A World in Fragments, a collaging workshop with Leniqueca Welcome

Friday, February 13, 12:30–2:30pm  | Taft Research Center | Register 

We will explore collaging as a poet(h)ical visual research practice. Like the poem, the collage breaks open both the normative form and narrative logic of the realist image, instead building an abstract world from fragments rich with multiple meanings and feelings. Collaging is particularly useful in anthropological research, allowing the composer to render the beauty, pain, complexity, and relationality of encountered life without presenting a transparent linear picture of a person that could be simply consumed by audiences. Mimicking Welcome’s ethnographic method, participants will be invited to engage in a short life story listening exercise, after which they will create their own paper collage that reflects their engagement and embraces ambiguity and excess. Space is limited and registration required. All materials provided. 

Sonic Poetics, a zine workshop with Audra Wolowiec

Friday, February 13, 3–5pm  | Taft Research Center| Register

In this workshop we will create sound scores and visual poems by mining the writing of others. Scores invite us to read and listen in new ways. Scores can be read quietly, imagined, or performed. Score comes from old Norse skor, to make an incision, from the root sker, to cut. Through processes of errant editing and close reading, we will locate undercurrents of sound in the spirit of Maggie Nelson’s “Writing With, From, and For Others” and Trinh T. Min-ha’s concept of “speaking nearby.” Examples of sound scores and visual poems will be introduced through Audra's own work and process, and we will learn how to make a simple folded zine through collage and photocopy techniques. Materials will be provided, no previous knowledge needed. You are welcome to bring a book or writing to work with.

What's the Point? a faculty media training workshop with Chris Hoff & Sam Harnett

For more than 20 years, Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett have been working to translate academic work into media: first as reporters and producers for public radio, and now as independent audio producers. As Sam and Chris visit universities to perform their live audio show, they’re meeting with faculty to help them better communicate their work to the academic community, their administrations, media organizations, and the general public. In this 2-hour, hands-on session they will workshop media strategies tailored to faculty's research, area of expertise, and professional goals.

Interwoven Spaces: Time, Pattern, and Care, a two-day community printing workshop with Eric Von Haynes and Julia Warner 

Day 1: Friday, February 27, 2–4pm | DAAP Printmaking Lab, 6335 Aronoff | Register
Day 2: Saturday, February 28, 10am–1:30pm | Cereal Box, 1645 Blue Rock Street, Studio 406, Northside | Register

In this two-day workshop, drawing from readings such as “Three Key Elements of Mutual Aid,” participants will interpret a shared space and collaboratively build a layered artwork that embodies a collective agreement and shared purpose. Participants will use patterns, collage, text, and visual marks to create a collaborative wall reflecting Community Care and Collective Power. Each participant will produce a 10×10-inch segment that contributes to a unified grid, collectively forming a wall-scale composition. This workshop emphasizes process as much as outcome, encouraging experimentation, iteration, and collaborative response. Day One focuses on developing and refining designs, while Day Two is dedicated to printing, overprinting, and assembling the final collaborative wall display. Space is limited and registration required. All materials provided. 

Writing to Images, a writing workshop with Tina Campt 

In her workshop, Campt will engage participants in her practice of “writing to images” and the ways in which correspondence can be a generative model for research and writing on art, visual culture and much more.

Openings, Audience, and the Everyday, a writing workshop with Sarah Mesle 

Wednesday, March 11, 4–6pm | Taft Research Center | Register

This workshop invites participants to share and learn strategies for one of writing’s ongoing challenges: starting. It will take up the joint problems of first finding the time (and motivation, and conviction) to start writing, and then, once we’ve done so, styling the words on the page so they’ll reach the audiences we care about. This workshop will draw on Sarah Mesle’s experiences as a writer, editor, and professor of writing to give practical advice for writers and teachers. Participants are invited to bring a notebook, a calendar, a laptop if they’d like, and a digital version of an opening paragraph(s)—no more than 250 words— of a piece of writing they’re working on, or that they admire, for our collective discussion.

Producing Single-Sheet Publications

In our social media-inundated age, printed zines remain a powerful, tactile, inexpensive, and enduring alternative for sharing images, ideas, drawings and writings. Creating zines gives authors an opportunity to work alone or with others to explore a limitless range of subjects while employing a variety of skills. These small publications can be printed and displayed, traded, shared, or left for others to find. In this workshop with Marc Fischer we'll start by looking at zine models that use the most elemental format - a single flat or folded sheet of paper. Working in groups or solo, we will generate content, design, and print our own zines on a Risograph and share them at the end. Bring your ideas or writings that you’d like to see turned into printed zines. The workshop will last for 3 1/2 hours with a short break for lunch. 

How to Assemble a Life

Thursday, September 18, 2–3:30pm | Taft Research Center

Join Taft Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Assistant Fatemeh Rezaei and Taft Director Stephanie Sadre-Orafai for a journaling and journal-making workshop inspired by Amitava Kumar’s The Yellow Book: A Traveller’s Diary (2023). We will discuss the relationship between marking time and making marks, or how a daily writing and reflection practice can invigorate our creative and scholarly endeavors. Participants will learn to make a concertina journal and collectively generate a list of prompts to use in their new hand-made accordion-style sketchbook/diary. Free and open to the public, materials provided. While supplies last, participants will receive a copy of Amitava Kumar’s My Beloved Life.