SHIFT: Queer ekphrasis

This practical writing workshop for emerging writers (and those curious about writing about art), hosted by author and editor Ange Crawford, moves through a series of ways of thinking about ekphrastic writing (writing in response to artworks), inspired by notions of queer use.

Ekphrasis, writes Sarah-Holland Batt, is now commonly defined as writing in response to art, but it was originally a form of deep description that could be applied to anything – art or otherwise. Thinking through this notion alongside Sara Ahmed's concept of queer use, this workshop moves through a series of practical exercises to inspire emerging writers to consider how writing in relation (to art, to non-art objects, to places and spaces, to one another – human and non-human) could deepen an ethic of care within their writing practice. Among exercises in this workshop, participants will be invited to play with prepositions (inspired by the work of Francesca Rendle-Short), experiment with liberating constraints, and join in a collaborative work of site-writing (via the work of Jane Rendell) to consider how context affects how we relate with art, with materials, and with one another.

Workshop Details:

• Date: Saturday 25 January, 2025
• Time: 10.30am - 1pm, with breaks 
• Recommended ages: 18+ as mature sapphics topics may be discussed

Do I need to bring anything?

Please bring a favourite work of queer art; and bring a non-art object that holds some significance for you. You don't have to bring the physical works in; these could just be phone photos. Pick items you will be okay to discuss and share with the broader group

About the facilitator:

Ange Crawford is a writer, editor and PhD candidate living on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her debut young adult novel, How to Be Normal, won the inaugural Walker Books Manuscript Prize, and she has also written across a variety of other genres, including poetry, interactive fiction, essays and reviews. Her writing is driven by her enduring interests in queerness, art, storytelling, place(lessness) and language, which have entangled themselves in her ongoing doctoral creative practice research into spatial writing.

꩜ ꩜ ꩜ 

This project is part of SHIFT: A Queer Symposia, a series of events at Seventh Gallery across January and February, to create a space for discourse, exchange, & solidarity within the LGBTIQA+ community. SHIFT is supported by the Victorian Government.

Please visit our website for the full SHIFT program.