SIMON ASENCIO: LEFT / WRITE (RESCRIPT): 4 READING SESSIONS

As part of his residency at Bulegoa z/b, Simon Asencio is hosting 5 open readings sessions of essays, transcripts and poems that pertain to his research on the 1981 Left/Write! conference and political movement in plant life. Feel free to join in one or all readings:

Thursday, 12/09 – 19:00
How Does Writing Arise From & Affect Our Communities?
(transcript from the first panel discussion of the Left/Write! conference)

Tuesday, 17/09 – 19:00
The Feminist Plant: Changing Our Relation with The Water Lily
(essay by Prudence Gibson and Monica Gagliano)

Friday, 20/09 – 19:00
The Politics of Feminist Writing
(transcript from one of the workshops of the Left/Write! conference)

Tuesday, 24/09 – 19:00
Resist Like A Plant! On the Vegetal Life of Political Movements
(essay by Michael Marder)

SIMON ASENCIO: LEFT / WRITE (RESCRIPT)
New Narrative is an experimental writing movement that emerged in the San Francisco poetry scene in the late 1970s around the writings of Bruce Boone and Robert Glück and their writing workshops held at the Small Press Traffic bookstore. The term was coined by fellow poet Steve Abbott to describe these experiments that used gossip, promiscuity, fax, lists, non-narrative elements, pieces of news and slanders as vehicles to write narratives.

Emerging from the context of the civil rights, the black movement and the sexual liberation in the US, New Narrative appears as a motley crew of poets, writers and activists who examined poetic forms that could address their lives. Through personal, relational and transgressive writings, New Narrative experiments generated an active and emancipatory approach to language.

In the aftermath of the first Reagan election, members of the movement envisioned a conference to gather grassroots poetry groups and to reflect about the politics of their life and work. The Left/Write conference, held in 1981 at the Noe Valley Ministry, SF, was an attempt to elaborate political solidarity through literary practices. Partly artistic, educational and political, the conference convened 300 writers over two days through workshops, discussions, exhibitions and events. The conference took place once and was never repeated.

Left/Write! (Rescript) is a performative study situation that examines the conditions of emergence of such event, through the method of reenactment. Using the transcript of the conference as a score for conversation, reading and organizing, the research looks into ways of learning from there and then in order to examine our commitments to here(s) and now(s).

Using research methodologies specific to performance, philology and critical pedagogy, the work of Simon Asencio takes the form of performances, publications, exhibitions, collective study situations and co-creation projects. His current research focuses on the forms of sociability generated by textual practices, particularly the relationship between poetical practice and political engagement. Since 2021 he has been developing a performative translation of Anon, an unfinished essay by Virginia Woolf on the ethics of anonymity and the survival of rhapsodes. In 2022, he was an associate researcher at a-pass / advanced performance and scenography studies in Brussels with his research Quire Whids. He is currently working on the transcripts of the political and literary conference Left/Write! (1981, San Francisco) with the aim of developing a performative reconstruction.

The project is supported by the research grant of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (Paris).