For Fiction of Now, WordXWord has challenged poets - across multiple generations - to create original work to be presented in the context of the Berkshire Museum's Morgan Bulkeley: Nature Culture Clash, a career retrospective of the artist's work, which - in his own words - is intended to "make people think of the fragility in which we exist.”
“I try to make paintings that are beautiful, frightening and funny all at once, similar to The Theater of the Absurd, which assumes things are so bad that you can only laugh."
In this, the age of post truth, the audience is invited to strap in for a wild ride.
Free.
Poet? Interested in taking this challenge and sharing your work? Get on the list.
For Politics of Identity / Poetry of Inclusion & Exclusion - Poets are invited to zoom in or zoom out; re aim their telescope or grab a magnifying glass; to build a fence, or tear one down; to examine the politics of identity from the personal, social, or cultural perspective. Who belongs? Who gets to decide?
Free.
Poet? Interested in taking this challenge and sharing your work? Get on the list.
Politics of Identity will be presented in the physical context of the exhibition of photographs from the Freedom From Fear/Yellow Bowl Project. The Freedom From Fear/Yellow Bowl Project created by artist Setsuko Winchester is an outgrowth of the research Winchester has done around the history not only of the Japanese internment camps, but more broadly around Asian-American civil right issues over the last century.
"The project's concept is a play on the contemporary practice of traveling with an object, say a garden gnome, “Flat Stanley” or plushy toy or animal and documenting its travels with a photograph. Instead of something easy to transport, Winchester decided to take 120 handmade fragile tea bowls, ceramic tea bowls, packed inside two enormous boxes as her “traveling” objects to places that were not famous or glamorous, but places most people had never heard of nor would probably ever go. By exposing these places of “fear”, Winchester hopes we can finally exorcise the shame and guilt, and move forward rather than blame the victim or shame the oppressors. More information can be found at can be found at yellowbowlproject.com."
