From the Introduction: This compilation is an outgrowth of the 'alter/altar II: sigil, soma, score, salve' workshop community facilitated by El (Lynne De Silva-Johnson).
We gathered for 6 weeks at Poets House in New York City in the Fall of 2019, in a space dedicated to deconstructing the boundaries of poetics, and began to explore, to settle inside the vacillating space between representation of the self and of the observed.
We attempted to develop work that reflected an ethical sense of narrative framing, experimenting with mark, typography, image-making, language(s), code(s), lists, erasures, citations, collage and other creative measures.
Our process imitated a palimpsest, layered to reflect a body that living in/against a historic time and place.
We considered and created works that challenged genre, drawing on source texts and media, ephemera, detritus, found language.
We made lists, we played with memoir and epistolary form--alongside somatic and social practice.
We asked: can we make our work a powerful, political act of radical self- and community-building? Of witness? Can it be an act of healing? YES.
We created a community dedicated to object-making.
We exploded the archaic idea that creating work is restricted to a strictly personal account.
Instead, we foraged, we used algorithms and chance operations so the work created could be situated within/against/in juxtaposition to/ as alchemical space of transformation and/or as lense through which to evaluate (elevate), mark, and/or transform.
We created our own personal shot publications and/or zines alongside many other exciting interdisciplinary and archival projects.
We have put our work together here, a collaboration to design an alter/altar publication.
Over our workshop, we invited one another to rid ourselves of preciousness, as well as a stable definition of what constitutes poetry.
Together, we invited a process of iterative learning by doing, approaching our lives together with a documentarian's atte.
| Introduction | This compilation is an outgrowth of the alteraltar |
|---|---|
| Ii | Sigil soma score salve workshop community facilitated by |
| We asked | Can we make our work a powerful political act of radical self and communitybuilding |
Operating System: Alter / Altar Alter / altar volume 1: sigil, soma, score, salve, paperback/kinsey cantrell
