Are you a person whose work it is to re-member?
Are you working on a family or community history project and running into silences everywhere you turn?
Pop-up workshops will introduce you to the tools and practices of memory work for digging into a past that has gone underground.
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“I have come to believe something: that life is preparation for the possibility of becoming an ancestor.”
Join Q.M. Zhang for this annual pop-up workshop in celebration of the Qing Ming Festival (清明節). Traditionally a spring ritual for visiting and sweeping the graves of our ancestors, Qing Ming can happen anytime and anywhere we gather to create our own rituals and practices as descendants, memory workers, and next gen writers and artists.
This year, we will gather to do Qing Ming on the Autumn Equinox, a time when Northern and Southern hemispheres share equal amounts of light and darkness. We’ll go to the imagined grave sites of our ancestors—human and non-human, known and unknown—and listen for the voices and silences we find there. We’ll experiment with tools and forms of memory work for writing into past legacies and future histories we carry in our bodies as descendants. We’ll practice descendance as a relationship with our ancestors that flows in multiple directions at once, asking not only what have we inherited, but what must we reclaim and what will we pass on.
Note: This remote workshop being offered at a time that makes possible the participation of writers and artists both Asia and North America. Creatives in all parts of the world are welcome to join. Workshop readings and writing prompts will be offered in English. Participants are invited to write in any language that feels necessary and urgent for them.
2024 Pop-up:
The Persistent Hum of the Past:
Qing Ming on the Summer Solstice
June 21, 2024
2-4 PM, New York Time
7-9 PM, London Time
Holmdel Horn Antenna, Crawford Hill, NJ, that detected the aural afterlife of the beginnings of space and time. (Video Recording: Hiroko Masuike, Video Editing: fran yu)
Join Q.M. Zhang for this pop-up writing workshop on the summer solstice, as we create our own rituals and practices for “doing” Qing Ming — 做清明. Traditionally a spring festival for visiting and sweeping the graves of our ancestors, Qing Ming is a form of memory work that holds meaning year round. It is a time for descendants to re-member and re-claim what has gone underground: our people, our histories, our humanity.
During this workshop, we will gather to train our senses on the hum of the past. We will reach across time and summon our ancestors. We will write into the past legacies and future histories we carry in our bodies.