© Geert Goiris
Nearest Truth Workshops
I'm Just Here for the Gasoline:
An online photographic workshop through the lens of proximal Science Fiction.
Feb 1st - March 22nd 2025
Geert Goiris Feb 1
Maria Lax Feb 8th
Andre Baumecker Feb 15
Jack Latham Feb 22
Alex Bocchetto March 1
Xiaofu Wang March 8
Ben Millar Cole March 15
Martina Hoogland Ivanow March 22
Science fiction is not ‘about the future.’ Science fiction is in dialogue with the present … [the science fiction writer] indulge[s] in a significant distortion of the present that sets up a rich and complex dialogue with the reader’s here and now.
Samuel R Delany
©Maria Lax
Summary:
This workshop is for people interested in world-building that incorporates futurism, the unknown, and relevant phenomena. As we stumble through technological advances, hyper-capitalism, and a potential ecological catastrophe, science fiction offers continued ways to consider possible good and bad outcomes. It offers parallels to investigate our non-fictive dilemmas.
During this eight-week course, we will think about producing work through the prism of science fiction through writing, photography, and alternative media exercises. The instructors have been brought to the course from their respective interactions with topics in which alternative technological fiction and realities influence their work.
Throughout the eight-week online course, participants will be asked to make images related to the themes. The outcome is not to create a complete body of work but to begin placing oneself into the arena where one might develop. We will discuss ideas, have reading and photography assignments, and suggest how to treat the trope of sci-fi with implicit questions of its history and future, if there is to be one.
© Jack Latham
How it works…
We will meet weekly with one instructor, giving a 2-hour lecture per week on their work. We will begin our meetings at 3 pm CET every Saturday between February and March. This schedule intends to inspire the participants, and though the work might be sci-fi adjacent, the overall presentations will cover artistic strategy and vision that is copacetic with the production of new work.
© André Baumecker
We will then review participant work as a group, in a group critique format with that week’s instructor, followed by a recap of the previous week’s reading, writing, and watching assignments.
In closing, each participant will have a one-hour individual review of their work with Brad Feuerhelm from Nearest Truth. He will take two hour-long sessions per week. Each participant may get feedback on this project or existing projects.
© Xiaofu Wang
We will accept am maximum of 16 participants for this course.
The price is 440 Euros+VAT for all eight sessions.
We will be making a new work for this workshop, for the submission please send us
5-10 images of your work and a couple of paragraphs about what you would like to achieve through the workshop.