The Ecopoetics of Deep Matter

What are the poetics of fused, aggregate, and interdependent aliveness? Of new community arrangements that decenter and diverge from human-only subject, and that recognize and destigmatize the ways we lean on, into, and remake each other? In this workshop we will create and uncover the syntaxes of symbiosis that exist in relational poetic form: mutualism, commensalism (neutrality), and parasitism. We will gather in the Beyond Baroque garden to work directly with the plants and flowers.

About the facilitator

Amanda Ackerman is a teacher and herbalist whose publications include the Book of Feral Flora, the scented pamphlet Air Kissing, and the collaborative book Mans Wars and Wickedness: A Book of Proposed Remedies and Extreme Formulations for Curing Hostility, Rivalry, and Ill-Will, co-authored with Harold Abramowitz. Her work focuses largely on the feralscape, divining techniques that allow for communication across species boundaries and interspecies art-making. With Dan Richert, she has worked with biofeedback and multi-sensory techniques that allow plants to create poems. Their olfactory installation Unknown Giants was part of The Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology’s A New We in Norway’s Kuntshall Trondheim gallery.

Masks are encouraged while inside our center.

One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at [email protected].

Workshop attendees are expected to participate in a respectful, constructive, and considerate manner. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our workshops, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow participants, or facilitator.

Host or Publisher Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center