Collaborations...
As a writer, Susanna Crossman collaborates with visual artists, film-makers, musicians and theatre companies such Awe Curation, Gilles Blanchard and Anne-Sophie Duca. Commissioned work and projects have led to artists books, digital film productions, plays and performances produced and exhibited in Britain, the USA and France.
ACTUELLEMENT / AT THE MOMENT:
The Dinner Party Reloaded with Lucy Writers.
The Dinner Party Reloaded (TDPR) is a gathering of words, art, culture and food, bringing together writers, visual artists, translators, dancers, musicians, actors and thinkers from around world. Each month we invite 3-4 guests to meet virtually, sharing their work and thoughts while eating, drinking, and cooking because, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
The Lucy Writers’ Platform is a website devoted to showcasing the work of women and non-binary writers and creatives working in collaboration with Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University.
The Dinner Party Reloaded 1: The Artists
In the first of her self-conceived series, The Dinner Party Reloaded, a virtual dinner party with selected artists and writers, Susanna Crossman meets Chiara Ambrosio, Lottie Whalen and Jemima Yong to discuss their creative projects, the looseness of time in lockdown, contact and intimacy in our increasingly digital age and the joys of chickpea stew.
The Dinner Party Reloaded 2: The Authors
In the second of her self-conceived series, The Dinner Party Reloaded, a virtual dinner party with selected artists and writers, Susanna Crossman meets acclaimed authors Haleh Agar, Sara Collins and Irenosen Okojie to discuss their work, their love for fiction, anime, the poetry of Derek Walcott, Han Kang and Kei Miller, and much more.
The Dinner Party Reloaded 3: The Translators
In her third virtual dinner party of the year, Susanna Crossman invites translators and writers Saudamini Deo, Denise Rose Hansen, and Emma Rault to discuss different modes of translating, the fascistic notion of an “original” language, the work of Ann Quin and the ghosts behind translation.
The Dinner Party Reloaded 4: The Poets
In her fourth virtual dinner party of the series, Susanna Crossman talks to poets Elodie Rose Barnes, Nancy Campbell, Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Alina Stefanescu about poets as ‘wonder-workers’, poems as rafts and echoes, writing the life of Djuna Barnes, revisiting Tagore’s Gitanjali and much more.
The Dinner Party Reloaded 5: The Memoirists & Fiction Writers
For her fifth dinner party, author and host Susanna Crossman talks to writers Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Lily Dunn and Shamini Sriskandarajah about eliding the barriers between fiction and non-fiction, the ethics of (memoir) writing, diverse ways of reading via Lydia Davis and whether to “glam up” or dress down when sitting down to write.
360° Morning
The morning. Le matin. La mañana. Three artists. Three countries. Three mornings. The earth turns 360°.
360° of Morning is an international prose-video, the story of three mornings: a French morning of grief for a writer who has lost her sister, a Spanish morning of discovery as a photographer contemplates the mountains, a New York morning of alignment between the sun and moon for an artist in the city that never sleeps.
The three solitary mornings intertwine, awakening, moving from horizontal to vertical, darkness to light, crossing thresholds, the separation of night from day. The world turns 360°. Le matin. The morning. La mañana.
360° is a collaborative project by Susanna Crossman, Michael Dickes and Juanan Requena,
Extract Performed at RichMix, London as part of PoemBrut with poet Steven. J. Fowler.
Press:
The Story Forest, collaboration with Immercity Theatre Company.
The Story Forest, Brainchild Festival, 2018.
Ruines, The Ruins, collaboration with contemporary artist Anne-Sophie Duca.
The ongoing collaborative project The Ruins is composed of a series of short fictional epistolary texts by Susanna Crossman, and drawings and fictional objects created by the contemporary artist Anne-Sophie Duca.
In the short story, The Ruins, Cassandra inherits a priceless collection of miniature Cities in ruins: Manhattan, the Gardens of Babylon, the Calais jungle... The family legacy brings to the surface the divisive history between Cassandra's family and the stones, the passion and madness of Nana. Cassandra faces a dilemma: should she protect the mysterious architectural heirloom, or cast her past, and the stones into the sea?
Deeply troubled, she writes to a friend...
THE RUINES/ THE RUINS
The vestiges of ancient architecture, or fragments from the future? The Ruins project draws on archeology, the ruin, and the human need to position ourselves in time.
Des vestiges d'architectures passées, ou des fragments futuristes? Les Ruines est une recherche autour de l'archéologie, de la ruine, de la mémoire...
DATES:
Expositions, exhibitions: Au Temple du Gout, 6-30 April Nantes, 2017.
Lectures de textes, readings: Librairie Durance 6-29 April, Nantes, 2017
Upcoming exhibitions and reading in Le Mans 2017-2018.
Past collaborations:
Entre Les Lignes
PRESS: Le Télégramme
Isabelle Bigot peint. Susanna Crossman écrit. L’une est française, l’autre britannique. Un jour, lors d’une rencontre entre stylo et pinceau, between pen and brush, elles se sont posées la question: what will we find between the lines, entre les mots, dans l’espace serré d’un souffle, hors cadre, dans le gribouillage, la marge ? Comment naviguer dans ces moments faits de minutes rebelles qui ne respectent plus le temps prescrits par l’horloge ? Dans un basculement entre la peinture et le texte, lors d’allers et retours synesthésiques, elles ont trouvé le manque, les secrets, le destin, l’amour, la folie et bien d’autres choses…
Cette collaboration a donné fruit à dix textes, une série de dix tableaux, un livre d’artiste et des enregistrements de textes.
Exposition Médiathéque de Dinard, 27 septembre - 8 octobre 2016.
Lecture d'extraits de "Brouillons du Bébé", accompagnés par Frédérique Couillard au contre-basse, Argile et Vin 5 mars, 2016.
Plays-Performances/ Spectacles:
Rubbish, Compagnie VO France. Toured in North-West France (Nantes, Rennes, Saint Malo, St Brieuc)
La mer, Performance, Grain de Sable, Lancieux, France.
Son Et Lumière, collaborative film and performance with Susanna Crossman and Andrew Zec. Screenings and performances around Great Britain: Stroud Festival, Oxford University, Watershed (Bristol) The Old Library, (Dorset)...
The Book Project; International touring exhibition curated by Cally Baker; UK and America.
Echoplex, En Faim de Conte, (Festival Mythos) Rennes, France.