image:medium:actor
Intent
image:medium:actor are hands-on workshops on creativity, intended to inculcate self reflection, collaboration, multi-media adaptability and emotional resilience.
Raw Material
Emotions & memories embedded in our bodies and the spaces we inhabit, form the essential raw material of this workshop. The relationship between memory & self can be both conducive & subversive: one inspiring or adapting to the other, or both in perpetual conflict. It is necessary to become aware of the nature of the relationship in order to enhance or change it. Our self worth depends considerably on how we remember our experiences. Remembering is re-membering, putting the parts together again to find something different hidden within the memory. In the workshop we learn to break down, analyse and synthesize meanings to reconstruct our narratives.
Mediums
The workshop encourages exploration of lines, colours, words, objects and bodies to displace space and create stories. While catharsis is one of the most significant reasons for creativity, using text, graphics, collage and embodied theater, the exercises introduce participants to essential components of the creative process:
appropriation: making it one’s own
abstraction: taking the essential
imagination: making vivid
translation: making another
negotiation: making meaning
expression: giving
reflection: making the self
Objective
Imagination is crucial to creative design processes. While re-evaluating our experiences to forge unique knowledge & understanding, in order to grow & create, we also need to imagine anew – spaces, solutions & ourselves. However, imagination requires a dual approach. On one hand it requires nurturing-careful development of the mental faculty of contemplation and meditation; adding one layer after another of contextual and processual parameters, to observe the image grow. On the other hand it needs to be approached with maturity: no matter how comprehensive, complex or charismatic, an image is always incomplete, as its purpose is only to instigate and affect material testing of the idea.
The dumbing down of our creative instinct is largely due to the dual socio-economic assault on imagination: truncation and obsession. While the opportunity of nurturing imagination is snatched away from the majority in the name of training, education and economic value, most of the minority that is left with this faculty are under such pressure to deliver that they end up obsessing over images and materialising immature outcomes. By trying to understand the inter- relationship between the enticing/ catalysing image, the role & limitations of mediums in realising it and our power & responsibility as actors, we attempt a better relationship with ourselves and with time.
Participation
The workshop is open to anyone interested in the creative process and is 9 years or older in age. Prospective participants need not be acquainted with any of the mediums & concepts referred to above. In fact, not only will we be working with your individual interpretations of the said mediums, you may bring your own new mediums into the process. In addition, you only need to bring your curiosity, memories, enthusiasm and openness to this playful engagement full of conversations.
Format
The workshops can be facilitated for an individual, a pair, a small group of up to 6 participants, a medium-sized group of up to 15 participants and large groups of up to 50 participants.
The workshops are primarily an in-situ, impromptu engagement, necessitating the sharing of space & time with the facilitator and fellow participants (if it’s not an individual engagement). However, adaptability & resourcefulness are critical aspects of the workshops, so they can be facilitated on-line as well.
Duration
The duration of the workshop varies depending upon the objectives of the engagement and preference of participant(s). A single workshop can range from a four hour session to successive sessions spread over a fortnight. Longer engagements could include a series of sessions over few weeks to several months.
Registration
Sign Up or head to the i:m:a questionnaire; complete the registration and confirm your ride on this roller coaster.