Classics Craft Workshop At KCL

Classics craft workshop at KCL

King’s College London are hosting an event on the 16th October 2015 called ‘Craft process & cultural response: making & thinking about making in Greco-Roman antiquity’ There’s a choice of a mosaic workshop and a textile workshop, followed by an evening talk. 

It’s free but you do have to register (which you can do through the link above). I already signed up for the textile workshop (shocking, I know). 

I’m a huge supporter of alternative approaches to classical material - especially craft approaches. There are experiences you gain from engaging in a making process that you just can’t pick up from translating texts or reading texts, looking at pictures, or reading academic research. It’s an approach that I’d recommend anyone interested in classics tries at least once. This event looks pretty good to me, so, y’know, if classics/craft is your thing and attending seems doable to you, maybe register for it. :3

Well that's not supposed to happen.

Everyone I have talked to today about Stitched Iliad and trying to finish book 2: Me: it's 877 lines. Them: ... Book 2 is that long?? Them: ... Them: *groan* Them: catalogue of ships. Of course.

caelum-videre - what don't you get?

Day 79.

MakingLearning & the Leuven Conference

A group of which I am a part (MakingLearning) recently ran a practical, art-therapeutic workshop at the Psychology and the Classics conference in Leuven. The workshop we ran is one we have run several times before: Hanging My Heart. In this workshop, participants create ‘votives’ - small art-object treasures mimicking the kind of votive offerings found from the ancient world. Such objects could represent prayers for help with a particular issue or illness, or perhaps even a prayer of thanks for something now over or completed. Obviously, in a contemporary context we (as in, we who run this workshop) do not make these votives with the intention of leaving them in a temple as an offering to a god. In our workshops, the value must be found in the process itself rather than the dedication of a finished item. 

One of the things I struggle with most as an artist, and in general as a person, is the idea that my activities and projects could be process-oriented rather than goal-oriented. I have always worked with the latter model. I make because I want to actualise something; I have an idea in my head and I want to turn it into a physical item that can be seen, held, and shared. The first few times I was asked if I enjoy the various modes of crafting I engage in in pursuit of this goal the question baffled me. It was so irrelevant to my goals that not only had I not considered it, but the question itself confused me. 

I still can’t answer the question. I can’t tell you if I enjoy sewing or knitting (etc.) or not, but I can at least explain that enjoyment of the process is not why I continue to do these things. 

  Perhaps it is odd then, that the group I work with and in - MakingLearning - is emphatically focused on the value and quality of the process: learning should be fun. Making should be fun. The process of making can be more important than the finished item. The process is the part in which learning, self-reflection and discovery happens. Everything of value to the maker happens in the process itself - it does not magically spring into our minds when an object is finally complete. 

  You can see the struggle I have with process-oriented thinking: even when trying to think with such a model my mind immediately grasps at the non-physical outcomes of the process. Goals, goals, goals. My mind remains stubbornly outside the process. And, perhaps paradoxically, this is precisely the reason I value MakingLearning’s approach. Every workshop is another chance for me to try and understand this other mode of thinking, to try again to just enjoy the process, without thought for any sort of goal: to try and engage in a making where success or failure are as irrelevant as enjoyment is to my usual way of working. 

  So when we run the votive workshop, in which participants make votives representing fears, hopes, sadnesses, etc. mimicking the ancient practices of votive giving, what do I make votives of? 

I make votives of anything I want, of things without outside meaning, I allow myself to play, to experiment with new techniques and not worry at all about what the finished item might look like, because this time, at least, it just doesn’t matter; it is the process of making the object, not the object itself, which constitutes my votive.

delightedbeauty.org

Shakespeare translation research project. Multilingual translations - all languages - all periods. Othello: case study, pilot project. Data visualisations.

Note also the project mentioned half-way down the page about translating the specific couplets. 

This conference is p awesome, so many amazing projects I’m learning about.