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.

Dharushana Muthulingam
What is a liberatory people’s science?

Science and technology are touted as a “benefit” of imperial conquest. The West recasts violent colonization as benevolent “civilizing,” by claiming “superior” knowledge and offering its industry, agriculture, and medicine. On Day 1, we deconstruct these fictions, including: (1) the Great Man Myth of individualist discovery, that obscures what has been collective generational knowledge; (2) the way epistemicide centralizes power; and (3) how institutional science still centers imperial priorities, like military, settler, and industrial dominance, not collective good. On Day 2, we get philosophical– how do we know what we know? We discuss (1) the power and metaphysics of naming, narrative and taxonomy; (2) Aristotle, Robin Kimmerer, and causality; (3) record keeping (lab notebooks, databases, the medical record); (4) how people have bypassed empire to safeguard generational knowledge (secrets hidden in tapestries, dreams, folk songs). On Day 3, we reconstruct and imagine: what will our post-imperial liberationist people’s science look like? We review existing models (Cuban and Palestinian medicine; indigenous ecology; disability movement’s reframing of illness; shadow libraries like sci-hub). Through didactics, discussion, and laboratory, we observe the body and surroundings, play with scientific instruments (microscopes, stethoscopes, fire), learn some first aid, and share our findings. This class aims to show that natural and applied sciences are not far-off, gate-kept institutions. Instead, participants experience science and medicine as a living processes, belonging to all of us, that are ancient tools and multi-generational gifts for survival, creativity, joy, connection, and care.

Lillyanne Pham
Making (and Breaking) Worlds: DIY Game Design

Games shape how we interact with the world—yet most are created by a small, privileged few. Making (and Breaking) Worlds is a hands-on class where students will explore game-making as a tool for storytelling, placekeeping, and imagining new realities.

Over multiple sessions, students will build on different approaches to game design—from narrative-driven mechanics to spatial storytelling and interactive systems. We’ll experiment with both digital and physical game-making tools, focusing on accessibility and creativity rather than technical expertise. Students will be encouraged to play, prototype, remix, and refine their own game concepts as they move through the course.

Sessions may include: Games as storytelling: How do rules shape narratives? Games as placekeeping: Designing games that hold history and memory. Games as political tools: World-building beyond colonial and capitalist frameworks. Playable experiments: Prototyping games with objects, text, movement, or digital tools

Play is central to this class—both as a method of learning and as a means of disrupting rigid structures. Whether you're an artist, organizer, designer, or simply curious, this class offers space to explore, break rules, and create new ones. By the end, students will have a working game prototype, informed by their own perspectives and experiences.

Luin Joy
Sound Playground

Sound Playground is a space for learning how to access play, self-expression, self-acceptance, community connection, and healing through sonic exploration. In this class, we’ll explore sound as a portal and playground where we can witness ourselves and others, lean into curiosity, practice self-acceptance, allow ourselves to take up space sonically, let go of perfectionism, and archive our lived experiences. On this playground, we can try many new things, demystify composition, reformat our definitions of “writing a song”, escape from binary judgments, learn new skills for sonic sculpture, share resources, express ourselves non-verbally, tend to creative blocks, and play with instruments both familiar and totally weird. This class will culminate in us making an experimental, anti-perfect, expansively-defined album using free/accessible software.

Maghan Baptiste
Ride on, on yourself or; How I became a nun

This is a 3-part multidisciplinary workshop on the erotics of self-possession and exploration of how we relate to the task of devotion through art-making.

In our first session, we’ll explore the works of nuns, poets, and visual and movement artists, from César Aira and Bebe Miller to Sor. Juana Ines de la Cruz, Louise Glück, and Pedro Almodovar. In our second session, we will begin to find the shape of our desires and prayers, mining for inspiration through making lists, writing poems, and creating movement. Each session will include a combination of movement scores, writing exercises, and the use of other mixed-media prompts. Through these practices, you will cultivate your own meanings of god, devotion, and nun-like behavior.

Our last session will be a showcase of our findings on self-study, with each student given 3 to 5 minutes to share what they’ve created in reverence to the self. No previous movement experience is necessary. Come curious!

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.

Kaitlyn Griffith
Echoes of the People: Creating Oral Histories & Independent Community Archives

Whose stories get remembered, and whose are erased? Echoes of the People is a hands-on workshop exploring oral history and independent community archiving as tools for preserving histories often left out of dominant narratives. This class will introduce participants to the fundamentals of ethical storytelling, recording oral histories, and building accessible, community-led archives outside of traditional institutions.

Through participatory exercises, we will explore the politics of memory and historical preservation, how to conduct an oral history interview, recording and transcription techniques (with accessible tech options), and creating community-driven archives that center collective ownership.

Whether you’re an artist, activist, historian, or just interested in capturing personal or community stories, this class will offer skills and frameworks for documenting and preserving histories with care. No prior experience is necessary—just curiosity and a desire to engage with memory as a form of resistance and storytelling as a tool for liberation.

Aaliyah OyaSeeke
Sacred Restoration: Reclaiming Our Spirits

This transformative workshop series explores ancestral practices from African diaspora and Celtic traditions to restore our connections with land, community, and spirit. Through hands-on learning and sacred teachings, participants will engage in healing work that addresses historical trauma from Christian colonization, capitalism, and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Each session weaves together educational presentations with experiential practices including altar building, meditation, herbal walks, and sacred movement. The series focuses on three interconnected aspects; Mind, Body, and Spirit.

Sara Lautman
Cultivating A Relationship with Your Unconcious Mind Through Drawing

It's a very common act to sit down at a desk to write a story, or a poem, or a script, and then feel frustrated if nothing exciting comes out. Meanwhile, our minds give us so much for free, all the time, every day and night, that we ignore, willfully or not. By cultivating habits that change the way we pay attention to our thoughts, it's possible to make new connections. Based in principles established by Lynda Barry and Marilyn Frasca, this process-based drawing and writing class prioritizes drawing as a tool to facilitate alternative modes of writing.

Zach Cooper
iPhone as Tape Machine

The smartphone comes equipped with GBs of RAM, an excellent microphone, on-board speakers, native recording and audio-processing technology, and wireless access to the ever-expanding firmament of commercially recorded audio. In this class, we’ll experiment with various methods of composing, improvising, recording, and listening, with the smartphone. How do we live with a device so unequivocally essential and potentially harmful to our bodies and lives? We will work to reestablish a healthier relationship with the smartphone as a unique sound art tool, reimagine the infinite scroll of social media as an inexhaustible sound source, and relay our experiments in a recital. No musical experience required! Smartphones encouraged.