POROUS, AMBIVALENT Workshop 2: River is/as Vessel - 16 Collective Glasgow International Public Programme

Free Writing & Microbiology Workshop

Location: Tramway (Meet at reception desk) Date: 20 June (12.45-2.45pm)

"River is/as Vessel" Workshop Details:

Taking the form of a microbiological sampling laboratory — a carrier apparatus and orbital lab shaker — Coneffluents invites you, the audience, to activate their sculptural installation in the exhibition River is/as, bringing the River Clyde into the exhibition space with living and incubating water samples.

Join us Saturday 20 June (12.45-2.45pm) at Tramway for the second of two workshops that bring together poetry and DIY microbiology as ways of sensing the Clyde and its microbial inhabitants.

This workshop will involve collaborative creative writing with each other and the microbes from the Clyde. In it, we’ll work with bacterial samples that have been incubating in the exhibition space, trying out different ways to perceive the river taken out of the river. What can we sense through slime, shimmer, transparency, yellowing? What if there’s ‘nothing’ there? Alongside the bacterial cultures, we’ll assemble and respond to other materials – plants, DIY nutrient broth, environmental reports, local knowledge – through poetic experiments. From what emerges through the workshops (both writing and bacteria!), we hope to generate a polyvocal text that we can share in the workshop.

What languages and practices might we need to reach for or dream up in relating to rivers beyond extractive and anthropocentric ways of thinking? If you want to show the council your water is polluted, what could a poem do to help?