June 2021: Treasures for the Shelf: Framing the Personal Universe w/ Drew Dean
“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” -- Susan Sontag
In these days of uncertainty, our sense of time and reality has morphed into now all-too-familiar phrasings: “the longest March ever”, “last winter ten years ago”, “the same day (x) months later”, and so on. Looking back on anything before this year can sometimes feel like peering into an alternate dimension; where folks could actually crowd together, embrace without worry, and sanitizer wasn’t comparable to gold. Pictures from this time will likely go without a time signature, as the masks are evidence enough.
This workshop will attempt to foster subversive artifacts to this bleak narrative, constructed of pauses great and small throughout our isolated days. We will write/create/enact through and around pictures and videos, in order to tie together a glimpse of contentment. At its simplest, we will be conducting photo and video documentation. In reality, we will orchestrate soundscapes, extract necessary tranquility, and maybe even conjure up some fantastic writing while we’re at it.
In this workshop, we will:
- record, document, preserve, and treasure the infinite(simal) moments
- craft personal galleries of the observed
- ponder what it means to reflect, respond, and remember
- welcome alternatives and question “negative” space
Materials:
- camera and basic editing software (phone will work, but if you have a film or DSLR camera, could lend for some interesting detours)
- collection of reflective and transparent objects
- drawing utensils
- Recommended: good walking shoes, proper outer layers, decent speakers
- Any other art mediums you'd like to work with.
Bio:
Drew Dean (MFA) is an experimental poet and cinephile who suspends his disbelief as often as he can, or in Barabara Dilley’s words: “Let a soft gaze roam around in the space without naming.” In both his work and instruction, he seeks out the obscure, the double-takes, and the dialogues within. He wears a specific sweater for cloud-gazing.
Logistics:
- This workshop runs from June 1, 2021 - June 30, 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: "housewife" by narghee-la is licensed under CC BY 2.0]
