
Part of the ongoing Writing Art Writing Art Writing learning programme — a collaboration between WITTA and Spike Island — this workshop, led by Professor Sarah Hayden is for artists, writers and everyone who is (or intends to be) part one and a bit of the other. Together, we’ll take on description and / in its paradoxical relation to art writing.
To start, we’ll prod at resistance to describing: our own, and that of writers, artists and theorists before and around us. After teasing out the overlaps between description, translation, interpretation and remediation, we’ll palpate the intermeshed politics and poetics of description in art/writing practice.
Then, we’ll move through a sequence of exercises designed to sharpen — and to skew, productively — our descriptive powers. We’ll test Houser’s notion of ‘description as asymptote’ and Fried’s suggestion that ‘even bare noticing has its conditions of possibility’. Our writing will toggle between tenses and degrees of distance, attending to the material qualities of what’s under observation and the vicissitudes of our (inevitably infinitely various) perceptual processes.
The workshop requires nothing by way of prior experience. Our attention will be attuned to apperception across the senses and your writing can take whatever form you fancy. There will be opportunities to work together and apart. There will most definitely be a break and the atmosphere aimed at is one of gently giddy experimentation.
This event will be live captioned by 121 Captions
Saturday 24 October, 2 – 5pm at Spike Island
Places are open to all, but limited. If you would like to join this workshop please send us an Expression of Interest to: lizzie.lloyd@uwe.ac.uk with the following:
[1]
Up to 150 words on why this workshop is of interest to you and how it would help you to develop your practice.
[2]
A link to your online presence (a website, Instagram handle etc).
[3]
Let us know how you heard about this event. Are you a member of Spike Island Associates? And have you been involved with any other WITTA events?
The deadline for sending us your Expression of Interest is 30 September at midnight. We will try to notify you of the outcome on 5 October by 5pm.
Sarah Hayden is a writer and Professor of Experimental Writing and Art at the University of Southampton. Her work explores intersections of voice, text, art and access. From 2019 – 23, she led ‘voices in the Gallery’. In 2022, Sarah edited slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs (LUX) and in 2024, she collaborated with Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones on the Blue Description Project, which was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), BFI (London), IFI (Dublin) MIT List Arts Center, and elsewhere. She is the author of Curious Disciplines: Mina Loy and Avant-Garde Artisthood (University of New Mexico Press), co-author, with Paul Hegarty of Peter Roehr: Field Pulsations (Snoeck) and editor of slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs (LUX). Recent publications include essays on ‘unvoiceover’ (Angelaki) and sensorial sovereignty.

Part of the ongoing Writing Art Writing Art Writing learning programme — a collaboration between WITTA and Spike Island — this workshop, led by Professor Sarah Hayden is for artists, writers and everyone who is (or intends to be) part one and a bit of the other. Together, we’ll take on description and / in its paradoxical relation to art writing.

An afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentation from artist-writer Katrina Palmer, and an in-conversation with Huma Mulji and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, and Mary Hurrell, chaired by Lizzie Lloyd. It was followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

When Language Becomes Material explores the material possibilities, traces and manifestations of language in art. The exhibition includes work by Huma Mulji and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Young In Hong and Owen Lloyd, Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Mary Hurrell, and Amak Mahmoodian.

Sign-up here to subscribe to our mailing list, to receive updates, forthcoming WITTA events, reading lists and new writing from our WITTA network.

WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

A new project supported by WITTA to explore experimental ways of making texts and images. The project is devised by Potato Press, formed of Lesley Guy, Kate Liston and Tom O’Sullivan and with contributions from Sarah Jackson and Leah Millar.

WITTAnights are a place for showing, reading, listening and trying things out.

Calling all artists who write, writers who art(!) and everything in between: tell us more about your work.

The WITTA podcast — hosted by Lizzie Lloyd and Kit Poulson — invites guests to reflect on why they do things with words, how they do things with words and what words allow them to do that other materials don’t.

Through various WITTA events, working with participants and collaborators within and beyond the university, questions have emerged.

This WITTAfilm was made from interviews and materials gathered at an informal week-long creative residency / experiment called WITTAverse.

In July 2023, WITTAverse happened. It was a week-long event which involved a range of artists, writers, composers, and students.

Members of the Ways of Writing in Art & Design (WoW) network, which is housed within the Visual Culture Research Group, have written and guest edited the first of two special issues of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.

Invitation to work as part of a research group devised by artists Beverley Carruthers and Wiebke Leister, which investigates contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production.

Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli’s ongoing collaboration spans writing, performance, sound and moving image.

In this inaugural event we invite Polly Barton and Daniela Cascella to discuss translation, relationships between art, writing and sound, and what it means to write between disciplines.

This evening of conversation with artist Katy Beinart, writer Lizzie Lloyd and curator Marianne Mulvey will consider their shared interests in socially engaged or participatory art projects.
WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) is the start of what I hope to become a fully fledged research group at UWE Bristol.

Part of the ongoing Writing Art Writing Art Writing learning programme — a collaboration between WITTA and Spike Island — this workshop, led by Professor Sarah Hayden is for artists, writers and everyone who is (or intends to be) part one and a bit of the other. Together, we’ll take on description and / in its paradoxical relation to art writing.
To start, we’ll prod at resistance to describing: our own, and that of writers, artists and theorists before and around us. After teasing out the overlaps between description, translation, interpretation and remediation, we’ll palpate the intermeshed politics and poetics of description in art/writing practice.
Then, we’ll move through a sequence of exercises designed to sharpen — and to skew, productively — our descriptive powers. We’ll test Houser’s notion of ‘description as asymptote’ and Fried’s suggestion that ‘even bare noticing has its conditions of possibility’. Our writing will toggle between tenses and degrees of distance, attending to the material qualities of what’s under observation and the vicissitudes of our (inevitably infinitely various) perceptual processes.
The workshop requires nothing by way of prior experience. Our attention will be attuned to apperception across the senses and your writing can take whatever form you fancy. There will be opportunities to work together and apart. There will most definitely be a break and the atmosphere aimed at is one of gently giddy experimentation.
This event will be live captioned by 121 Captions
Saturday 24 October, 2 – 5pm at Spike Island
Places are open to all, but limited. If you would like to join this workshop please send us an Expression of Interest to: lizzie.lloyd@uwe.ac.uk with the following:
[1]
Up to 150 words on why this workshop is of interest to you and how it would help you to develop your practice.
[2]
A link to your online presence (a website, Instagram handle etc).
[3]
Let us know how you heard about this event. Are you a member of Spike Island Associates? And have you been involved with any other WITTA events?
The deadline for sending us your Expression of Interest is 30 September at midnight. We will try to notify you of the outcome on 5 October by 5pm.
Sarah Hayden is a writer and Professor of Experimental Writing and Art at the University of Southampton. Her work explores intersections of voice, text, art and access. From 2019 – 23, she led ‘voices in the Gallery’. In 2022, Sarah edited slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs (LUX) and in 2024, she collaborated with Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones on the Blue Description Project, which was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), BFI (London), IFI (Dublin) MIT List Arts Center, and elsewhere. She is the author of Curious Disciplines: Mina Loy and Avant-Garde Artisthood (University of New Mexico Press), co-author, with Paul Hegarty of Peter Roehr: Field Pulsations (Snoeck) and editor of slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs (LUX). Recent publications include essays on ‘unvoiceover’ (Angelaki) and sensorial sovereignty.

Part of the ongoing Writing Art Writing Art Writing learning programme — a collaboration between WITTA and Spike Island — this workshop, led by Professor Sarah Hayden is for artists, writers and everyone who is (or intends to be) part one and a bit of the other. Together, we’ll take on description and / in its paradoxical relation to art writing.

An afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentation from artist-writer Katrina Palmer, and an in-conversation with Huma Mulji and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, and Mary Hurrell, chaired by Lizzie Lloyd. It was followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

When Language Becomes Material explores the material possibilities, traces and manifestations of language in art. The exhibition includes work by Huma Mulji and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Young In Hong and Owen Lloyd, Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Mary Hurrell, and Amak Mahmoodian.

Sign-up here to subscribe to our mailing list, to receive updates, forthcoming WITTA events, reading lists and new writing from our WITTA network.

WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

A new project supported by WITTA to explore experimental ways of making texts and images. The project is devised by Potato Press, formed of Lesley Guy, Kate Liston and Tom O’Sullivan and with contributions from Sarah Jackson and Leah Millar.

WITTAnights are a place for showing, reading, listening and trying things out.

Calling all artists who write, writers who art(!) and everything in between: tell us more about your work.

The WITTA podcast — hosted by Lizzie Lloyd and Kit Poulson — invites guests to reflect on why they do things with words, how they do things with words and what words allow them to do that other materials don’t.

Through various WITTA events, working with participants and collaborators within and beyond the university, questions have emerged.

This WITTAfilm was made from interviews and materials gathered at an informal week-long creative residency / experiment called WITTAverse.

In July 2023, WITTAverse happened. It was a week-long event which involved a range of artists, writers, composers, and students.

Members of the Ways of Writing in Art & Design (WoW) network, which is housed within the Visual Culture Research Group, have written and guest edited the first of two special issues of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.

Invitation to work as part of a research group devised by artists Beverley Carruthers and Wiebke Leister, which investigates contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production.

Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli’s ongoing collaboration spans writing, performance, sound and moving image.

In this inaugural event we invite Polly Barton and Daniela Cascella to discuss translation, relationships between art, writing and sound, and what it means to write between disciplines.

This evening of conversation with artist Katy Beinart, writer Lizzie Lloyd and curator Marianne Mulvey will consider their shared interests in socially engaged or participatory art projects.
WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) is the start of what I hope to become a fully fledged research group at UWE Bristol.