about why, as the
contributions went on, this Aisha seems to suffer from split personality, what
is going to happen with her life, who is she going to meet next…and interact
not only with one, but many stories.
We
now are at #18 and, during the precedent editions, the novel evolved with new
and unpredictable characters, erased passages, deliberate editing, the
insertion of videos, the recovering of the disregarded passages and someone who
actually decided to become one of the characters and have a love affair with
Aisha. Who knows what is going to happen next. “By now”, says the mind behind
the name Charlie Byrnes, “we have a mysterious Mr. Pebbles to deal with.”
The
project has been very successful so far, but what she really wants to talk
about is what lies ahead: “Revolving Writer apes a democratic society and aims
to be as cohesive as possible”, she explains, “but I realized the novel might
be just the beginning of other projects. We started using writing as a media
and created something site specific. A site. Well, website. The novel is not
being very sociable at the moment, because interacting with a given text can be
a pretty solitary job. I now would like to work with the same material but
different media: art for artists, not artists “acting” as writers; architecture
for architects, etc. In short, I’d like to work with many sites.”
The
website’s home has an announcement reading: “Major Developments from Summer
2009”. Does it mean that we will maybe see the characters coming to life or
something like that? “Not really far from truth.” Charlie grins: “We want
people to get really involved with the novel, like it happened when Revolving
Writer participated to the High Tide Festival in May 2007. We had a performance
with some Revolving Writers writing the story on computers, and the audience,
through projected images, could see the computer’s screen and the story being
written. Then, we asked them questions about the characters and, even thought
they had no idea about the whole plot, we received the nicest contributions. We
made them squeeze their brain.”
That
sounds interesting, but isn’t there the risk of getting things a bit out of
control? “Yes. That’s why, in the future, anyone who would like to contribute
will be invited to discuss each passage with me and the other collaborators
before proceeding. May it be exhibitions, photographs, acting, film, writing,
performances, flyer distributions, we would like to hear from you.” And will
all of this converge onto the website? “No, because the website is just one
of many sites. Do you
see what I mean? We are going to push everything out of cyberspace and
organize, say, events around the world, still “Aisha related”. For example, we
are thinking about a photographic campaign to get more Polaroid pictures for
the characters: 3 different cities around the world, photographers in action at
the same time, stopping the people, taking the picture, and asking them one
particular question. Then, thanks to the modern technologies, we will map the
areas the photographers worked into according to the concentration of people,
like popular/not popular, and create 3D charts from that which describe the
city from a psycho geographic point of view.”
And
who are those revolving writers? “So far, I can mention among all gallery
director Hannah Barry, Naomi Wood, artists Clayton Smith and Noon Day Demons,
Nick Fleetwood, Architect Simon Fujiwara and the Independent Critic and
Novelist Jay Merrick.”
Watch
out for www.revolvingwriter.com
then. A new stage of the project is about to begin, and it might need someone
just like you. Are you ready to meet Aisha and add more colored dust to the
Mandala?
End note: even though the above link is no longer active, I have decided to keep it anyway, like a memorial stone. Ugh, melancholia is here?
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