Writing Concert
Since 2014
An exhibition of live writing. Invited writers build stories out of what the audience gives them, with a host, a live band and the full projection setup. Thematic on request.
Photo: Mar Perla
A literary discipline · since 2010
The text is alive
A literary discipline where the audience watches a text being born, always new and always unexpected. The art of literary improvisation in front of a reading audience.
[ Dictionary ]
Live Writing, v.
To write in real time
in front of an audience.
Improvised
The text is invented in the moment, at the keyboard, and projected as it appears. Improvisation is the discipline: rules, constraints and games that make writing possible on the spot.
Participative
The audience is invited in. The keyboard travels, and people who came to read end up writing. Writing is for everyone.
Collective
One text, many contributors. What matters is what happens between the participants: the voice becomes shared, and so does the story.
Artistic
Writing talks to the other arts. Live music, theatre, dance, drawing, film and projection are part of the piece itself.
Formats
Different ways of putting writing on a stage.
Live Writing Session
Since 2014
An encounter. A device we install to invite everyone who comes to join in through writing, sharing the keyboard. Most people who sit down are writing in public for the first time.
Writing Slam
Since 2014
A writing competition unlike any other in the world, where new literary challenges are invented constantly for four to eight participants to face live. The audience takes part, there is music and there are performers. A live literature show.
Graffitext
New
Live writing taken to the street and onto the walls of the city, turning the session into a visual experience through video mapping.
Photo: Mar Perla
Where the writer and the reader connect.
Written live
Texts that only happen once.
In a Live Writing session we let the collective voice flow, passing the keyboard around to build one text together — a text that connects us and takes everyone somewhere none of us would have gone alone.
every night
a book is born
and dies
in this roomClub Cronopios · Barcelona, 2015
The cursor is the heartbeat,
the voice in whispers,
the thought getting ready
to summon the bloodGalería Mutuo · Barcelona, 2015
Go on,
be brave.
Or be a coward.
Come. Either way. Come.Club Cronopios · Barcelona, 2015
The archive
Fifteen years, and it is still happening.
600+events since 2010
2010first performance, as Improtext
500people in the room, our largest audience
5original formats, all documented
The origin
“El cursor es el latido,
la voz en susurros,
el pensamiento que se prepara
para llamar a la sangre.”
Written live at Galería de Arte Mutuo, Barcelona, in 2015 — ten years before the cursor became our symbol.
Live Writing was created by Marcos Xalabarder, who has been writing in public since 2010 and founded ASEV in 2017 to research, produce and teach performative writing.
Photo: Mar Perla
Five hundred people reading at once, at the speed of the hands that write.
For programmers
Bring Live Writing to your venue.
Theatres, cinemas, museums, libraries, festivals, galleries. Indoors and outdoors. From thirty people to five hundred, in any language.
We bring the writers, the musicians, the host and the whole projection setup. Sessions can be built around a theme, a collection or an anniversary.
We have worked with Sala Beckett, CCCB, Centro Botín, Fabra i Coats, Museu del Disseny and the Estrella Damm brewery, among many others.
What we need
- a wall or a screen
- power
- a room that can go dark
- two hours to set up
- and the readers
(They can write too)