Mar26

UPDATED: Chance and Happy Accidents now on MONDAY, APRIL 28

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Fuxi with trigrams from the I Ching

Fuxi with trigrams from the I Ching

UPDATED WITH NEW DATE: Mark your calendars for the next 3Text gathering, “Chance and Happy Accidents: An Aleatory Art-Making Workshop,” which is [now] happening on Monday, April 28, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in room 5414 at the CUNY Grad Center (365 5th Ave btwn 34th & 35th St). Available activities will include:

  • Creating suminagashi — Japanese paper and fabric marbling
  • Using “Oblique Strategies” cards and making a set to take with you
  • Composing cut-ups (in the tradition of William Burroughs)
  • Consulting the I Ching
  • Throwing some very unusual dice, and
  • Using our collection of fabulous rubber stamps and other materials

There will be drinks and snacks of course.

“Aleatory,” from the Latin for dice, refers to composition practices that leave something up to random chance. Here was our pitch to the DSC, which gave us a generous grant fro the workshop:

In her writings about making art—and in the studio class she taught at the GC—Eve Sedgwick celebrated art-making as an experience of what she called “the middle ranges of agency,” where subject and object are not the distinct roles we imagine. In this workshop, 3Text will provide materials, tools, and instruction for participants to experiment with a wide range of aleatory art-making practices—practices that emphasize the role of chance in creation. We will explore, for example, conceptual incorporations of chance (John Cage’s use of the I Ching, Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies”), techniques and materials that restrict an artist’s control over the outcome (suminagashi silk-dyeing, working with resists), and final products whose use incorporates chance (books as decks of cards to be shuffled, images on magnet backings or dice).

You can play with Oblique Strategies or the I Ching online, but we’ll have physical copies at the workshop. Hope to see you there!

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