The Little Silent Library: Artist’s Book Master Class With Shirin Salehi

This workshop will introduce the students to the concepts of silence and void as languages of secret and mystery. This class will instruct students the beauty and metaphors of these concepts by creating a little silent library. Students will start with an artist book, learning the various steps of creation, from printing methodologies, to realizing a creative vision.

Students will draw from personal history, memory, spirituality, music or as poetics counter to visual overexposure noise, to incorporate into their book project.

Students will also be introduced to the works of selected artists and creators as case studies in order to raise questions and reflections on the poetics of the silent and the hidden qualities in art, which contain mystery. This will be done through text and poetry readings, and audiovisual visualization during the course, reflecting on the work of creators who work with the languages of sculpture, painting, ceramics, poetry, music and cinema. Some of our references will be Abbas Kiarostami, Philip Gröning, Pere Portabella, Aleksandr Sokurov, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Edmund de Waal, Rachel Whiteread, Micha Ullman, Jochan Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz, Man Ray, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Sol Lewitt, Mieko Shiomi, John Cage Alphons Allaise, Lewis Caroll, Robert Rauschenberg, Stéphane Mallarmé, Cornelius Gijsbrecht, Pieter Jansz Saenredam and the artists of Antiquity collected in the tales of Pliny the Elder.

This class is open to students of all levels and experiences.