This participatory, score-based workshop was taken up by members of the Knot Working Group as part of a series of seminars and gatherings looking at relationships between voice, fiction, collectivity and publication. Written by artist Serena Lee, then based in Vienna, the workshop involved the collective reading aloud of texts, physical movement around the room, individual imaginings and writings, translation of notes, and group-based, improvised score-writing. The workshop was presented as one of several events which took place in the Courtroom at the Arts Court, in Ottawa – a site or legal proceeding which provoked reflection on the weight of language and utterance as world-producing acts.
Serena Lee
Serena Lee layers cinema, performance, voice, image and text to map a political grammar of harmony. Modeling belonging and power through polyphony, she practises and collaborates internationally. With the Read-in research group she explores the embodied, situated, and political aspects of collective reading aloud. Serena holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and Associate Certification in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Canada. Active with various Canadian cultural organizations, she works as an educator in Experiential Learning at OCAD University. Serena is third-generation Chinese-Canadian and was born in Toronto.
Related Programming
Performance: Kempelen’s Breath, VOR. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 10, 2019.
Workshop: Cold Read, Andrea Oliver Roberts. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 11, 2019.
Residency: Expanded Practice, Shani K Parsons. Knot Project Space. Dec. 2-14, 2019.
Performance: Documents, Autumn Knight. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 12, 2019.