Writing Anyhow: Practicing craft despite the existence of chatbots
December 11, 2025 from 1.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m. University of Arts, Domgasse 1, 4020 Linz, Expostmusik
Workshop with Alexis Shotwell in collaboration between the departments of Cultural Studies and Plastics and Environment.
In this discussion-based workshop, we think with John Warner’s provocation that “If AI can do it, we shouldn’t be teaching it.”
How should we think about writing at the university level if we believe it is still worth doing, even though Large Language Model-based text prediction programs exist?
Taking the approach that writing is a practice of thinking, we’ll investigate how to practice this idea. Chatbots may be able to quickly string together grammatically correct sentences and structured paragraphs, but this doesn’t mean we can or should turn the practice ofwriting over to them. Appearances to the contrary, chatbots aren’t thinking, and writing is not primarily something we do to produce a written product.
In this workshop, Alexis will share some specific exercises and practices that can support a writing-as-thinking approach to today’s university context.
Alexis Shotwell primarily writes and teaches theory, but has also given workshops and taught classes on how to reduce suffering and increase joy in both academic and activist writing since 2008.
The workshop will be held in English.
