Hello, friends! Welcome to the brand new blog of the MFA Cross Pollination at U of M, an group aimed to encourage collaboration between masters students in Michigan's programs in Creative Writing and Art & Design.
The group was founded 2 years ago by Poetry professor Khaled Mattawa, reportedly after hearing two creative writing students complaining about teaching responsibilities instead of sharing inspired conversation about Art. The program was founded with the hope of encouraging collaboration and even the simpler sharing of ideas and thoughts between artistic communities at the University.
This fall, Zell Fellow Darrell Holnes has upped the ante by encouraging the group to organize a collaborative exhibit of our work that would take place on campus in Winter/Spring 2011, ideally in a multimedia space with television monitors, projectors, wall hanging space and sound capabilities. We're hoping to present a collection of collaborative work that speaks to investigating space, place and home. The topic is broad and we're hoping to present (and encourage you to present) prompts for collaboration.
Participation in this group and blog is open, for now, to all students in these two programs. Hopefully this blog can serve as a forum and also function as a listserv as people share thoughts and ideas. Comment to this post if you'd like me to add you as an author.
At this exciting venture, I'd like to invite artists and writers to post short personal statements about topics or projects people are interested in pursuing. At the meeting today we were thinking this could be a nice way for potential collaborators to find one an other, and for us all to get a sense of the kind of work we're producing and places it might intersect. (This process also might speak to the notion that our very conversations, in that they produce and transverse spaces and boundaries, are also kinds of investigations into place and space.)
This blog is open to the public but only authors can comment. Comment or e-mail me @ browtr@umich.edu and I'll add you as an author/administrator.
Let's share ideas, people! And hopefully in January we can do some sort of project-based event in real space-time. Like, in a room.
Collab commence!
Tessa
