“Character Development” — the third session of the course “Theory and Practice of Experimental Writing. Block II”

“Character Development” — the third session of the course “Theory and Practice of Experimental Writing. Block II”

In his poetic essay “Self-Portrait in the Studio”, philosopher Giorgio Agamben attempts to answer the question: “What remains from the sequence of days and years we have lived as best we could — that is, following a need whose logic we still cannot decipher — and at the same time lived as it happened, that is, by chance?”

Drawing on Agamben’s reflections and on the answers we can give ourselves, we will work on creating character images. We will discuss how the personalities and subjectivity of characters are reflected across different layers of an artistic work.

As a writing practice, we will try to create a character portrait based on a photograph or another image of their room or workspace. To reveal the inner world of the character, we suggest turning to four classic approaches:

• How would they speak? (write a monologue or dialogue)

• What do they do? (write an everyday life scene)

• What are they afraid of? (describe thoughts and inner fears)

• What do they cherish? (describe a childhood memory or fantasy)