You must practice being stupid dumb unthinking empty. Then you will be able to DO," wrote Sol Lewitt in a letter to Eva Hesse. Trying one's dumbest ideas is far from a fatuous imperative. By turning towards and taking seriously one's own rejected thoughts, we ask the question, who decides what's dumb (or bad or hideously ugly)? Our dumbest ideas often carry the tag of oppression. (1)

— Still Worm, Ashley Yang-Thompson

Like a comet or a melody, we will return to places, ideas, and feelings that were left behind. Let us reconsider the abandoned fragments of cringe poems. Let us cut up and collage embarrassing diary entries. We will discover what drives our writing practice when we let go of value systems.

With failure as our goal and praxis, we will generate four pages of new and repurposed content during this workshop. If your writing sucks, you succeed. If your writing doesn’t suck, you succeed.

Bring old journals and the flotsam of jetsam of your creative practice.

Bad Art/Poetry Workshop

Sunday, March 29

11am-12pm PST / 2-3pm EST

Online

Facilitated by Ash Yang-Thompson

A replay will be provided to all who register

Facilitator: A poet, performance artist, and painter, Ash Yang-Thompson questions stereotypes with humor and irreverence. Her videos were selected for The Museum of Moving Image’s Changing the Picture series, which highlights artists of color who are bringing diverse voices to the screen. Her video art, in conjunction with her zines and letters, was also exhibited in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum’s After Hope: Videos of Resistance exhibition. In January of 2020, she was part of a two person show at Gund Gallery Museum, where she displayed her zines and letters alongside Axis Mundo, the first historic examination of queer Chicanx artists. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Equity Fellowship and Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists grant. She has been awarded full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and Ox-Bow School of Art. Ash is the author of How to be the Worst Laziest Fattest Most Incontinent Piece-of-Shit in the world EVER and Still Worm (Bateau Press). She almost won a Pushcart Prize for her poem White Fur Rug. Ash currently lives in Portland, OR.

(1) Tabitha Nikolai

Photo: Ulysses was deemed “unpublishable” before Sylvia Beach took the risk of printing Joyce’s emetic aphrodisiacs.