Working with feminist scholar Karen Barad’s notion that "theories are living and breathing reconfigurations of the world", this experimental workshop will be part reading group and part darkroom play, thinking through ideas of touch and the body. Starting with their text “On Touching - The Inhuman That Therefore I Am”, participants will collaboratively map and embody the ideas put forward in the essay through discussion, drawing, and object sharing. Prioritizing the affective dimension of knowledge making practices, this workshop will also involve darkroom play using the materials generated from the discussion and activity, and think about mis-use in the darkroom, mixing up processes and methods in an uncharted, intuitive manner. This conceptual workshop is decidedly non-goal oriented and non-technical, to emphasize the value of asking questions and experimentation through collaborative activity. Together with Barad, we will engage the indeterminacies of touch as they relate to identity and formations of self and other.
Participants are asked to read the text in advance, as well as bring in an object(s) of personal relevance to work with.
karen-barad-on-touchingthe-inhuman-that-therefore-i-am.pdf
This workshop is at capacity. Please e-mail lfatemi@gallery44.org to be added to the waitlist.
Laurie Kang (b. 1985, Toronto) works in photography, sculpture, installation, and video. Kang has exhibited internationally at Topless, New York; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Cooper Cole, 8-11, The Loon, and Franz Kaka, Toronto; L’inconnue, Montreal; Carl Louie, London; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw, Poland; Raster Gallery, Warsaw; Camera Austria, Graz, Austria; and Tag Team, Bergen, Norway. She was recently artist in residence at Tag Team; Rupert, Vilnius; The Banff Centre, Alberta; and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn. Kang lives and works in Toronto and holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.