Dream/Memory/Ecstasy: A Workshop Reading

Participants from Dream/Memory/Ecstasy, one of Cave Canem’s workshops this fall, will read from work developed with Ladan Osman.

Click here to RSVP.

Course Description
This workshop explores the language/system of the mind in memory (re)construction, dreams, and in the alternative reality of hallucinations or visions. We will explore artistic, spiritual, and scientific inquiries of self-image making while thinking about how the process of recalling/reconstructing those images encourages a flexible understanding of time. How can we translate the images that stay with us, awake or asleep? How can we recognize and communicate themes that recur inside us? Also, how can we produce artifacts from these explorations?

We will explore poems, writings, media, and other artworks to deepen our understanding of impressions, recollections, and expressions. The end goal is to become familiar with personal imagery banks, to investigate commonalities, and to discuss divergences with higher levels of specificity. This will encourage us to critically and aesthetically engage image systems in our poems, and challenge our obsessions. Materials include poetry by Lucille Clifton, Aracelis Girmay, Dionne Brand, Donika Kelly, and Mahmoud Darwish; films by Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Lucrecia Martel, Walé Oyéjidé, Sunao Katabuchi, Ama Lou, and Mahalia John; photography by Liz Johnson Artur, Nuits Balneaires, and Ming Smith; music by Laura Mvula and Nicholas Brittell; and writings by Jamaica Kincaid and Christina Sharpe.

Instructor
Ladan Osman is a Somali-American writer and filmmaker. She’s the author of Exiles of Eden and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony, winner of a Sillerman First Book Prize. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Lannan Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her first short film (co-directed), Sam Underground, profiled the 2020 American Idol. Osman’s next film projects are love letters to artists and their cities. She lives in Brooklyn.