Writing & Concepts Lecture Series, Autumn Royal and Lucy Van

Autumn Royal and Lucy Van present Breaking Lines

We often feel distressed and — after our pain subsides — disappointed with how the condition of psychosis and people experiencing the schizophrenia spectrum have been used in writing. The guise of ‘understanding’ illness provides cover for morbid, controlling curiosities that play into sensationalised and market-driven entertainment. Throughout this address we search for a detour, unsure if there is another way. We as the creators of this lecture also acknowledge our complicity in the value-adding cycle — and so — this is an attempt to return to and concentrate on the ethics of our representations:

Our shrieks dangle over that pause, the one
that you’re given when you describe your own
account with what you’re living. When this description
takes place outside of a film, or poem, or song,
there’s always a stretched intermission —
the unchosen separation between representation
& reality — a messy play & I’ve lost my lines.

This free public lecture is open to everyone. Please click HERE to reserve your seat.

AUTUMN ROYAL is a poet and researcher based in Narrm/Melbourne. Her current research examines elegiac expression in contemporary poetry. Autumn is interviews editor for Cordite Poetry Review, editor of Liquid Architecture’s Disclaimer journal, and author of the poetry collection She Woke & Rose. Autumn’s second collection of poetry is forthcoming with Giramondo Publishing.

LUCY VAN writes poetry and nonfiction. She is a Melbourne Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, working on the monograph The Beginning of the Poem. Figures, her spoken poetry EP, was realised by Laila Sakini and released by Purely Physical in 2017.

WRITING & CONCEPTS is a lecture and publication series exploring the insights that practitioners have in to their own creative and cultural practices, and provides an opportunity for them to discuss and publish these insights in a public forum. Contributors include practitioners for whom the written form is their primary professional output and practitioners whose work manifests as exhibitions or events within the domain of contemporary art.

WRITING & CONCEPTS is produced by Future Tense and moderated by Jan van Schaik and Fjorn Butler. We are supported by each of the host venues, MvS Architects, RMIT’s School of Art and School of Architecture & Urban Design, Melbourne University and ART + AUSTRALIA .