Place & Process: Video Experiments with Jodi Lynn Maracle

Saturdays, May 24 & 31

12-4pm

$175 (10% discount for members. Scholarships may be available – email caroline@squeaky.org for info)

In this two session, process-focused workshop, participants will meet with artist and educator Jodi Lynn Maracle, Tyendinaga Mohawk and Polish/Irish settler descent, to produce a short film based on relationship to place. We will develop a practice of connecting with specific places while recording video and audio, helping us to stay physically and mentally present. We’ll utilize all of our senses – from sight, to sound, to touch, to smell – and we are just as interested in the process and experience of physically being in a specific location as we are in the final product.

For the first class, on Saturday May 24, we will meet briefly at Squeaky Wheel, where Jodi will share their work and give insight into their art practice. Then we will travel together to Woodlawn Beach, where we will consciously engage with the site, recording video and audio with personal smartphones and digital cameras. Participants are encouraged to bring any recording equipment they have as well as notebooks, writing utensils and weather appropriate clothing.

During the week between classes, participants are encouraged to apply what they learn with Jodi to a place that is personal to them, in order to gather additional footage and audio.

The second session, on May 31, will be held at Squeaky Wheel, where we will begin reviewing and editing the footage gathered during our time at Woodlawn on the first day, as well as additional materials gathered independently.

Together we will consider:
What does it mean to slow down and become fully present in a specific place?
How does this translate to an audio and video based practice?
What do we experience in our bodies in specific locations that can inform both our practice and our product?
How can we deepen our relationship with place through a process of slow and thoughtful observation – observation of specific sites and observation of ourselves?

Class limited to 8 students. No video editing experience is required, but participants should be open to experimentation, comfortable using smartphone cameras, and confident using a computer. Squeaky Wheel’s classroom is outfitted with Mac desktop computers.

Questions? email caroline@squeaky.org or call 716-884-7172

Instructor bio:

Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’keha:ka/settler artist, language teacher, parent and hide tanner. Born and raised in what is currently considered Buffalo, NY, their work is influenced as much by an upbringing in Western New York as it is by Kanien’keha:ka culture, language and material objects. Jodi’s work centers reclamation of space and memory in the face of settler-colonial occupation through contemporary representations of Indigenous cultural legacies and lived realities. Jodi blends traditional Haudenosaunee skills, symbols, forms, and language with modern forms of making to articulate historical and contemporary relationships to place, land, and community.