HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE ART GALLERY
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17, 6.30 – 9PM
* Workshop for Five College students with limited capacity: please register by emailing gallery@hampshire.edu
In this writing workshop, participants will view and interpret a self-selected image from Pablo Delano’s installation The Museum of the Old Colony. The intention of the workshop is to provide tools with which to interrogate, decode and respond to an image through the written word, to heighten critical viewing, and self awareness in how one approaches viewing. Do we look or do we see? Do we accept the superficial first glance, or look and think again?
We will begin with self and group trust building theater based activities, preparing the body and mind, to enter into engagement with the image. We will explore how the immediate state of our bodies can influence how we see and respond to an image, and how we can open ourselves to a deeper experience and understanding of what is before us. We will move to music, vocalize, and learn techniques for a visceral viewing experience, followed by creative writing time activating an Ekphrastic response through poetic monologue.
At the end of the workshop, each participant will have a better understanding of how they view media, art and the world, with tools to expand into a more multi-sensory, self-directed, engaged viewing experience. Each participant will leave with their original Ekphrastic written work and a better understanding, empathy, curiosity and interaction with the image they have chosen.
Magdalena Gómez is the author of Shameless Woman, a memoir in poems, published by Red Sugarcane Press, NYC. She is a cultural organizer, vanguard Nuyorican performance poet since 1971, playwright and the co-founder and artistic director of Teatro V!da, the first Latin@ theater in Springfield, MA. She has written 24 poems in response to The Museum of the Old Colony, and tells us “I don’t think I’m done yet. Every image holds endless possibilities for the thoughtful and informed viewer. As the oldest extant colony in the world, the study of the histories and cultures of Puerto Rico should be required in all U.S. curricula. In the meantime, Pablo Delano’s installation gives us an opportunity to deepen our insights, self-education and humanity.”
This program is offered in conjunction with the installation The Museum of the Old Colony, and supported by the Ethics and the Common Good (ECG) program.