Questions for Roy Claire Potter

@Roy, I am really interested in the implications of your proposed alternative techniques to subvert common hierarchies of power. Could you say a little more about how you could imagine this might play out outside of the academic/performance context.

@Roy also, could you talk to the futurity of your methodology, e.g your role inside the university/hierarchy as a person both inside a position of ‘power’ and outside a position of ‘power’ (e.g Senior Management). Also as well how participants ‘take forward’ their experiences from your workshops, both individually and collectively - perhaps thinking of such in relation to an ‘archive’ of the activity

@roy - Shows how horrific AI systems for gauging ‘attention’ in classrooms are?

@Roy - In case study 4 I was inspired by the project as collaboration - the potential of writing using someone else’s language, drawing using someone else’s parameters. Not as stealing but as enabling tools

@Roy - Roy, this might relate to Robbie’s question: you mentioned the intention of the speaker, but not their authority, in producing performative speech acts. I was reading about how flawed IQ testing is, and one thing that came up was how they relate to the desire to please the tester. I have personally found your workshops fascinating, as you know because we keep booking you and referring to these ideas! But I was wondering about the role of the workshop leader’s authority and the importance of that position of the master, even if it is an empty placeholder as Ranciere suggests, in allowing participants to feel emancipated. Could you say more about this? Do we need a a workshop leader? Where does their authority come from? Ought we dismantle it?

@Roy - Agreed. Open way to nw expression in ways I hadn’t thought of before and which translated into my practice. Also being back to back allowed more reflection/pause time -which then translated into better expression of thought later on

@Roy - Did anyone challenge your own rules and authority in the workshops ?
Henri Giroux on Neoliberalism and academia useful?

@Roy - Comment on freedom from/to - Srnicek and Williams develop quite an interesting idea of ‘synthetic freedom’ in their book Inventing the Future - liberty as something which has to be actively held open… connects to what you’re saying Roy


@Roy - When we did the session with Roy they said that we could use the workshop ourselves - with other students. For me this was interesting in terms of power / hierarchy as often workshops are positioned as owned by the workshop leader. I’m currernlty participating a reading group as part of the Circle Way in which the roles of guardian, host etc rotate.