Fig. 3.4: A scorched photograph can make for a starting point with various possible contexts.
Writing Context
Participants are given a primary source or “starting point,” if necessary with a translation of visible texts, but without much contextualizing information. What can be said about the object based on its materiality, traces of use, aesthetic appearance?
This creative writing exercise can bring out unexpected possibilities and limitations in spelling out in language an otherwise vaguely imagined context. What unexpected tools does language offer your peers in representing a historical situation of which but a fragment, the starting point itself, is confirmed? What different perspectives did each participant choose to represent? Where did imagination take the story, and how does this fictive context it change the meaning of the common starting point?
Possible takeaways
This creative writing exercise can bring out unexpected possibilities and limitations in spelling out in language an otherwise vaguely imagined context. What unexpected tools does language offer your peers in representing a historical situation of which but a fragment, the starting point itself, is confirmed? What different perspectives did each participant choose to represent? Where did imagination take the story, and how does this fictive context it change the meaning of the common starting point?