As a strange year on Earth begins to end, this workshop offers an opportunity to reflect on what emerges amid generative chaos, and persistent disruption. We will look to writing on the botany of mosses, critical theories of African-American intellectual life, tactical applications of erotic power, and the isolated sociality of Emily Dickinson to consider varieties of creativity and longevity that can — or must  — flourish within ecosystems of material and energetic challenge. 

Prior to the workshop, participants will receive text selections from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss, Fred Moten’s In the Break, Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”, and poems by Emily Dickinson. In reading these selections participants are asked to make a list of all thoughts, questions, and critiques that arise within them. We will continue this notation practice during our workshop in a shared Google Document resulting in a new community-created text to add to the canon with our thanks for all it gives us.