Poetic Witness: Automatic Writing Workshop with Autumn Ahn

This is an automatic writing exercise that imposes two limits on participants: their pen or pencil cannot leave their paper and they cannot look down at what they are writing or drawing. Autumn projects found images and sounds that she has personally recorded, creating a unique installation for each group. Participants spread out, soak in the stimuli, and begin the processes of free association & generative writing.

We will use listening and writing as a form of complex “secondary” poetry. “Secondary” in this case, meaning a peripheral consciousness. Using rapid association, this technique allows the senses to take precedent to the consciousness. Akin to the “automatic writing” practices developed by the Surrealist & Dadaist art movements of the early 20th century, this immersion practice makes use of available information to inform control and release control of the artistic mind.

To register, email bmlashfield@gmail.com.This program is free of charge and open to 15 participants.

*The workshop is funded in part by a grant from the Ashfield Local Cultural Council, a local agency that is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.*

Autumn Ahn earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on performance and critical studies, and her BFA in oil painting from Boston University College of Fine Arts. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College in the Visual Art Department and was previously visiting fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Philosophy. She has been a resident at lower_cavity, at Headlands Center for the Arts, and has conducted research with the astrophysics department between University of Chicago and Yerkes Observatory.