// FULL // Creating Fiction from the Absurdity of Reality

The workshop will explore ways for dissecting our perception of reality into layers: the known and the unknown; the noticeable and the unnoticeable; the seen and the unseen, the rational and the irrational.The goal is to rearrange the elements of what we perceive as reality in unusual ways to create a new understanding of it by creating art about it.The students will engage in individual and collective exercises to create visual or literary narrative structures using still and moving image, language, performance, storytelling and any other medium they wish to work with. The focus is on moving forward from deciphering the oddities of daily lives to finding the artistic language to make sense of them and communicate them. The workshop will use references that span ancient philosophical allegories to quantum physics to music videos and mainstream Hollywood movies. The main focus will be to find meaning in the absurdity and unexpectedness of the mundane events and objects we are surrounded by in our daily lives.
Participants are asked to bring the following:

1. A personal object that may seem mundane but has a personal story that bears more meaning than may appear. 
2. Paper, scissors, markers and tape
3. If available, an artwork in any form that they never finished because it stopped being relevant or didn’t make sense after they started it.
4. Computer

The workshop will be conducted in English

Basim Magdy was born in Assiut, Egypt. He lives and works in Basel and Cairo. Magdy is an artist and filmmaker who enjoys working with different mediums including painting, photography, film, text, poetry, sculpture and installation. He is particularly interested in working with the expanded forms of any medium and in exploring unusual ways of constructing narratives to respond to the absurdity of everyday life.His work appeared recently in solo exhibitions at museums such as Frac Bretagne, Rennes; KM21 Museum for Contemporary Art, The Hague;  Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg; M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; MCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome; Jeu de Paume, Paris and in group shows at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Castello di Rivoli, Torino, New Museum Triennial, New York; Henie Onstad Museum, Oslo; CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Taipei Biennial; MEDIACITY Seoul Biennial; 13th Istanbul Biennial; Sharjah Biennial 11 and La Triennale: Intense Proximity, Palais de Tokyo, Paris among others.His films were screened at Tate Modern, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam among many others.