September Workshop: Creating (from) Home w/ Shawnie Hamer
How do you define home? What does it mean to create (from) home? Is it a sensation, a memory, a space for art, an origin story? James Baldwin wrote in Giovanni’s Room, “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” In this workshop, we will work together to explore this condition. We will collaboratively create (from) home, and then rip it open again, by tending to the ways that homes are made, in the world and the body, for better or for worse, for ourselves and our communities.
Over the course of the month, we will examine and expand the definition of ‘home,’ thinking specifically about how these definitions impact creativity, the artist, and the artist’s community. We will work with memory, space, time, fluidity, and social justice work to consider how homes are constructed, and how, in turn, things or people are left out of those homes. We will discuss ways that we as artists can attempt to build homes, both literally and figuratively, within our work. Lastly, we will meditate on the ways that homes have built us—how we are shaped by the people and places we grow within.
Goals: It is my goal that every participant will walk away from this workshop with:
- A foundational understanding of how to engage with, and create within, their own sensation of home.
- An exploration and understanding of what is needed to be fed by their homes.
- An authentic curiosity about how to expand ideas of home to be inclusive to people different than themselves.
Facilitator Bio: Shawnie Hamer was born in the heat & dust of Bakersfield, CA. Her first book, the stove is off at home (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) is an experimental art & poetry book curated through a community ritual which focused on the identification & exorcism of trauma. Hamer is the founder of collective.aporia, & a co-conspirator of the off.collective. Her poetry can be found in publications such as South Broadway Ghost Society, Bombay Gin, Tooth n Nail: practical advice from and for the everywoman, The Birds We Piled Loosely, SWP Guerrilla Lit Mag, & Tiny Spoon Lit Mag. She is currently living & creating in France.
Logistics:
- Workshops consist of one video per week for each week in the month. Videos are typically 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].
[Original images: Rodolfo Clix and Steve Johnson | collage by Shawnie Hamer]