In this interdisciplinary workshop we will think through how our environments, established forms, cultural norms, etc. influence our experience--and production--of creative works. Using the blueprints of innovative, race-critical artists and poets such as Renee Gladman, Bhanu Kapil, Olalekan Jeyifous and others, we will discuss the possibilities and limitations of form to both reflect the world around us and re-build it. We will then apply a speculative lens to our own creative process; we will treat the creative process as a world-building process, and tease out new ways of inhabiting forms that are feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, [insert your vision of utopia here]. 

Goals:

Materials: This is an interdisciplinary and multi-modal workshop. Participants will need access to materials of their choice in order to respond to the creative prompts (paint, clay, pen and paper, etc). 

I understand that words such as “Diversity” and “Inclusion” are irreparably institutionalized; they index empty promises, haphazard trainings that oftentimes traumatize folx who belong to marginalized communities, and an overinvestment in numbers, representation, and “brochure images.” They are words that have been packaged and pushed by the very institutions that perpetuate harm in order to save face and bolster their reputation. As an educator, I am not invested in liberal multiculturalism. We are not reading and discussing the work of brown people to check a box and pat ourselves on the back. We are going to delve deeper, adopt a decolonial framework, and support each other through the challenging task of imagining ways of being outside of what we have been made to believe is normal, inevitable, and okay--because it’s not, actually, okay.