creative writing school
Module 1: Perception & Intuition
structure
Introduction
Theory:
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Theory:
- Philosophy
- Theatre & Performing Arts
- Félix González-Torres: Portrait of Ross in L.A.
Share your text with us
introduction
Welcome to this module on presence where we will approach presence as something that appears, shifts, withdraws. Presence is never complete. It is always entangled with absence, with memory, with projection. To be here is never only to be here. Something is always missing. Something is always already gone. In this sense, presence is not a state. It is a tension. We will work with this tension through writing. To notice how it moves: in the body, in attention, in language, in relation to others.
We will bring in Portrait of Ross in L.A., where presence is measured through disappearance. A pile of candies slowly taken away, reduced, replenished — a work that holds together love, loss, and time without resolving them. What remains is constantly negotiated.
We will also move through literary and performative approaches where presence is also about how something is held, voiced, sustained. Where a pause, a repetition, a silence can carry more than a statement.
For writing, this means shifting position.
Not writing about presence, but writing from within it. Staying close to what is here, and to what escapes it at the same time.
Through exercises, you will work with attention, with memory, with perception. You will explore how presence can be constructed, interrupted, displaced. How a text can hold something without fixing it. The aim is not to capture presence. It is to stay long enough for it to reveal its instability. Because what is present is never fully there. And writing begins exactly at that moving, in-between-point.
We will bring in Portrait of Ross in L.A., where presence is measured through disappearance. A pile of candies slowly taken away, reduced, replenished — a work that holds together love, loss, and time without resolving them. What remains is constantly negotiated.
We will also move through literary and performative approaches where presence is also about how something is held, voiced, sustained. Where a pause, a repetition, a silence can carry more than a statement.
For writing, this means shifting position.
Not writing about presence, but writing from within it. Staying close to what is here, and to what escapes it at the same time.
Through exercises, you will work with attention, with memory, with perception. You will explore how presence can be constructed, interrupted, displaced. How a text can hold something without fixing it. The aim is not to capture presence. It is to stay long enough for it to reveal its instability. Because what is present is never fully there. And writing begins exactly at that moving, in-between-point.
theory
PHILOSOPHY
Presence is often approached as something simple — being “in the moment.” But when you look at how different fields engage with it, it becomes clear that presence is not one thing. It is layered, unstable, constructed through different modes of attention, perception, and relation.
From phenomenology, with Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, presence is not an abstract state but something that emerges through experience. You do not access the world from the outside. You are already inside it, through a body that perceives, filters, orients. What is present to you is inseparable from how you encounter it: through movement, sensation, position. Presence is always embodied, always situated. There is no neutral perception.
Mindfulness practices approach presence differently. Not as a philosophical structure, but as a discipline of attention. Staying with what is there — thoughts, sensations, emotions — without immediately transforming it, judging it, or escaping it. What is often simplified as calm or clarity is in fact a demanding practice: remaining with discomfort, with distraction, with instability. Presence here is not given. It is trained.
With Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and flow theory, presence takes another form. It appears in moments of deep engagement, when attention is fully absorbed in an activity. The separation between doing and perceiving collapses. You are no longer observing yourself. Time reorganizes. Action carries itself. But this state is fragile. It cannot be forced. It emerges under specific conditions — challenge, focus, involvement — and disappears as soon as you try to hold onto it.
Existential thought, with Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, complicates the idea of presence even further. You are never fully here. You are always projected toward something else — a future, a possibility, a fear, an expectation. Presence is not complete. It is structured by absence. Sartre’s notion of “bad faith” shows how easily we escape this condition, how we construct narratives to avoid the discomfort of being fully exposed to our own existence. Heidegger, in another way, shows that being is always stretched between what is and what is not yet.
Across these approaches, something becomes clear: Presence is plural.
For writing, this shifts the work.
You are not trying to “be present.”
You are working with the instability of presence.
What appears. What slips. What insists. What escapes.
From phenomenology, with Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, presence is not an abstract state but something that emerges through experience. You do not access the world from the outside. You are already inside it, through a body that perceives, filters, orients. What is present to you is inseparable from how you encounter it: through movement, sensation, position. Presence is always embodied, always situated. There is no neutral perception.
Mindfulness practices approach presence differently. Not as a philosophical structure, but as a discipline of attention. Staying with what is there — thoughts, sensations, emotions — without immediately transforming it, judging it, or escaping it. What is often simplified as calm or clarity is in fact a demanding practice: remaining with discomfort, with distraction, with instability. Presence here is not given. It is trained.
With Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and flow theory, presence takes another form. It appears in moments of deep engagement, when attention is fully absorbed in an activity. The separation between doing and perceiving collapses. You are no longer observing yourself. Time reorganizes. Action carries itself. But this state is fragile. It cannot be forced. It emerges under specific conditions — challenge, focus, involvement — and disappears as soon as you try to hold onto it.
Existential thought, with Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, complicates the idea of presence even further. You are never fully here. You are always projected toward something else — a future, a possibility, a fear, an expectation. Presence is not complete. It is structured by absence. Sartre’s notion of “bad faith” shows how easily we escape this condition, how we construct narratives to avoid the discomfort of being fully exposed to our own existence. Heidegger, in another way, shows that being is always stretched between what is and what is not yet.
Across these approaches, something becomes clear: Presence is plural.
For writing, this shifts the work.
You are not trying to “be present.”
You are working with the instability of presence.
What appears. What slips. What insists. What escapes.
THEATRE & PERFORMING ARTS
In theatre and performance, presence is not a single quality. It is approached, constructed, and used differently depending on what is at stake: immersion, distance, exposure, precision, relation.
With Konstantin Stanislavski, presence is built through a form of immersion often described as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” The actor does not simply represent a character but works to inhabit a situation — to remain connected to actions, partners, and the unfolding moment. Presence here is not about intensity for its own sake, but about continuity of attention. A sustained relation. Something that allows the performance to feel alive, responsive, and grounded in an internal logic.
With Bertolt Brecht, this continuity is deliberately interrupted. The Verfremdungseffekt — often translated as the alienation effect — breaks identification. The actor does not disappear into the role but maintains a distance from it. Presence becomes double: the actor is there, and the character is there, but they do not merge. This distance produces another kind of attention. The spectator is not absorbed but positioned. Invited to think, to observe, to question what is being shown.
With Jerzy Grotowski, presence is reduced to its essential components. No elaborate scenography, no excess. The actor’s body and voice carry the work. What matters is a form of commitment that is both physical and emotional, but also precise. Presence here is not expressive in a decorative sense. It is stripped, exposed, sometimes almost uncomfortable. It establishes a direct relation with the spectator, without mediation.
With Jacques Lecoq, presence becomes a question of the body as language. Movement, gesture, rhythm, spatial awareness — these are not secondary elements, but primary. The actor learns to observe how the body communicates, often before intention is formulated. Presence is constructed through attention to form: how a gesture begins, how it evolves, how it ends. Meaning is carried physically, not explained.
Psychophysical approaches — such as those developed by Michael Chekhov or within practices like Viewpoints — insist on the relation between inner state and external action. Sensation, impulse, emotion, movement are not separate layers but interconnected. Presence emerges when these elements are not controlled independently but allowed to interact. What appears on stage is then not fixed, but responsive to the moment, to space, to others.
Across all these approaches, presence is never simply “being there.”
It is produced through choices:
– whether to merge or to separate
– whether to sustain or to interrupt
– whether to expose or to construct
– whether to control or to allow
A text also performs these choices.
It can draw the reader in or hold them at a distance.
It can create continuity or introduce rupture.
It can expose its material or structure it.
Presence in writing is not only what appears on the page.
It is how the text positions itself — and how it asks to be read.
With Konstantin Stanislavski, presence is built through a form of immersion often described as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” The actor does not simply represent a character but works to inhabit a situation — to remain connected to actions, partners, and the unfolding moment. Presence here is not about intensity for its own sake, but about continuity of attention. A sustained relation. Something that allows the performance to feel alive, responsive, and grounded in an internal logic.
With Bertolt Brecht, this continuity is deliberately interrupted. The Verfremdungseffekt — often translated as the alienation effect — breaks identification. The actor does not disappear into the role but maintains a distance from it. Presence becomes double: the actor is there, and the character is there, but they do not merge. This distance produces another kind of attention. The spectator is not absorbed but positioned. Invited to think, to observe, to question what is being shown.
With Jerzy Grotowski, presence is reduced to its essential components. No elaborate scenography, no excess. The actor’s body and voice carry the work. What matters is a form of commitment that is both physical and emotional, but also precise. Presence here is not expressive in a decorative sense. It is stripped, exposed, sometimes almost uncomfortable. It establishes a direct relation with the spectator, without mediation.
With Jacques Lecoq, presence becomes a question of the body as language. Movement, gesture, rhythm, spatial awareness — these are not secondary elements, but primary. The actor learns to observe how the body communicates, often before intention is formulated. Presence is constructed through attention to form: how a gesture begins, how it evolves, how it ends. Meaning is carried physically, not explained.
Psychophysical approaches — such as those developed by Michael Chekhov or within practices like Viewpoints — insist on the relation between inner state and external action. Sensation, impulse, emotion, movement are not separate layers but interconnected. Presence emerges when these elements are not controlled independently but allowed to interact. What appears on stage is then not fixed, but responsive to the moment, to space, to others.
Across all these approaches, presence is never simply “being there.”
It is produced through choices:
– whether to merge or to separate
– whether to sustain or to interrupt
– whether to expose or to construct
– whether to control or to allow
A text also performs these choices.
It can draw the reader in or hold them at a distance.
It can create continuity or introduce rupture.
It can expose its material or structure it.
Presence in writing is not only what appears on the page.
It is how the text positions itself — and how it asks to be read.
inspiration
Portrait of Ross in L.A. works with very little, and because of that, it holds a lot.
A pile of candies. 175 pounds.
A precise weight, referring to the body of Ross before illness. Before disappearance.
At first, it is there. Present. Measurable.
Then it begins to shift.
Visitors are invited to take a candy. The pile diminishes. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. What was stable becomes unstable. What was whole becomes fragmented. The work does not represent loss. It enacts it. Presence here is something that changes through contact. At the same time, the pile can be replenished. Rebuilt. Restored. Not to erase loss, but to hold another layer: memory does not function linearly. Something disappears, and yet something persists. The work moves between these states without resolving them — presence and absence do not cancel each other out. They coexist.
The viewer is not outside of this process. By taking a candy, you enter the work. You alter it. You become part of its transformation. Presence is no longer located in the object alone, but in the relation between bodies, gestures, time.
What is intimate — grief, love, loss — is placed in a public space. Exposed, but not explained. The work does not tell you what to feel. It creates a condition where something can be experienced, differently, by each person, yet within a shared structure.
Presence here is not only physical. It is also emotional, relational, temporal. Something is there. Something is leaving. Something remains. All at once.
A pile of candies. 175 pounds.
A precise weight, referring to the body of Ross before illness. Before disappearance.
At first, it is there. Present. Measurable.
Then it begins to shift.
Visitors are invited to take a candy. The pile diminishes. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. What was stable becomes unstable. What was whole becomes fragmented. The work does not represent loss. It enacts it. Presence here is something that changes through contact. At the same time, the pile can be replenished. Rebuilt. Restored. Not to erase loss, but to hold another layer: memory does not function linearly. Something disappears, and yet something persists. The work moves between these states without resolving them — presence and absence do not cancel each other out. They coexist.
The viewer is not outside of this process. By taking a candy, you enter the work. You alter it. You become part of its transformation. Presence is no longer located in the object alone, but in the relation between bodies, gestures, time.
What is intimate — grief, love, loss — is placed in a public space. Exposed, but not explained. The work does not tell you what to feel. It creates a condition where something can be experienced, differently, by each person, yet within a shared structure.
Presence here is not only physical. It is also emotional, relational, temporal. Something is there. Something is leaving. Something remains. All at once.
creative exercise
Step 1 — Anchor
Sit where you are. Do not change the space.
Before writing, pause.
Notice:
– your breath (fast, slow, held, uneven)
– one point of contact (feet, back, hands)
– one sound that repeats
– one detail you usually ignore
Do not interpret. Just register.
Step 2 — Write from here
Write a text that stays entirely inside the present moment.
No past. No future.
If they appear, let them pass without developing them.
Focus on:
– what is here
– what insists
– what almost disappears
Stay concrete. Stay close.
Step 3 — Destabilize
At some point, let presence shift.
– something slips out of focus
– something becomes too present
– something is there but feels absent
– something repeats differently
Do not explain the shift.
Let it happen through language.
Constraints
– no narrative progression
– no explanation of “what it means”
– no conclusion
– work with fragments, pauses, repetition
Final note
Do not try to be “present.”
Stay with what is unstable in presence:
what appears,
what slips,
what cannot fully stay.
Sit where you are. Do not change the space.
Before writing, pause.
Notice:
– your breath (fast, slow, held, uneven)
– one point of contact (feet, back, hands)
– one sound that repeats
– one detail you usually ignore
Do not interpret. Just register.
Step 2 — Write from here
Write a text that stays entirely inside the present moment.
No past. No future.
If they appear, let them pass without developing them.
Focus on:
– what is here
– what insists
– what almost disappears
Stay concrete. Stay close.
Step 3 — Destabilize
At some point, let presence shift.
– something slips out of focus
– something becomes too present
– something is there but feels absent
– something repeats differently
Do not explain the shift.
Let it happen through language.
Constraints
– no narrative progression
– no explanation of “what it means”
– no conclusion
– work with fragments, pauses, repetition
Final note
Do not try to be “present.”
Stay with what is unstable in presence:
what appears,
what slips,
what cannot fully stay.
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