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Collaboration Workshops
w/Jill Darling, Hannah Ensor & Laura Wetherington

Friday, April 11
2-4 p.m.
Cost: $5
To register please email casakeepers@casalibre.org

Saturday, April 12
11:30 am-3:30 p.m.
Cost: $40
To register please email casakeepers@casalibre.org

To take full advantage of Laura Wetherington and Jill Darling’s visit to Tucson—and to serve as a “going away” party (class as party – discuss) for Hannah Ensor as she prepares to leave Tucson, we’re offering two pre-Trickhouse workshops. The Friday workshop will be focused on generating writing, both solo and collaborative in nature. Friday’s workshop is $5 for drop-ins, and free to all registered attendees of Saturday’s workshop, which is a topics-based seminar/workshop on collaboration practices and theory. Saturday will involve discussion, gifted reading/thinking/looking materials from our visiting and local writers, and producing new writing (again: collaborative, solo). Please see longer descriptions below.

1. COLLABORATION PRACTICES: a generative workshop
Friday, April 11th, 2–4 pm
This workshop is free if you’re registered for Saturday’s workshop, or $5 for drop-ins.

In this generative two-hour workshop, we’ll work on stretching (using, incorporating, diverging from, abandoning, returning to) our usual writing practices to create new work. Together, we’ll try out some of the same solo and collaborative practices that Laura, Jill, and Hannah used at various shared tables and across geographical divides to produce work that is both of the same cloth (the same froth) and divergent. We’ll generate work (and mental fodder) to discuss/explore further on Saturday (though it’s not necessary to attend Friday if you plan on attending Saturday, and vice versa). No matter what, we’ll all leave having written together and on our own (and on our own together).

2. COLLABORATION: crafting theory, playing with it, making it happen & taking it into the world
Saturday, April 12th, 11am–3:30pm
(with a lunch break: bring a bag lunch!)
$40

This Saturday workshop will occur in two complementary phases: (1) communal/collaborative theory-making; and then (2) doing, making, rocking out.

First, Laura, Jill, and Hannah, will each speak briefly (think: book report, but art report) about one of their favorite historical/contemporary collaborations and what is so weird and cool and unique about it, speaking to its process, its product, etc. We’ll take these and begin creating some communal theories: to articulate visions, intentions, and/or proposals for collaborating with other artists, with each other, in the world. This may begin to verge on a manifesto, or to be more modest about it, a plan.

In phase two, we will put our ideas into action, starting to experiment with ourselves and with each other. We might begin to approach various questions of creative collaboration, such as: can we attempt an “egoless” art, a piece of writing that rises up not from me or from you but from somewhere in-between (let’s try)? And/or can we each be recognizable to ourselves (the artist that I am) in concert, unison, harmony, with another (the artist that you are)? Can we play with balance, creating practices or products in which one voice is heard above another, or one voice is felt more than heard? Can collaboration be antagonistic, or must we play nicely (are these mutually exclusive)? Can it be serious? Can it be funny? Can it be true, deep, real? We will play, will game the system, will get raucous and maybe even a little confused.
And: don’t forget to bring a bag lunch!

Jill Darling, Hannah Ensor & Laura Wetherington will be reading their work for the Trickhouse Live Performance Series on 4/12
more info...