Life Writing Beyond Words - What can life-writing learn from the expressive forms of the animal kingdom?

Add to Calendar Life Writing Beyond Words - What can life-writing learn from the expressive forms of the animal kingdom?Pre-recorded video
Location
Pre-recorded video
Speakers
Martin Bencsik, Katherine Collins, Eleanor Morgan, Olivier Adam, Aline Pénitot
Cluster
Oxford Centre for Life-Writing
Booking Required
Not Required
Contact name
Dr Alice Little
Contact email
admin.oclw@wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Life-Writing Beyond Words is a research network and termly series of public events, hosted by Felix Appelbe, the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and Ocean Ambassadors, that explores how we move between words and the non-verbal.

Life-writing is the study of lives, through letters, diaries, performance, memoir, autobiography and biography. But it frequently has to negotiate the non-verbal, for instance when describing the creative minds of composers, choreographers or artists, capturing the sound and light of childhood, or eavesdropping on the world of animal experience. How can these worlds be captured in words?

We are addressing this challenge by convening a network that spans many disciplines, bringing together academics, practitioners and performers who would otherwise not meet. Free-thinking lectures and laboratories will forge new pathways between the verbal and the non-verbal, journeying towards innovative experimental and performative methodologies.

This is the second in a termly series exploring the non-verbal in life-writing, with contributions from Martin Bencsik, Katherine Collins, Eleanor Morgan, Olivier Adam and Aline Penitot.

What can life-writing learn from the expressive forms of the animal kingdom? An interdisciplinary panel of artists and scientists convene to ask: what is the sound of a spider web? How do the vibrations of bees spread news? What do humpback whales make of human music, and how might human poetry learn from birdsong?