Creative Practice Showcases
Images Not Words: Creating a Novel in Woodcuts
Creative Practice Showcase Billy Simms
In this presentation, I share my work The Clown Genocide: a novel in woodcuts. I briefly discuss the history of woodcuts novels, my process for writing a novel told entirely in images, and my three-fold artistic intent when creating The Clown Genocide. Stylistically, I wanted to create a linear narrative told only in images. The style of the work is inspired by silent films and the works of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward, whose woodcut novels from the early twentieth century are now seen as the precursors to the modern graphic novel. While I looked to these artists for inspiration, I strove to create my own style with my woodcuts, and then translated this style into three dimensions with the bronze statues. My second artistic intent is that conceptually, I wanted to create a world in which I could tell the story of a mythical genocide so that I could challenge the viewer to ask questions about genocide and mass murder without any historical background knowledge. And, thirdly, intellectually, I wanted to create a work that provokes questions: Why are some groups made the scapegoat for the troubles of society? What is the role of the average person in world events where mass murder is almost a daily news story? What does it mean to be a member of a society that has witnessed such events? And how do people heal from such events?
Performing Exhibitions: Atmospheres of Commmunication
Creative Practice Showcase Juan Cabello Arribas
Starting at Whitechapel Gallery in London with the reconstruction of "This is Tomorrow" exhibition, this adventure in exhibition design continued in Brazil with more than ten atmospheres of communication built in big museums of São Paulo and other cities. Acting as "a spatial curator", the role of architecture turned into something "very special" when all the efforts were related to social and educational engagement. This paper wants to show how this collaboration took place and share the experience of designing exhibitions as an altogether act of creation. "Exhibitions as spatial mediators" was the core of our work. Curators, designers, technicians, chiefs of diverse institutions working together in a new ecology opened to the whole society.
An Intercultural Tale of Winter: Sharing the Staging of One Shakespeare Production Between Two Student Cohorts in America and South Korea
Creative Practice Showcase Marta Rainer
In the winter of 2025, one Shakespeare-based production was prepped, rehearsed and produced on two continents, through the bifurcated international engagement of two undergraduate programs in collaboration. For a semester, Wellesley College's Theatre Studies program (USA) interpreted the sections of the narrative set in Sicilia, while Soon Chun Hyang University's English Drama Performance organization (Korea) prepared a K-pop and namsadangpae-infused Bohemia. Eventually, each cohort was hosted on the other's campus where the production details were finalized, adjusted, and shared with live audiences. What we anticipated when we all committed to this project was that the benefit, challenges and discoveries for all of our students during the process would exceed even the promise of the production itself. What we could not know until it was fully realized was: how. This study illuminates the obstacles, solutions, reception of and reflection on this grand international experiment.
