Warming Up to Text/Image Process

INTRODUCTIONS/BACK TO BACK

We started with warm up exercises to encourage students to feel comfortable with one another and with us in a workshop setting. We put our chairs in a circle and went around to share everyone’s names. Next we asked everyone to move around the space and when Rachel or I called freeze, each person had to find a partner with someone and lean on them, back to back. We posed a question and then each had to turn to the other and share a response. The questions:

1. Who is the funniest or most interesting person in your family?
2. What is a story that you heard passed down to you from your grandparents or elders?

We heard many interesting stories. One was about a child who was abandoned in the mountain because her family was to poor to feed her. She continued to follow clues that led her back to her home until one day she was rescued by a woman in the mountains and there lived o n happily. Another was about a young man’s grandfather who was a hunter. He and his friends crossed paths with an enormous buck who was impenetrable by the hunters bullets. The magical buck walked away into thin air and the legend continues.

EXQUISITE CORPSE

After hearing these stories, we asked everyone to play the famous surrealist game “exquisite corpse,” just to warm up to the idea of images and text together. Students broke into groups of four and each had to draw a part and pass it. Once all the parts were finished, the original head was returned to the person who drew it and that person had to create text for each part of the body. This was a playful warm up to the idea of text and image together.