Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab
presents
Meeting at the site of memory
Creative workshop with narrative therapy
practitioner and film consultant Poh Lin Lee
Date: Friday, May 24th , 12 PM- 3 PM
Location: Annie May Swift Hall, Northwestern University, AMS 109
This workshop is a part of the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase
If you attended the screening of Gabrielle Brady’s Island of the Hungry Ghosts on Thur, May 23 at Block Cinema, you will have already witnessed Poh Lin Lee’s sensitive work as a trauma counsellor as featured in the film. Poh Lin, whose practice is rooted in narrative therapy, has since become a sought-after creative consultant for filmmakers and artists. She will guide Northwestern students in an interactive, hybrid workshop that will focus on students’ new projects that can be at any stage, be it in development, production or post-production. Poh Lin will lead the workshop remotely while participants will meet in person to engage with specially designed exercises and participate in small group conversations.
Open to Northwestern students only – Limited capacity, so please sign up as soon as possible.
Click here to register and fill in a short questionnaire.
Snacks & refreshments provided!
___________________________________________________________________
Workshop description provided by Poh Lin Lee
Rememory as in recollecting and remembering as in reassembling the members of the body, the family, the population of the past…Possibility of hope for the present…
– Toni Morrison
Which part of ourselves do we let lead?
– Susan Raffo
To signify (a) special type of recollection, the term ‘Re-membering’ may be
used, calling attention to the reaggregation of members, the figures who
belong to one’s life story …
– Barbara Myerhoff
This unique workshop is an experiential offering to you and the project(s) you are in relationship with to unpack and sift through the multiple stories that run through and around you.
How are our film projects reflections of the ongoing and multiple process of coming into relationship with ourselves – all the different stories that shape who we are becoming?
Drawing from cross discipline collaboration between film, creative practice(s) and narrative therapy practice, Poh designs questions and exercises inviting close nuanced explorations of what it might mean to be engaging with lived experience – yours or those you are collaborating with.
What stories are you expected to include, value, monetise, exclude, subvert or disguise?
What narrows our gaze or limits our possible choices when selecting which stories we prefer to be getting into relationship with?
Narrative Therapy
“Narrative practice” (as it has come to be known) refuses those boundaries that would assign certain people to positions of fundamental passivity, and seeks to embody the belief that all authorship is co-authorship – that the most natural and appropriate form of story-telling is “multi-storied”, seeking not only to acknowledge but to activate and live forward from multiple possibilities which can only be discovered by embracing a radical diversity of points of view. Formulated in the 1970s and 1980s by two social workers, the Australian Michael White and the New Zealander David Epston, it is explicitly driven by a commitment to justice, both epistemic and social. In this, they were largely influenced not only by constructivist psychology, feminism(s) and postmodern theories of power, but above all by what they learned from their collaborators as they sought to establish concrete forms of equality and orient to the co-production of knowledge and practices – in particular through White’s work alongside Aboriginal colleagues and communities in Australia. (Peter Snowdon, https://www.collateral-journal.com/index.php?conversation=1)
Who is this workshop for?
Undergraduate, graduate and Phd students. You are requested to attend the workshop with one particular project in mind regardless of the stage of development (a single fragment is enough!)
BIO: Poh Lin Lee
I grew up with the bird song of kookaburras, galahs and magpies. I grew up with blue tongue lizards and dugites. I grew up with creeks and bush filled with jarrah, gum, banksia and kangaroo paw. I also grew up with humidity thick with spices and pandan leaves. I grew up with pepper plant, monsoon rain and dusky leaf monkeys. Now I am in relationship with snow and rivers. I meet marmots and belugas. Pines, juniper, bluets and lichen.
Poh is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to practice from multiple locations – narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and film/creative consultant. For many years Poh was engaged in co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Poh collaborated on the award winning film Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018) with director Gabrielle Brady and for the past decade has been innovating with narrative therapy to create workshops and consultations that offer anti-oppressive pathways, movements and possibilities in creative projects and practices.
What people say about these workshops…
“The creative narrative workshop with Poh Lin has been the single most important creative development work I have done during the process of making my films. It is a space where you can explore the much deeper and nuanced sides to your creative work that often get left behind in all the ‘practical’ and ‘industry’ focus. This instead is a look at the deep metaphors, dreams, memories and images that come to influence and make up your work. In a way it is a rebuilding of your work – but through the lens of pure imagination. This work with Poh Lin is essential for anyone who is pursuing creative endeavours and engages in artistic process”. Gabrielle, filmmaker, http://www.gabrielle-brady.com
“…(Poh) is one of the most extraordinary guides in my creative and inner work. She helped me overcome some major hurdles with Foreign Body, encouraging my vision for it and enabling me to take it to a wider audience than I’d dared to imagine …” Imogen Butler Cole, Theatre maker, business trainer, public speaker and activist www.imogenbutler-cole.co.uk/
“At the end of the project Poh Lin carried out a long interview about the process of making the film which helped to connect the dots and reflect the events of a three year working process. It not only built the foundation for writing the synopsis and director’s statement, but also helped me to arrive at a deeper understanding of the decisions and learnings I made along the way and how they are both part of my own biography and wider socio-cultural and historical context.” Florian Kunert, filmmaker www.floriankunert.com
“…Poh Lin’s contribution to the project was invaluable. At a point where the creative process had derailed we identified the emotional disconnect causing the problem and explored the options to get the documentary back on track. She immediately understood the heart of the film – the story we were trying to tell – and helped to arrive at some very practical suggestions to move forward…” Eddie Narain, filmmaker, writer, drummer, scholar
“The workshop with Poh Lin inspired me to see my struggles from constructive alternative angles… I learned to overcome tight patterns that eventually held me back from progress including my film project. Especially when reviewing my situation in the Skype session I found out some of my habits I saw as “problematic” simply belong to my natural rhythm and being. Once embracing them I saved so much energy by not fighting them anymore, eventually even using them as a powerful tool…” – Pepper, artist, photographer and author www.pepperlevain.com
About the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase:
In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Northwestern University’s Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab presents the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase – two days of films, conversations, and a creative workshop with film consultant and narrative therapist Poh Lin Lee.
The three featured films include the award-winning hybrid documentary Island of the Hungry Ghosts; a hard-hitting feminist analysis of Hollywood’s cinematic language in Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power; and the regional premiere of the new French fiction film The Rapture (Le Ravissement). Ranging from migration and gendered cinematic shot design to motherhood, the topics of the selected films vary greatly, yet they are tied together by prompting questions about mental health in the context of greater societal and cultural conditions and pressures.
Film screenings and discussions are free and open to the public, the workshop with Poh Lin Lee is reserved for Northwestern students.
About the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab:
Northwestern University’s Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts creatively examines representations of mental illness and health on screen and supports students in the production of original media art works that challenge stereotypes. Student filmmakers, faculty, visiting artists, and the wider public engage with the studio lab in a variety of ways – from the production of new works and courses to public events such as the Chicago Mental Health Film Showcase. We strive to tackle complex topics, destigmatize mental illness, and promote healing through creative innovation and inquiry.