Works Cited: experiments in dismantling texts with Elaine Cameron-Weir and Amaranth Borsuk

We invite the public to join us for a participatory experiment in poetics that will engage acts of dismantling, re-contextualizing, and performing language, as well as exposing the institutions and systems it represents. Elaine Cameron-Weir’s creative process and sculptural practice is informed by found text—"raw language" culled from varying sources, including technical manuals, scientific field research, and other niche and non-literary genres—as well as her own writings that draw on and transform these existing texts. Within the context of poetry, these source materials and the knowledges they enact become strange, fragmentary, weakened or emboldened, and raise speculation about other ways of seeing, thinking, and being in the world. After a brief conversation about her relationship to language in STAR CLUB REDEMPTION BOOTH, Cameron-Weir, alongside Associate Professor and poet and educator Amaranth Borsuk, will guide participants through a creative process of dismantling and re-contextualizing language for poetic reflection and subversion.

This small group program is open to anyone interested in the relationship between writing and visual arts practices. No set level of experience in either field is required. We ask that you please sign up for this event by September 7 to receive instructions, including a request to contribute to the development of the program’s community agreements, as well as to stay informed about our safety protocols. Participants will also be asked to bring in non-literary source materials that will act as your “works cited”—your building blocks of language for experiments in poetic form and content. 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Throughout her work in sculpture and writing, Elaine Cameron-Weir grapples with questions of individual and collective human survival, while also considering the potential for transformation in states of being and forms of knowledge. Her work is informed by belief systems that structure how people make sense of and find meaning in the world—from science and religion to the nation- state. Cameron-Weir earned a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design and a MFA from the New York University Steinhardt School. Select solo exhibitions include exhibit from a dripping personal collection, Dortmunder Kunstverein (2018); Outlooks: Elaine Cameron-Weir, Storm King Art Center, New York (2018); and Elaine Cameron-Weir: viscera has questions about itself, New Museum, New York (2017). She has shown nationally and internationally in group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; the Fellbach Triennial; and the Montréal Biennale, among others.

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist working at the intersection of print and digital media. Her most recent volume is The Book (MIT Press, 2018), an exploration of a technology we think we know intimately. Her poetry collections include Pomegranate Eater (Kore Press), Handiwork (Slope Editions), and three collaborative books. She teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell and serves as Associate Director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics.