WORKSHOP SERIES
multi-disciplinary virtual gatherings for writers, artists, designers, and researchers who want a regular space to tend to their creative + intellectual practice— in community.
1x per month, every last saturday
2.5h per session, live on Zoom
billed monthly | cancel anytime, no questions asked
w.1.6 an ethic of sand
date: june 27th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
understanding sand is not dissimilar to the experience of trying to tightly hold it in our hands; the stronger our grasp and certainties about it, the more it slips through our fingers. sand is matter that challenges and erodes the social constructions and scaffolding with which design(ing) often manifests, and is predicated on. in this workshop, we will sit with the uncertainty + malleability that sand challenges us to think through, opening up questions about how to collaborate instead of “use” materials in a creative practice.
thinking-with: Ariella Azoulay, Stacy Alaimo, Robert Macfarlane, Donna Haraway, William Cronon
w.1.7 spiralism
date: july 25th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
Spirialism questions the order of things. the Haitian phenomena and literary movement emerged during the 1960s Duvalier regime, when political oppression and chaos re-invented writers’ conceptualizations of time, meaning, and relations. these ontologies + epistemologies challenge our assumptions around storytelling arcs– how history gets recorded, and how stories can open us to non-logical ways of knowing. we will situate this genre-agnostic movement within the contemporary political landscape, and engage in a Spiralist writing workshop together.
thinking-with: Frankétienne, Kaiama L. Glover
w.1.8 archipelagic thinking
date: august 29th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
the island is not isolated— it is always in creative exchange with other islands, which represent other cultures, languages, and ways of being. first conceived by Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, archipelagic thinking calls forth a Caribbean ontological impulse– to consider the scattered + diffracted nature of islands/sea in relation to each other. in this workshop, we will read sections from “The Black Beach”, a chapter from Glissant’s Poetics of Relations, where a singular sand-seascape inspires reflections on the fate(s) of Caribbean prosperity.
thinking-with: Édouard Glissant, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, Wifredo Lam
frequently asked questions
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yes! subscribe any time and your first session is the next one on the calendar. you won't start from the beginning, but each workshop is designed to be entered independently. no prior sessions are required, and you won't feel lost.
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every session is recorded and the replay is shared with subscribers within 24h. you'll never lose access to a session you paid for, even if you couldn't attend live.
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no. the workshops are designed for lifetime learners, writers, artists, researchers, designers, facilitators, and anyone who desires to deepen their critical thinking skills. come curious.
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sessions meet at 18:00 CET | 12PM EST | 9AM PST every last saturday of the month. if your time zone makes live attendance difficult, the replay is always available within 24h.
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the workshops are a monthly drop-in series. low commitment, CHF 23/month, cancel anytime. THE RADICAL WRITER is a 13-week intensive reading/writing course with a cohort, curriculum, workbooks, and guided feedback. think of the workshops as a way to experience the living room studio ethos before committing to the full course, or as an ongoing practice alongside it.
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cancel at any time from your Squarespace account. no email needed, no questions asked. your access continues until the end of the current billing period.
what’s included
⟡ monthly workshops, with seminar-style teachings + writing prompts
⟡ WhatsApp community chat to build relations + share resources
⟡ workshop board with core + supplemental research materials
our next workshop is: w.1.6 an ethic of sand
saturday, june 27th at 18:00 CET | 12PM EST | 9AM PST
previous workshops
w.1.5 making living room
date: may 30th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
from the familiar to the abstract, the concept of ‘living room’ has long traversed cultural + linguistic boundaries. inspired by Ruth Asawa’s sculpting practice, June Jordan’s poetry + photography after visiting Lebanon, and Henrike Naumann’s history-furniture installations, we will consider the living room as a site of geo-political entanglements. our primary lens of analysis for this workshop will be the medium of photography, and participants will be invited to make prototypes from speculative prompts. how does the domestic move within + beyond the home?
thinking-with: June Jordan, Ruth Asawa, Henrike Naumann
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w.1.4 scaffolding-of-mind
date: april 25th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
scaffolding-of-mind is an awareness framework that softens us into a more relational act of reading, writing, and speculative making. in this workshop, we will think-with the worldmaking practices of June Jordan + James Baldwin, with a close reading of Harlem as a site for re-designing temporal/spatial relations. through the fields of architecture, urban planning, and fiction writing, we will thread the structural connections between our psyches and the built environments that shape us + are shaped by us.
thinking-with: James Baldwin, June Jordan
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w.1.3 research(ing) as curiosity
date: march 28th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
for intellectual wanderers interested in the art + spirit of research, where intuition, methodology, and practice intersect to create new pathways for thought-full storytelling. we will emphasize transdisciplinary strategies for creative and independent scholarly work, with a focus on citational politics as a restorative practice. how can research become a form of listening, activated through sensing, reading, and writing? how can research restore our forgotten/erased intellectual lineages?
thinking-with: Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Sara Ahmed, Max Liboiron, Ahmad Greene-Hayes, errantry media lab
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w.1.2 rituals of technology
date: february 28th at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
how do we intentionally dialogue with technologies? this session will investigate historical + contemporary case studies of technological inventions that have re-shaped arts, ethics, senses, and psyches. we will explore the ‘viscosity’ of particular technologies and their immeasurable + infinitely tentacular impacts on our worlds. what a typewriter is to poetry; what the internet is to knowledge; what celluloid is to filmmaking.
thinking-with: Robert Duncan, Timothy Morton, Ana Vaz, Donna Haraway
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w.1.1 archival materialisms
date: january 31st at 18:00 CET | duration: 2.5 hours
discover how to deepen your creative practice through the material reading of archival research, a process that holds the ability to challenge our assumptions around knowledge and its production. focusing on archival literacy beyond the academic scope, we will introduce conceptual frameworks for approaching the future-past-present through material, memory, and media. how do we read archives with a heightened perception of their material being(s)?
thinking-with: Saidiya Hartman, June Jordan, Etel Adnan
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