THE STUFF OF DREAMS: SURREALIST POETRY AND THE MOVING IMAGE
Ages 16-29
Winter 2023, Online
In this workshop, student fellows will tap into dreams and the unconscious to discover their own, unique ways of thinking and creating. Defined by André Breton as a way to express “the actual functioning of thought,” Surrealism emphasizes the strange, the outlandish, the spontaneous, the mysterious. In group discussion with the instructor, fellows will learn about the work of the original Surrealists, watching excerpts from their films and reading their poetry (sample work). And they’ll experiment with exquisite corpse exercises (samples), and with automatic writing and drawing as ways to stimulate their imaginations and generate surprising images. These images will then be linked through a poetic structure, using devices like metaphor and metonymy, resulting in experimental videos that exploit sound, image, and language in fresh, compelling ways. Fellows will become proficient with cameras and editing software. Their work will be shared through a public exhibition and on the program website. Limited to 8 student fellows.
Karen Yasinsky is an artist and filmmaker, and Senior Lecturer in the Film and Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. She is a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and the American Academy in Rome. Her work has been widely exhibited both domestically and internationally. She is also a recipient of the Baker Award.
Murtaza Hathiyari is pursuing a graduate degree in robotics at Johns Hopkins. An experimentalist who believes in the power of expression, he is certain everything has an intriguing story behind it to dig into.
