Culture Writing: Textures of Things, Thresholds, and Bodies

About

Together with the participants, the workshop aims to develop the ability to approach cultural phenomena through writing techniques. In the seminar, we will explore and develop methods such as the development of everyday cultural sensitivity, observation techniques of phenomena in a spatial everyday culture, and tools of a text-practical practice.

Inspired by the Berlin Summer University of the Arts 2022’s themes, we will look at material (things), transgressional (thresholds), and somatic (bodies) phenomena. In an experimental setup, we aim to encourage participants to explore methods and meanings of new artistic, creative, and textual expression and thereby gain inspiration to create textual and visual projects around thinging, transgressing, and bodying.

As an additional option, the participants possibly could be invited to publish their texts within the context of the 7-volume book series “texturen”, which the two lecturers are co-editors of. This, of course, is only optional and could be a nice way to create some “thing”, a “body” of work as a mutual workshop result.

This course is suitable for people with a theoretical, design, or artistic background in media, design, communication, fine arts, architecture, dance, and for anyone who is curious about the phenomenological potentials of everyday culture and experimental writing techniques.

SCHEDULE

Day I – Intro

Introduction concerning methods, techniques and tools of cultural analysis
Getting to know each other & expectations; First session of culture writing

Day II – Things
On day two, we deal with things in the widest sense and shift the perspective on to a process-oriented understanding of material culture. How do things become meaningful; how do they transform themselves and others? Using the methodological experiment of creating thing collections, we will engage with the creative energy that lies within things and develop textual and/or visual translations of thinging.

Day III – Thresholds
On day three, the focus will be on different concepts of transgressions. We will stroll through imaginations of new ways, transgression and pathfinding; crossovers, in-betweening, and leaving behind. We will explore imagined worlds as well as the existing one by a strollological approach and get ourselves inspired to create different forms of artistic projects.

Day IV – Bodies
On day four, we will discuss how we can rethink the entity body as a verb. The body as a constant becoming, as a process, in dialogue with its social, political, emotional, economic environment. We will engage with the methodological experiment of Bodywriting and thereby approach bodying in an unusual way.

Day V – Recap
Presentation of workshop results; Recap of (un-)fulfilled expectations and how we could go further

EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS

Please bring a laptop.

Course leader

Konstantin Haensch, Johanna Kirschbauer

Fee info