WEEK 1 | May 9-15

SOLIDS:

Solid classes are based in sequential learning, most like a traditional class structure. Students will be encouraged to attend all classes; each class builds on the last.

Zoe Tuck | First there is a mountain / then there is no mountain / then there is

First there is a mountain / then there is no mountain / then there is” is a class on and through the location of the SotA campus. In the first session, “First there is a mountain,” we’ll write through our initial encounters with our immediate environment at the SotA campus: the mountain, its flora and fauna, the buildings, the people around us in. In the second session, “then there is no mountain,” we’ll move away from describing our immediate environment and write through what we are carrying with us: our identities, histories, projects, concerns, etc. Finally, in “then there is,” we’ll work on merging the objectives of the first two classes and returning to our actual experience of reality, which always moves between our immediate environment and our mental life—but maybe now with more meaningful attention to both!

Miles Lamberson | Print & Preserve: Zines, Memory, and Community Storytelling

Zinemaking is a centuries old art form that has barely received its flowers in the “fine art” world, however these DIY publications grant validity and reality to the experiences and memories of marginalized voices everywhere. Anyone can make a zine, and by doing so, they are cementing their truth in the archive of the world. They are creating artifacts. This solid class is an exploration of the magic of the free small press, and the collective responsibility to break out of mainstream requirements of “worthiness” in collections. How can WE decide what is worth keeping? Worth writing down? Worth remembering?

Through intimate and thorough discussion of memory, printmaking, archives, and accessibility, participants will engage in free-expression as a means to freedom from invalidation and isolation. By utilizing collage, basic linocut techniques, and creative writing, we will validate our own experiences by making them real. We will create our own art books about them - our own zines.

Micky | Resonance: Exploring Dissonance and Harmony as a Way of Deep Connection

Through the use of the human voice, this workshop will explore what it somatically feels like to connect internally and externally with sound. We will reclaim our relationships with resonance, dissonance, and harmony, feel how our bodies respond to discomfort and relief, and draw connections between this practice and social relationship building. What does it mean to resonate? How can these different ways of resonating inform the ways we connect with each other? In what ways does connecting to our voice represent the greater responsibility we have to ourselves and our communities? This workshop will challenge participants to let go of prescribed understandings of what singing is and recognize the ancestral power that community circle singing has.

LIQUIDS:

Liquid classes function as a series of workshops, so each session should be able to stand alone. Students are welcome to attend a different Liquid class each day, or to stick with the same one all week.

Zach Cooper  |  Arriving at (experimental) Music

Defining “experimental music” as a music “the outcome of which is not foreseen,” this Liquid Class will explore and practice various experimental composition methods and begin to uncover the myriad ways we can arrive at music. The class will culminate in a recital where participants will have the opportunity to present and realize their work. Topics covered include; alternative notation systems, deep listening, preparing instruments, field recording, and exploiting various playback technologies (turntables, cassette tape, iphone). No musical experience required!!

Gerardo Delgadillo | From the Porch to the Forest

A material methodology class, applying the explored essences of foraged materials from the trails and forest surrounding the Black Mountain Campus. Participants will be encouraged to gather and play with the natural elements they are drawn to, examining what the true inherit character of those materials might be as much as what they lend themselves to be realized. Methods like pattern making, juxtaposing, perspective, or personification with raw elements will be used to amplify our perception, intuition, and awareness. Each class is an experiential sequence informed by historic Black Mountain College classes and contemporary practices. 

Lauri Stallings | Making Kin

The world of Making Kin is dedicated to the research of imaginary culturological Chthulucene. Coined by Donna Haraway in the 1980’s, earth (chthulu) new kind (cene) is an act of making-with. Also referred to as staying with the trouble (as used by John Lewis), this theory envelops the age that’s defined by not being able to think of ourselves as disconnected from the rest of life on earth. 

Making Kin is a multi-sensory class in which we enact thick attention, dynamics, textures and sensations to explore all possibilities of our living being. Participants work closely, immersed in the warmth, sweat, and the shape-shifting of constant spiraling tableaux, and living sculptures. Lubricating the joints to explore all possibilities that your physical being is, just beyond the unseen realms. Vocal material is based on research of a nuanced chorus of breaths into waves of sound, vacillating between harmony, utterances, and other modern extended practices. 

Starting with the premise that all people belong, the class will concern the spiritual significance of the rhythms through which humans live, to expand the connections between presence and practice. The belief here is that with alternative art practices, and a unique embodied vernacular, it is not what you see that is important, but what takes place between people. This class draws on far-reaching interests in body-based practice and collaboration. I am always trying to find the best processes all the time for the highest quality of experience and human decency and care and mutual inspiration.

WEEK 2 | May 16-22

SOLIDS:

Solid classes are based in sequential learning, most like a traditional class structure. Students will be encouraged to attend all classes; each class builds on the last.

KESSWA  |  Space to Inspire

Space to Inspire is an interactive workshop and mini-dive into the afro-futuristic soundscapes of Detroit, MI over time. We will follow an aural and visual curriculum to familiarize us with the terms and aesthetics of Afrofuturism, and will explore the historical legacies of afro-futurist artists that are native to, or influenced by Detroit, MI; the birthplace of Techno.

Next, we will tinker with drum machines and synthesizers to create collaborative soundscapes and exchange somatic feedback on our listening experiences. In an ad hoc studio containing drum machines, synthesizers, speakers, and a computer, we will explore and shape our own basic soundscapes and notice how the audio interacts with our minds and our bodies.  

Tina Carlisi | Liberate the Imagination: Resistance Action Poetry

This class explores resistance poetry as a popular art form within liberation movements. What is poetry’s role in shaping the social imaginary? How is poetry a necessary means for speaking truth to power? Through guided discussions on selected poems and through writing exercises, students will create a fabric kite bearing their short poem or poetic phrase based on a chosen theme or topic. The class will conclude with a collective poetry kite-flying action on campus. The kite symbolizes freedom in various social, cultural, and political contexts. Using the sky as a vast backdrop, Liberate the Imagination! Resistance Action Poetry explores how simple and accessible forms such as poetry and kite-making can be used to manifest our shared dreams and desires.

Dharushana Muthulingam | Beyond the Hero’s Journey: Storytelling to Defy Empire, Build Care, and Imagine Futures

The Hero’s Journey has dominated popular storytelling since first described over 70 years ago. This narrative structure is deeply rooted in (and reinforces) a specific 20th century American ideology, amplifying a heteropatriarchal, imperialist and individualistic Main Character. What is served and lost when storytelling is so narrowly conceived? We will explore the limitation of a narrative that can only cast Heroes, Victims and Villains. We examine the implications for art, power, and material resources. Specifically, we will focus on (1) the clinical encounter in contemporary healthcare, (2) the inability of this narrative structure to make legible care work, repair, maintenance, and (3) imperial propaganda. 

We then look (beyond mere representation) at alternative storytelling techniques and what they can illuminate. Drawing especially from postcolonial, diasporic, and speculative literature, we can access a more radical history that reclaims alternative ways of knowing, being, and sharing. These storytelling methods are a tool to reckon with attempted colonial erasure and can project imaginative futures. We will approach these through lecture, facilitated discussion, games, and writing exercises, co-creating possibilities together. Participants will leave with an expanded toolbox of both cultural criticism and storytelling techniques with which to play.

LIQUIDS:

Liquid classes function as a series of workshops, so each session should be able to stand alone. Students are welcome to attend a different Liquid class each day, or to stick with the same one all week.

Io | Cyborg Security Blanket: A primer to resisting surveillance capitalism

An interactive workshop series on security culture, maintaining digital boundaries, general digital wellness, and safety/privacy practices on the internet. This workshop series is geared toward those subject to repression: activists, workers with criminalized forms of income, and those vulnerable to the surveillance state.

Using an improvisational learning model, students at ALL skill-levels learn practical security skills and somatic techniques tailored to their specific needs or curiosities. Beyond the material itself this workshop centers co-creating a container where we don’t forget our bodies or each other in the room— to bring levity and deep presence when interfacing with tech. A greater understanding of our relationship to technology helps arm us with a felt sense of autonomy and sharper tools for our collective liberation.

Isabella "Isa" Marie Garcia |  Uprooted: Alternative Photography In Ekphrastic Conversation

This class is a series of site-specific alternative photography workshops that speak and reflect on the concept of identity as affected by displacement i.e. through immigration via exile, gentrification in one’s home, relocating to new lands, race and gender-based daily systemic issues, neurodivergence, ableism and disability in the world, etc. to a collective of participants that embody a mixed reality of lived experiences.

Throughout each workshop, participants will learn about the work of contemporary artists who deal directly with the overarching theme of displacement. They will learn about how the variance of displacement's effects has either fueled an artist's entry into their medium(s) or how it is thematically at the core of the work they produce. Participants will also see how contemporary art can displace individuals.

Participants will then directly engage with these topics and respond via alternative photography i.e. pinhole cameras, anthotypes, oil-based photo transfers, life-size cyanotypes, chlorophyll printing—methods that stray from traditional photo-based processes—creating in conversation with them, looking introspectively at their own personal and collective identities and outwards towards their surrounding environments. "Uprooted: Alternative Photography in Ekphrastic Conversation" encourages an active engagement between the facilitator and participants through dialogue-based and creation-centered discussion. Participants will share how displacement affects them and their own particular lived experience, envisioning how to better accommodate communities who are actively affected by displacement. What care matrices can be implemented to disrupt or ease the discomfort felt by body and situational displacement in their respective communities?

Crystal Presley  |  Gestures Only

Gestures are a “non-language” and universal way to communicate in which some cultures/communities are more comfortable using gestures than others. Imagine you are traveling to another country. You do not know the language and the residents of this country do not use English. How will you communicate? This experience is the daily experience of someone who lives with moderate to severe hearing loss. Deaf people are extremely isolated in everyday life because spoken language will always be their second language; they simply can’t hear. 

In the “Gestures Only” class we will indeed do just that; communicate using only gestures. This class will ask you to use eye contact, facial expression, acting, pantomime and body language to share ideas. We will move through several activities in this manner. Gestures are the building blocks for learning a signed language. This class aims to increase your awareness of other modes of communication available to us but that we often overlook and is offered in hopes of bridging the gap and moving towards better relationship with and access for the Deaf community.