January, Quite Contrary: Enter The Enchantment of the Enigma with Karen Finley (via Zoom)

This mixed-genre generative workshop will be held on Zoom. It will be capped at 18 students. Scholarship information will be available on November 15th. Please read the course policies page before signing up for any of our workshops

As we begin with our writing for 2022, the promise of a new year is upon us. With hopes and wishes, moving forward for a still unknown future, a certain uncertainty. This border line from year to year, hoping and planning for a better future has always been a marker for centering our place in the world. To return to and plan for is both the dilemma and the prize.  We have been living with this plurality of mixed emotions, whether in masked isolation, the psycho drama in the simplest of essential activities, discovering new capacity, realizations, gratitude amidst the loss. How can complexity and contradiction provide insightful and perceptive expression for the human condition? Grasping the edges, the vagueness and clarity can offer whimsy and wisdom mutually.  We are not only living in contradictory times but profound times.

Through writing prompts and creative exercises, we will draw on not denying the complexity but to embrace the contradiction into our poetics. How can we manifest this new beginning with creative intention?  Enter the Enchantment of the Enigma, projecting purpose and finding form of the mysterious to guide our verse. The transition space, the greyness and sparkle, the uproar yet the solitude, symbolic synchronicity in the confusing strangeness that has become routine provides an unconventional significance, tuning in to our own inner code for meaning.

How do we transform the merry-go-round carousel of contradictory, confusing emotions and experiences into the imaginative realm? How can our conflicts and resolutions become artistic awakenings?  Join me as I guide you to discover and inspire your practice and creative journey.

Karen Finley is a performance artist whose work has long provoked controversy and debate. She has performed at the Lincoln Center (NYC), the ICA (London), the Steppenwolf (Chicago), and the Bobino (Paris). Her art is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other places. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Obies, two Bessies, and a Ms. magazine Woman of the Year Award. Her books include Shock Treatment, Enough is Enough, Living It Up, A Different Kind Of Intimacy, George and Martha, The Reality Shows, and Grabbing Pussy. Finley is a professor in the department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Registration is $124 at:
www.writerscenter.org/calendar/finleyjanuary/