August 2021: Unsettlement and Resurrection: A Word Laboratory w/ Honora Spicer
This workshop will engage creative practices for breaking into and breaking out of languages of colonization.
As artists, we can build tools to dismantle language patterns formed through imperialism and settler colonialism. This workshop will play with words as sound, image and symbol, as a practice of unsettling colonial language. In a word laboratory, we'll explore histories of English on the level of phonology (sounds), morphology (forms of words) and syntax (grammatical structure). We'll engage with the work of artists who break into and break out of language on this level, in the name of unsettlement: M. NourbeSe Philip, Jena Osman, JD Pluecker, Cecilia Vicuña, and others. We'll dissect etymologies, resurrect forgotten language-ancestries, and play with what it means to make queer family from word lineages. We will morph, mutate, and make syntax mess. We'll resurrect extinct words and have them play with future sounds.
While this workshop is focused on English, it will be a generative environment for work in any language. We will approach words as sound and image, and as such this workshop also welcomes practice in creative mediums beyond the written word.
Materials: Pen, paper, and any art materials you'd like to work with.
Bio:
Honora Spicer is an experiential educator, poet and translator. She holds a BA from Oxford University in English Literature & History, and an MA from Harvard University in Early Modern History. She teaches an online and experiential course in Place-based United States History centered on the question 'How do we know where we are and when we are?' She has designed and led expeditionary learning programs, teaching college-accredited courses in literature, history, and Spanish language while mountain biking, mountaineering, and paddling. She currently teaches history at El Paso Community College. Her writing and translations have been published or are upcoming in Asymptote, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, and Latin American Literature Today.
Logistics:
- This workshop runs from August 1, 2021 - August 31, 2021.
- Workshops consist of one video per week for each week in the month. Videos are 45-60 minutes long, and are shared on a private YouTube account.
- Class discussions are held via Slack.
- All readings, creative prompts, and shared artwork will be exchanged via a private Google Drive folder.
- All workshops are designed for you. Dedicate as much or as little time to the workshop per week as you'd like.
- This workshop is taught in English, but collective.aporia offers subtitles for the workshop videos in over 60 languages. If you have questions about language accommodations, please feel free to email us at [email protected].
Donations:
Collective.aporia believes in paying working artists fairly for their time and work. As a diverse international collective, we also believe strongly in valuing fair exchange—whether that be monetary, energetic, or otherwise.
Because of these beliefs, our workshop donations all begin at a $40 base rate with the option to give additional donation amounts, if you’re able. Seventy percent of the donations go to facilitator, and the remainder goes back into collective.aporia for operational expenses.
Participants also have the option to donate money towards the community scholarship, which provides opportunities to folks from these communities to attend workshops at no cost.
Please check out this page to learn more and/or apply for the scholarship.
We understand that not everyone has the financial means to donate $40. In the spirit of collaboration and exchange, we have developed a work exchange initiative that allows folks to choose what kind of work they would like to trade for free entry into the workshop. Examples of this work include writing blog posts, creating and sharing social media content, editing video subtitles, etc.
Thank you for your generosity!
[Image credit: "paint fragment from Belmont Art Park" by otherthings is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]