Shift/work: Speculations

chapter three Shift/Work: Speculations neil mulholland anticipation No leaders. No lemmings. No lurkers. Founded in 2010 by Neil Mulholland and Dan Brown in Edinburgh, Shift/Work supports the active peer production of Open Education Resources (OER) for artists. An iterative practice continually re-performed like a musical score, Shift/Work solicits autopoetic and generative workshop compositions that do not require facilitation. Shift/Work is a performative paragogics (Corneli, 2011) wherein peers compose and play-test Shift/Workshops for one another. Shift/Workers practise a multilateral approach to workshop composition. Groups of paragogues compose a score to be performed by their peers. Composers then switch roles to become players, performing workshop scores composed by their peers. This generates a metacognitive feedback loop that enables the group as a whole to identify, observe, experience and recalibrate their own artistic learning. This chapter briefly delineates Speculations (Shift/Work, 2017), a Shift/Workshop composed and performed at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (ESW) in March 2017, the parameters of which were scaffolded by Dan Brown, Jake Watts and myself. Scroll-score. To withdraw facilitation, Shift/Work scaffold play with a scroll-score. This is a minimal set of prompts-a catalyst (e.g. hyperstition) and a few easily acquired probe-props-that sets the parameters within which Shift/Workshop design is communally performed. The scroll-score collectively interpellates us as Shift/Workers-or, in the spirit of Fluxus event scores, ‘players’-triggering subjectivisation through ludic imperatives. The scroll-score sets Shift/Working to an unfolding timeline. Scroll-scores are printed onto the….