[...]
13:18
25 September 2026Edward Dorrian
to Five Years:Alex Schady, Anne Robinson, Carol Mancke, Catherine Harrington, Edward Dorrian, Esi Eshun, Esther Planas, Gordon Hon, Heyse Ip, Ilga Leimanis, Jhinuk Sarkar, Laura Nicholson, Marc Hulson, rgm, Rochelle Fry, Rolina Blok, Sally Morfill, Stephen Hennessy,
[Rolina’s having problems with her emails. She’s asked me to forward this text to us all. I haven’t read it yet. Eddy]
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A collective publication project at Five Years.
I would like to propose a series of in-person workshops with the members of Five Years, culminating in the production of a collectively authored, hand-bound publication to be shared publicly in December.
As a point of departure, I am interested in the opening sequence of An American Werewolf in London (1981), in which two American travellers arrive in a rural part of northern England and find themselves confronted with an unfamiliar landscape, its inhabitants and an increasingly ambiguous sense of threat. The sequence establishes a particular relationship between the foreign and the familiar, between hospitality and suspicion, and between the ordinary and the uncanny.
I would propose that, as part of the project, we watch this opening sequence together in December. Rather than treating it as an illustration of the project’s themes, I am interested in using it as a shared cultural reference — something we can collectively look at, discuss and respond to before returning to the figure of the werewolf itself.
The project takes Werewolf as its wider point of departure. I am interested in the term not simply as a folkloric or fictional figure, but as a conceptual and linguistic proposition: a site through which questions of transformation, embodiment, identity, language and alterity might be approached. The werewolf occupies an unstable threshold between categories, inviting movement between human and non-human, individual and collective, familiar and unfamiliar.
The workshops would use this instability as a generative framework. Rather than prescribing a particular interpretation of Werewolf, I would invite members to produce situated responses through writing, drawing, image-making, discussion, found material, annotation and other forms of practice. The emphasis would be on producing material through collective encounter, allowing individual responses to enter into relation with one another and generating forms of knowledge that may not emerge through individual practice alone.
Following these sessions, Eddy and I would undertake an editorial process, working with the material generated by the group to develop it into a publication. Editing would be understood not simply as selection and refinement, but as another form of collective thinking: establishing relationships, juxtapositions and productive tensions between disparate contributions.
The final stage would return the publication to the collective. We would gather around a table at Five Years and produce the physical publication through a shared, static assembly-line process. Members would participate in the different stages of folding, collating, sequencing, assembling and hand-binding the publication.
This material process is central to the proposal. It locates publishing not solely in the production of content, but in the social and embodied labour through which a publication comes into being. The table becomes both a site of production and a temporary collective structure, in which individual acts contribute to the formation of a shared object.
The publication would consequently operate across several registers: as a collection of individual responses, as an edited constellation of contributions, and as a materially produced object that records the collective labour of its making. Rather than seeking coherence through a single authorial position, it would allow difference, discontinuity and multiple forms of knowledge to remain visible. The intention is to complete and publicly share the publication in December. The project would move, therefore, through a sequence of shared activities — watching, discussing, responding, editing, assembling and binding — with Werewolf functioning as the proposition that holds these activities together.
I see this as an opportunity to use a familiar cultural figure as a means of thinking collectively about Five Years itself: its forms of exchange, collaboration, individual practice and shared knowledge production, while producing a publication that is materially and socially specific to the collective
Shopping list: If people can pls bring ->
Bone folder
A3 and A4 print outs and paper
Scissors
Glue
Anything you can imagine (for mark making)?
Groovy? :)
[Rolina Blok]
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20:36
6 October 2026Rolina Blok
to Five Years:Alex Schady, Anne Robinson, Carol Mancke, Catherine Harrington, Edward Dorrian, Esi Eshun, Esther Planas, Gordon Hon, Heyse Ip, Ilga Leimanis, Jhinuk Sarkar, Laura Nicholson, Marc Hulson, rgm, Rochelle Fry, Rolina Blok, Sally Morfill, Stephen Hennessy,
Hi everyone!
Hope you’re all keeping well! I’m very much looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible this coming weekend for our first session of working together on the publication/zine/pamphlet WERE WOLF.
I understand that Eddy very kindly emailed you what I had written up as a starting point, and that some of you will be joining us. I thought it would be useful to share the dates and timings:
Part 1:
This weekend 10–11October 2026, 1-6pm
FIVE YEARS members — Session 1
Part 2:
Next weekend 17–18 October/2026, 1-6pm
Public binding / workshop / making — Session 2
Part 3:
12–13 Dec 2026 TBC
Public sharing of WERE WOLF — Session 3
I have lots of thoughts for Session 3, which I’ll share when we’re together and we can think through collectively.
Things to bring I’m not sure how everyone likes to work, so please bring anything that could be useful. For example:
A4 and/or A3 paper
Photocopies, images or text you might like to work with
Mark-making tools — pencils, pens, etc.
Glue, scissors, tape and other making materials
Laptops / phones if you’d like to work digitally
A bone folder, if you have oneIf anyone has a printer that they would be able to bring and let us borrow for the two weekends, that would be wonderful.
I can also hotspot internet from my phone if that’s useful.
Really looking forward to seeing you and hearing your thoughts, and to getting started!
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Five Years:
Unit 2B1 Boothby Road, Archway, London, N19 4AJ
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