radicalimagination

General description
Black feminist activist and scholar Angela Davis defines radical as ‘grasping things at the root’. Imagination we can define as the action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. When we bring those two terms together and place them in our historical moment characterised by social and ecological injustice, we can think of “radical imagination” as the ability to re-imagine futures and worlds in which all living and non-living beings can flourish, paired with a critical analysis of current structures, ideas and institutions that produce the ways in which we encounter and engage with the world. During this thematic session, we will engage with different artistic, academic and activist practices through which we will approach the notion of radical imagination.

Learning objectives
After this thematic session, you will
- understand the concept of radical imagination and related notions from different (disciplinary) perspectives;
- have developed your own radical imagination by re-imagining an existing concept, issue or other object in a speculative manner;
- know how to communicate your ideas in the alternative publishing format of zine-making.

Schedule:
10.00-11.00 Seminar by Vivian Sky Rehberg

11.00-11.15 Break

11.15-12.00 Introduction to SF and workshops

12.00-13.00 Lunch Break

13.00-14.30 Workshops round 1 (parallel sessions - workshops by Amy Pickles and Rae Parnell)

14.30-15.00 Break

15.00-16.30 Workshops round 2

- - adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha (2015). Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from the Social Justice Movement. Chico: AK Press.
........ Read a short story (or several) of your own choosing

- - Watch: interview with adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha (only first 15 min.)

- - Watch: lecture (2019) Max Haiven "The Power and Poverty of the Imagination" (49 mins)

- - Summer Somewhere by Danez Smith : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58645/from-summer-somewhere

- - Safe Sex Comic Interview with Tina Horne: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/safe-sex-dystopian-sex-thriller-comic-908949/

- - Flash Forward - Body Switcheroo : https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2019/06/04/bodies-switcheroo/

- - An article on the Puma Currency in the North District of Seville
https://www.nonviolence.wri-irg.org/en/resources/2019/puma-social-currency-currency-social-and-economic-change

- - Kimberly Jones gives a powerful, eloquent speech that needs to be heard by everyone, she explains in detail why this is happening (racism across 450 years) and the difference between protesting, rioting and looting in 2020. End Racism Now!
There is a transcript here - https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/kimberly-latrice-jones-blm-video-speech-transcript
and the video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llci8MVh8J4

- - 我們相遇之處 Where We Meet, a video about Kai Fong Pai Dong Market Stall in Hong Kong
https://vimeo.com/207893121

- - Ryan Presley talks about Blood Money Currency Exchange Terminal
the artist is interviewed here and you can see images of his work -
https://www.artandaustralia.com/online/discussions/blood-money-ryan-presley-and-tess-maunder-conversation

read and watch in advance for Tamara and Vivian (mandatory):

Summer, Somewhere -
Radical imagination and zine making

Workshop by Rae Parnell

Zines (independently published magazines) are fun, easy, and low stress ways to share your thoughts and passions with others. A zine can be made up of illustrations, poetry, collages, photos, essays, really anything!

In this workshop, we’ll be looking at how artists and creatives use their experiences, desires, and curiosities to imagine alternative futures. Then, we will build and dream our own imaginations and futures through zine making! Submissions will go into a collective zine that will be shared.

Participants may choose how they would like to submit to the zine. You can work with photo editing websites and apps, or you can work exclusively with paper and materials you have at home. You can play with make up, write a fictional scientific report, write essays and poetry, release an interview from the future…. The choice is yours!

Before the workshop consider how you would like to work and bring the appropriate materials. You will need to email me some type of submission (JPEG, PDF, document, etc) that will be included in the zine.
What to bring/prepare:

Bring whatever material you would like to work with! If you would like for your submission to look more like traditional zine, please gather some paper, old magazines, markers/pens, and scissors.

Rae Parnell is an artist, educator, zinester, and voguer based in the Hague, NL. He comes from a social justice background, and does community building through workshop facilitation and uses the process of zine-making to archive queer and trans communities of color. His past projects have focused on a range of topics, including anti-racist organizing, queer and trans knowledge distribution, and embodied pleasure. Currently, he is an event programmer at WORM Rotterdam.

Amy Pickles is an artist and loosely formed educator. She is learning how educational and artistic processes can collapse into each other, and feed each other, to make a research-based performative practice. Since 2018 she has co-run Performance Lab with Clara J:son Borg and collectively programmes monthly reading events in Varia, Rotterdam.

Workshop by Amy Pickles

We will play a game called Creative Strategies [After] to alter Financialisation. This game borrows its name from Max Haiven’s subtitle for his book Art after Money, Money after Art. It will lead us through financial conundrums and alternative economies as we play in teams of recently graduated, precarious cultural workers living in rented city accommodation. Learning about modes of redistribution and collective work we will think together about how, in the words of Max Haiven who we value and what we value could be radically changed.

The game will take place on both video call and collective writing tools.