WORKSHOP: Laughing Through Tears - Interventions

In-person workshop for galleries, museums, libraries, festivals, universities, and cultural institutions.

Facilitator: Aga Łuczakowska
Target Group: Adults and young people aged 16+ (e.g. university students)
Number of Participants: 6–10
Duration: 3 hours

Râsu'-plânsu' Interventions is a workshop based on my photographic publication Râsu'-plânsu' and the ongoing intervention project of the same name.

The workshop begins with an introduction to the book and the ideas behind the project, exploring how people negotiate imposed structures through small acts of adaptation and personal expression. Participants are introduced to my own interventions before creating their own.

Each participant works directly with their own copy of the book, approaching it as a space for experimentation and intervention. Through drawing, painting, collage, cutting, gluing, writing, inserting elements, or other techniques, participants transform the publication into a unique object. Interventions may be temporary or permanent, subtle or radical, with complete freedom to develop an individual response.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES

Educational Objectives

• Develop an informed and critical engagement with the photobook as an artistic medium.

• Explore the book as a site of artistic action rather than merely a carrier of content.

• Expand ways of thinking about photography through material and performative practices.

• Introduce the concept of artistic intervention and practices of appropriation and transformation of space.

Developmental Objectives

• Foster creative confidence and independent decision-making.

• Encourage experimentation without the pressure of achieving a "correct" outcome.

• Build trust in one's own intuition.

• Reflect on the relationship between the individual and imposed structures.

• Create personal meanings through engagement with existing objects.

• Recognize that even small gestures can transform the perception of spaces and objects.

Artistic Objectives

• Create an original artistic intervention within a book.

• Experience a creative process grounded in experimentation.

• Develop an individual visual language.

• Broaden the understanding of the book as an artistic medium.