Uneasy Arrangements: Collage, Animation & the Archive

[vc_row][vc_column offset=”vc_hidden-lg vc_hidden-md vc_hidden-sm vc_hidden-xs”][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46T0dWTytwA” css=””][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””]Every image carries the intentions, assumptions, and histories of its making. Yet these meanings are never fixed. When images are displaced, recast, and recontextualized, they can spark new meanings, unexpected connections, and critical perspectives. What if we deliberately unsettled the image, using collage, remix, and transformation to intervene in its intended function, revealing other possibilities latent within the frame? For this workshop, we’re thrilled to host filmmaker and animator Kelly Sears to think through the politics and aesthetics of reappropriating, reassembling and mutating images.

Join us for an exploration of the creative possibilities that exist in the cracks and seams of our contemporary visual culture to critically engage with the prevailing image regime. We’ll consider the image as raw material; a flexible, unfixed, and malleable resource available for the artist to cut up, reassemble and collage to generate new narratives, temporalities and performances. We’ll approach collage not simply as a visual technique, but as a way of thinking: a practice of transformation and resourcefulness.

Across these intensive 3-days we’ll be asking questions like: What can be revealed when an image is released from its original context? What happens when historical documents, institutional archives, family photographs, fragmented media and ephemeral scraps of everyday life are brought into collision? How can our cultural detritus become a site of play and invention? How can we turn a culture of surveillance and consumption into its own criticism?

Kelly Sears will lead participants through her own collage-based practice, at the intersection of animation, archival, speculative fiction and documentary. She’ll be joined by an all-star cast of artists who know how to recycle: Bill Morrison, “the poet laureate of lost films”, will elaborate on his recent work with surveillance materials; the Anti-banality Union will share examples of composite imagery reframing the assumptions of mainstream media; and acclaimed photographer Keisha Scarville will elaborate on her iterative approach to reinterpretation and artistic reappropriation.

Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how the unstable image might become a space for imagining something otherwise, and of collage as an aesthetic and political strategy. No prior experience with collage or found footage is required—just a curiosity about images and their afterlives.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title=”Details” color=”white” el_class=”h1″][vc_empty_space height=”40px”][vc_tta_accordion style=”outline” shape=”square” color=”white” active_section=”8″ no_fill=”true” collapsible_all=”true”][vc_tta_section title=”Who is eligible?” tab_id=”1477608256488-ac7d3d1a-ae9084d0-801ebd47-97fc”][vc_column_text css=””]Open to everyone, though the workshop setting is best suited for filmmakers, film producers, journalists, curators and media artists.

Give us an idea of who you are and why you are coming. When you register you will be asked for a short statement of interest that should briefly describe your experience and a film project (it would be great if you have a project in progress that you would present to the group during the work-in-progress critique sessions), plus a bio. There’s a spot for a link to a work sample (and CV, which would also be nice, but is not required).[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Cost” tab_id=”1477608256642-4c32d845-e84384d0-801ebd47-97fc”][vc_column_text css=””]$295 early bird registration ends on Oct 16, 2026.

$350 regular registration.[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Refund Policy” tab_id=”1477608441051-60d28267-92bf84d0-801ebd47-97fc”][vc_colu