Workshop : Christopher Willes – Collaborating through scores

Objective

What is a score and what exceeds it? Beyond a means of preserving an author’s ideas, a score invites other people to interpret those ideas into new experiences. A score asks its readers to become curious, to listen, play, take action or break the rules, and in the process develop shared questions and navigate agency. A score has living in mind. And so, in a way, a score always has some kind of collaborative process at its core.

This workshop will explore the interdisciplinary possibilities of scores within collaborative art practices. Through reading, discussion, and hands-on experimentation, participants will examine diverse approaches to score-making and the ethical, practical, and aesthetic questions they can draw out. The goal of this gathering is for each participant to reflect more deeply on the formal aspects of their own working contexts, and to come away with new ideas about collaborative work.

Content

This workshop will involve practicing scores together—both collaboratively and for one another. The activities will incorporate reading, writing/drawing, discussion, sound-making, and movement, however no prior experience in these is required. The workshop is devised with the forms and traditions of experimental art making in mind, but it can be applicable to other fields as well (education, community work etc).

My facilitation approach is shaped by my background in experimental music, dance, and interdisciplinary performance, as well as my current studies in Conflict Coaching at the University of Waterloo.

The workshop will be conducted in English, but I will actively encourage collective translation and will gladly slow down as needed to ensure accessibility for all participants.

𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: English – Questions in English and French

📷 Claire Harvie