Presented by Manisha Anjali, The Two-Headed Bird: A Surrealist Writing Workshop seeks to unearth the creative potential of the unconscious for the purpose of composition and publication.

The course consists of a series of lectures, discussions and practical exercises on dream work, psychoanalysis and mythology. Students will examine existing surrealist works like William Blake's nightmarish visions, blues folklore, Yoko Ono's instructional pieces, Alejandro Jodorowsky's cinematic lucid dreams and the spiritual revolt of Butoh: a surrealist way to move.

By learning to extract narratives from the unconscious mind, students will not only be able to maintain a continuous state of inspiration but also evade psychological traps that inhibit creativity like writer's block, self-criticism and creative boundaries established by traditional forms of composition and editing. Three two-hour classes will focus on dream writing, automatic writing and editing as means of altering reality.

The Two-Headed Bird prescribes set readings by C.G Jung, Katsue Kitasono, Sun Ra, Yoko Ono, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Leonora Carrington, Federico García Lorca and more. Students will be expected to keep a dream journal for the duration of the course, and workshop a piece of writing to be published on Free Association's website on completion of the course.

Presented by Free Association and Schoolhouse Studios and supported by a Yarra City Council Small Project Grant

Manisha Anjali is a writer, performer and dream archivist. She is the author of Sugar Kane Woman, a collection of poems about the dreams and hallucinations of exiled Indo-Fijian women. Manisha is the creator of Neptune, an otherworldly audio archive of dreams and visions of artists and writers and is the Poetry Editor at The Lifted Brow. She is currently working on her forthcoming collection, Lizard. She has performed at Melbourne Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, Bendigo Writers Festival and West Writers Forum.  Her work appears in Peril Magazine, Seizure, Blackmail Press, IKA Journal and Blackmail Press. She has been a Writer in Residence at Incendium Radical Library, a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre and an Emerging Cultural Leader at Footscray Community Arts Centre. 

Free Association is a project platform for writing workshops and publishing through the expanded fields of fiction, poetry, critical theory, philosophy and art criticism. Presented by artists, writers and editors, workshops are delivered over three evening classes at art spaces, engaging with the exhibitions on display. Free Association is open to anyone; no prior writing experience is necessary.

Sundays June 30, July 7, July 14. 4-6pm

Schoolhouse Studios, 81 Rupert St, Collingwood VIC 3067

Applications close midnight June 21. Apply here 

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