LONELY CITY. Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

The writing seminar LONELY CITY expores the connections between the city as a nexus of loneliness and writing as an artistic practice. Loneliness, according to the dictionary: ‘Sadness due to the lack of company of others.’

Loneliness in the midst of millions, this ‘most shameful of experiences’, writes Olivia Laing in Lonely City, is ‘a thing in itself’, and the late playwright René Pollesch said: ‘You can't think alone, you can only feel.’ Poet Marianne Moore, as quoted by Rachel Cusk, on the other hand, stated that ‘alienation produces loneliness, for which solitude is the cure.’

Alongside to the shared close-reading of Laing's Lonely City – a radical and, according to critics, ‘frighteningly beautiful’ examination of urban loneliness by way of art – participants will investigate their individual writing modes and artistic interests and engage with related questions and production processes employing experimental writing methods and collaborative formats.

We will look, among other things, in particular at exploring the time ‘that is still in fusion before the cooled-down narrative time. When we feel and it is still not named.’ (Hélène Cixous).

Literature: Lonely City. Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing, Canongate Books, 2016

All questions can be clarified in the first session.

Regular participation required, 80% attendance, active participation incl. writing practices and presentation, reading assignments between sessions. Attendance at the first meeting on 18. October is essential.