WEEK 1: May 1 - May 7

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.

Eboshi Ramesh: Articulating Authenticity
In Articulating Authenticity we will explore our understanding of authenticity in art and culture, why it is important and how we can identify and utilize it in our work. In this class we will discuss important themes pertaining to writing and creating in relation to representing our identities, the identities of our communities, or of researched subjects and/or communities that we do not have membership to. This will include analysing verisimilitude and who we are allowed to speak about and create work regarding. We will look at subjects such as the license of authority, intentions and obligations, and the nature of diversity in authenticity. Articulating Authenticity will deliberate the nature of criticism and out utilization of it through varying lenses and discuss the contemporary cultural contexts of integrity to personal history, the curse of “corniness”, and probing “wokeness”.

Owen FitzGerald: Meaningful Noise. Listen to the Symbols!
We’re creating coded sound sculptures and abstract sonic collages; we’re playing with sine wave semiotics; we’re making meaningful noise music. Let’s investigate examples of symbolic sound that are natural and narrative. Let’s turn objects into envelopes that can hold whatever meaning we place into them and teach those objects to sing. Let’s build little rituals that let us breathe meaning into noise.

Kate Grube: Parade Studies
What makes a parade a parade? How can we use the elements of one to stage processionals of any size, with anything, for any reason at all?

Adam Void: Viral: Art, Philosophy, Performance, Mutations, Death.
A dive into the concept of the virus; replication, distribution, viability, phenomenology, and the host. Concepts illustrated through a variety of materials, conversations, and experiences.

The concept of the virus is applied to visual art, its distribution, and reception. Looking at ‘The Viral’ in the era of digital communication, the pandemic, and mediated experience. This class aims at a better understanding so we can spread important messaged in oversaturated time.

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.

Suzi Sadler: Ethical Production : Creating Together in a More Sustainable and Intentional Way
(Also week 2)
Through exercises and group discussion, we will examine and consider more intentional practices when producing films, theatre, and other art made through collaborative groups. So often, these groups are temporary communities that have a painful lack of accountability and often foster toxic, unchecked practices when intentions are not set. I hope we can work together to develop tools and references needed to foster safer and fairer spaces. The end goal is for us to produce a handbook / working document that will be free on the internet for anyone to use when entering a group project or production. While discussion will be an important part of the workshop, there will be an exercise each class which will expand on the day’s topic or put it into practice. The workshops will culminate with the enactment of these discussed methods and we will take part in an abbreviated production setting that will be decided by interested participants (a music video, short film, one act play, dance performance, reading, presentation, etc.). In this setting we can test our intentions and reflect on how they worked.

Alexander Chaparro: Private Property is Theft
Private property is theft.

Great artists steal.

For decades artists have been selling their framed signatures as a stunt, and an edition of three bananas duct taped to a wall just sold for $120,000.

The predominant narrative about how artists might survive and sustain a creative practice in this competitive society, is that they should participate in industry (the studio/office), ownership (authorship/copy-right), and market (gallery/elitist institution). This individualistic model excludes and repels, and evermore we are seeing communities of artists creating independent networks of support and self-sustainability, which rely on collaboration and sharing of resources, rather than competition and exclusion. This class will explore the work of collective projects that self organize to create spaces of exhibition, print shops, community supported arts funds, art CSA’s, mutual-aid projects, free schools, radio stations, open - edition publications, free software, facilitation guides, libraries, and other ways of supporting creative expression as a public good, and not only as a commodity.

Jen Swegan: Open Weaving
This is an open studio / freeform weaving workshop. We will each weave our own creations (or collab) on simple lap looms using recycled waste materials (think plastic bags, reclaimed fabric, old wires) as our fibers. Instructions will be offered as needed, but experimenting and improvising are strongly encouraged. All materials will be provided, but you’re welcome to bring your own as well. You’re invited to come just for a day and weave something small or stick around all week and weave as much as you want.

lo bil: Post Clown and the Anti-Objective
Use your body as a worlding device. We make physical proposals to self-source deeper images and desires for your formless form art practice of stars. Spin yourself into the portal of unrepeatable moments in the future history. We will find ourselves moving weirdly in response to the strangeness of the world. We will create external confusion in order to shake the inner layers of your all-unknowing clown gods. Nownevernottogetto where time falls apart and i find you in a wonder puddle laughing but we have never been here before.

Fahad AlSuwaidi: Kufic Script; Meaningful Enigmas
Kufic script is an arabic style of calligraphy mainly dealing with geometry and flora design. We will use such script to create enigmatic drawings that only we can read together.

Week 2: May 8 - may 14

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.

Celia Peters: Serious Screenwriting Basics
This screenwriting workshop gives students a foundation in the craft of writing for the screen. Starting with the basics of storytelling, the course builds on this foundation to establish both the technical and creative aspects of screenwriting, including character development. The course includes in-class writing exercises, group discussion and homework. Using these building blocks, as well as examples from scripts and films, students will create the foundations of their own story, completing a three-act script outline and character breakdown that they can use to write a screenplay, along with developing a protagonist/hero, antagonist/villain, and two-three supporting characters.

Zoe Tuck: Book Magic
In this class, we will take as a given that the magical systems outlined in children’s chapter books and other fantastic literature all contains a grain of truth. Through reading and practice, we will investigate the corollary possibility that we could write our own magical systems into being.

Nick Mcmillan and Alex Santilli: The Medicine of Improvisation
We will curate an environment to channel our emotions, our pasts, our love, our fear, our struggle with surviving in this modern world, and transmuting it into clarity, joy, meditation, and reflection by using the instrument of human creative faculty.

Sarah Myers: Pleasure Food
Cakes are for birthdays and celebrations, centerpieces that signify joy and gathering. They are visual, tactile, olfactory, and edible experience. Students will explore cake as an impermanent edible sculpture that gathers community for a collective pleasure experience. In creating their cakes they will learn how to naturally dye with accessible/edible fruits and veggies. They will gain an introductory knowledge of vegan and gluten free baking to make our collective experience as inclusive as possible. They will sculpt, stack, carve, dye, and manipulate their creations into temporary edible sculptures that our entire community will then eat!

LIQUIDS:

Suzi Sadler: Ethical Production : Creating Together in a More Sustainable and Intentional Way
(Also week 1)
Through exercises and group discussion, we will examine and consider more intentional practices when producing films, theatre, and other art made through collaborative groups. So often, these groups are temporary communities that have a painful lack of accountability and often foster toxic, unchecked practices when intentions are not set. I hope we can work together to develop tools and references needed to foster safer and fairer spaces. The end goal is for us to produce a handbook / working document that will be free on the internet for anyone to use when entering a group project or production. While discussion will be an important part of the workshop, there will be an exercise each class which will expand on the day’s topic or put it into practice. The workshops will culminate with the enactment of these discussed methods and we will take part in an abbreviated production setting that will be decided by interested participants (a music video, short film, one act play, dance performance, reading, presentation, etc.). In this setting we can test our intentions and reflect on how they worked.

SeeVa Dawne + John Beckmann: Faces of the Sun: Solar Printing in an Octagonal Display
(also week 3)
In this class we will be constructing a structure that consists of removable roof panels for sun printing. Using wood cutting techniques and other tools we will create a design in each panel to let light into a closed interior space. This will create an abstracted effect in the interior room that will be used to create large-scale cyanotype prints on fabric and paper. The effect in the room will change throughout the day leaving endless possibilities for printing. The display will also exist as an environment for others not in the class to experience, play, and spend time inside. Completed cyanotype prints will have the possibility to be hung inside the display creating a temporary exhibition space.

Hannah Katz: Drawing as Listening
Through collaborative drawing, we will explore different modes of communicating and listening, in groups small and large. Through a variety of exercises we will expand our ideas of visual communication and self-expression. How can we listen without words? Through shared ritual and improvisational play, we will create a shared visual language and forge community bonds.

Aya Razzaz + Kasey Kinsella: BOXXlandia
BOXX mamas Aya and Kasey met during an experimental performance residency in 2019 that ignited an embodied research process around comfort and discomfort, belonging and vulnerability, individual and collective care. As strangers, they made intimate dances in uncomfortable spaces, bodies entwined, that fostered rootedness and a powerful bond. Eventually, a magical wooden BOXX would become the site of their work. Inside the BOXX they began offering surprise sensory and somatic gifts to one another, designed around the receiver’s expressed needs and desires. This liquid class will be a communal iteration of BOXX research, where we will engage in intentional acts of reflecting, sharing, giving, and receiving across the SotA campus that will lead to building generative relational habits.

Yasmin Reshamwala: Synthetic Synesthesia
Research has shown that 4% of the population has Synesthesia. What about the rest of us? In this course we will tap into how senses overlap through exploration of the intersection of site and sound. We will discover aspects of the voice as an instrument via breathing techniques, tonal experimentation, and rhythm exercises which will then be connected to drawing techniques. How cantonal changes be shown visually? What does a scream look like on paper? How many colors is a whisper? This class will culminate with a collaborative drawing which will then be interpreted into an experimental vocal composition. No prior music experience necessary!

Week 3: May 15 - May 21

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.

Maria Judice: Screenwriting Rooted in Decolonization and Abstract Thinking
A class on storytelling with a political center. A class on storytelling, character, and writing rooting in decolonization frameworks. Writing stories for screens that develop a new/authentic film grammar based in ancestral mythologies, languages, and understanding of struggles of liberation. We will explore non-linear storytelling, abstract thinking techniques, oral traditions, complex organism development, radical writers, diasporic writers, and still mind practices. We will use the Principles of Good Story. Participants are guided through developing a personal process of writing to develop a short work for publication, release or production.

Julian Prince Dash: Open Source Sewing from Seed to Retail
Students will understand how clothing comes to fruition via the sewing machine and how it correlates to nature, consumerism and society at large. Basic and complex concepts such as design, constructions and finishing.

Eliah Eason + Tula Honkala: Con Artist
Is there a part of you that secretly fantasizes about starring in movies or fronting a punk band, but your inner critic reminds you that you’re not talented enough or too old to start? Do you talk yourself out of applying for jobs you feel under qualified for? Do you have hidden, guilty pleasures? This class is about recovering our shadow selves. We will draw from our own personal inventories, the Artist Way, somatic healing, imposter syndrome, cheat sheets, the anti-clown/jester archetype, embodies voices and stream-of-consciousness exercises. Together, we will articulate ways to channel the most empowered, conniving versions of ourselves-using the class as our hype-man. We will jump straight into the DIY mentality, Armchair Expert style and conjure up ways to lie, cheat, and steal inside the matrix. Fake it ‘til you make it!

Serena Hocharoen: Bookbinding World
Books are portable, durable, and universal objects that travel with us through very public and historical realms as well as personal and intimate ones. As a widely accepted traditional form of reflection and information dissemination, what can we learn from making our own books today?

This is a class focused on the book as a site for creative experimentation, self-determined archives, and personal narratives. Students will learn basic bookbinding techniques and be able to bind their own blank sketchbooks and journals, as well as explore making zines, artist books, and other experimental book structures.

LIQUIDS:

Marion Horowitz: Easy Puppet-Making for Fun & Magic
In this series of workshops, participants will make hand-sewn puppets using different techniques and styles. We will make our own puppets, play with them, and explore what’s created (or invited in) when a human and a puppet get together. This workshop is suited to all skill levels.

Danny Soto: FLOW STATE: Synchronize your three brains with freestyle rap
Everyone can flow. People think that to freestyle they have to know a million rhymes. This is not true. Rhyming is a byproduct of speaking from your heart to a rhythm. When our head, heart, and gut don’t communicate, things tend to get forced. Forced dancing, forced jokes, forced relationships…blaaaah. There’s a moment of fear in improv of not knowing what will come next. So we try to fill the space with cheap tricks. By learning to listen deeply to the space you will be filled with ideas and you’ll make connections you never thought possible.

Katie Obeda: Reimagining Sexuality for Us
An interdisciplinary course in studies of sexuality. Most of us have a good story about how sex ed in public school failed us. We don’t understand what real safety looks like. So many of us can’t communicate our desires to ourselves, much less others. A class for understanding queer, disabled, decolonized, othered, traumatized sexuality, for ourselves. This class is part instruction, but will focus mainly on facilitation between ourselves and each other. What can sexuality be outside a corporeal form? What does decolonized sexuality look like? How can I feel connected to my body after trauma? What is pleasure activism? Why is it important to feel good? In what ways is pleasure political? What are the intersections of sexuality and justice? What do we want to archive in our bodies? These are some of the foundational questions that will be asked and worked from. The class will use methods of harm-reductive, non-judgmental, and focus on providing the best information

SeeVa Dawne + John Beckman: Faces of the Sun: Solar Printing in an Octagonal Display
(also week 2)
In this class we will be constructing an octagonal structure that consists of removable roof panels for sun printing. Using wood cutting techniques and other tools we will create a design in each panel to let light into a closed interior space. This will create an abstracted effect in the interior room that will be used to create large-scale cyanotype prints on fabric and paper. The effect in the room will change throughout the day leaving endless possibilities for printing. The display will also exist as an environment for others not in the class to experience, play, and spend time inside. Completed cyanotype prints will have the possibility to be hung inside the display creating a temporary exhibition space.

Eleanora Edreva: Introduction to Olfactory Experiencing
This class will communicate the importance of using our noses and sense of smell as tools, and offer several different entry points for doing so. Through playing smell games, building an alphabet of scents, and learning traditional and contemporary methods of scent extraction; we will collectively sharpen our noses and think more about the historical and cultural reasons why smell isn’t a primary sense we rely on for navigating our worlds.