Master Class BECOMING PLANT: The New Weird Divine by Jasmine Reimer

“Becoming Plant: The New Weird Divine” is a 5-day intensive program held in a studio environment hosted by the BERLIN ART INSTITUTE from February 10 – 14, 2025. The masterclass focuses on experimental drawing methods, writing, journaling, and sketchbook exercises applicable to drawing, writing, research, curatorial, collaborative, and other art practices. In this masterclass we will learn about historical and contemporary feminist mythologies, the role of the hybrid and monster as cultural symbols/models, divine feminist symbols and narratives of transformation, in addition to discovering new drawing techniques, and journaling/sketchbook processes. 

The curriculum is based on feminist understandings of transformation, the hybrid body, and the monster as they relate to the weird, eerie, and divine. As concepts, the hybrid and the monster are symbols of resistance – in contrast to our modern ideas of perfection, they exist in a constant state of in-becoming, never finite or complete. As symbols of transformation and change, the hybrid and the monster exhibit relational, material, and spiritual unbounded-ness. Situated outside of normative language, within an incoherent embodied experience, they confront us with what we believe is impossible, challenging self-restricting and damaging ideas imposed upon us by capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism. The monster-hybrid-body is a thriving “mess” of disparate parts, ecstatically grinding and writhing against itself and its surroundings, eradicating socio-politico-geo-biological boundaries with every swath of its furred tail, every multi-directional thrust of its many tentacled arms. As such, the monster poses an existential threat to the need for linear order and Progress, rational sense, gender binaries, single-species policies – in other words, for a “neat and tidy” life. 

Over the course of five days, Reimer will trace the origins of feminist hybrid symbols from Neolithic Goddess mythology to 19th century Italian grotesque murals to contemporary theories of “queering”, and the monster. Focusing on the hybrid and the monster as generative critical symbols and models for change, we will explore the hybrid and the monster as a way to think beyond and through Anthropocentric systems and ideologies, and as a way to discover a new and weird divine – or as Reimer says, a way to “(re)monster” ourselves. We will study what it might mean for humans to “become plant”, become monsters.” (Text & photos by courtesy of Jasmine Reimer )

Day 1
9:30 AM Reception at the BAI
WORSHIP TO BEWILDERMENT: INTRODUCTION TO THE HYBRID BODY

Morning Session:
GROUP INTRODUCTIONS

To begin the class, Jasmine will introduce her art practice including a presentation on her drawing and sculpture methods, research and ideas. The group will also have an opportunity to introduce themselves, their practices and their interest in the course subject.

PRESENTATION AND GROUP DISCUSSION

After the introduction, Jasmine will offer an informal lecture, “From Worship to Bewilderment: Introduction to the Hybrid Body”, with opportunity for group discussion and questions.

Topics include:

• Neolithic goddess symbols and mythology
• The role of the hybrid in Neolithic goddess worship
• The hybrid in Italian and German grotesque eras
• The hybrid in Surrealism and contemporary art

We will discuss the work of archaeologist-linguist-mythologist Marija Gimbutas, cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, and contemporary and historical Surrealist artists including Leonora Carrington, Max Earnst, Remedios Varos, Claude Cahun, Wangechi Mutu, Jennifer Murphy and Ambera Wellmann amongst others. The presentation on hybrid bodies serves as a foundation to discuss the role of the monster in contemporary culture.

Afternoon Session:
Drawing Exercise: “The Language of the Goddess”

After the lunch break, participants will engage in a group drawing exercise guided by Marija Gimbutas’ book “The Language of the Goddess”. The exercise will be carried out individually in participants’ sketchbooks and guided by written prompts created and selected by participants.

Daily Sketchbook Exercise

Participants will have the chance to discuss their work, ideas and share drawings.

The day will end with individual journal/sketchbook entries prompted by end-of-day discussion.

*There will be an assigned reading at the end of the first class, to be discussed as a group the following day.

Day 2
FROM WEEDS TO WANDERING: BECOMING PLANT

Morning Session:
The second class will begin with a group discussion of the assigned readings, with opportunity to read excerpts collectively, ask questions and relate the material to the participants’ practices.

Following a short break, the group will read and discuss Margaret Atwood’s short story “Death by Landscape” and how it relates to ideas of non-anthropocentricism, the hybrid body, anti-capitalism and the environmental crisis.

Afternoon Session:
Drawing Exercise: Out of Order

After lunch Jasmine will lead a group drawing exercise. Jasmine will read Leonora Carrington’s short story, “The Debutante” aloud to the group, spontaneously stopping to guide participants in image creation based on excerpts and key imagery/ideas. Jasmine will read the story in non-linear, non-chronological order and/or otherwise disrupt the text to encourage drawing that is similarly “out-of-order”. Participants will be encouraged to draw large-scale, in a medium new to them, and let go of attachments to outcome.

Drawings will be discussed briefly at the end of the exercise.

Daily Sketchbook Exercise

The day will end with individual journal/sketchbook entry about the day’s discoveries and experiments. Participants will be asked to review the journal entry from Day 1 looking for any similarities, overlaps in subject and ideas.

Day 3
FROM FINITE TO BECOMING: ALWAYS SHIFTING, ALWAYS MOVING

Morning Session:
In the fourth class, we will explore the concepts related to monstering and what cultural theoreticians call “The New Weird Divine” – first thought of as a literary genre stemming from “The New Weird” which was related to 1990s speculative fiction, horror and cross-genre writing. “The New Weird Divine” deals with the wonder and horror at the fringes of human consciousness.” Monstering, as Jasmine understands it, is a practice of seeing the world constantly anew, without the need for a finite definition or single expected experience. Monstering is a way to instill the divine or sacred in the banalites of everyday experience.

The day will begin with in-class readings of excerpts from two key texts, Jack Halberstam’s “Wild Things” and Donna Haraway’s “The Promises of Monsters”. The group will discuss the texts in relation to the course content with opportunities to ask questions.

Afternoon Session:
Listening and Drawing Exercise: Bayo Okomolafe “Facing the Monstrous”

Participants will engage in a listening and drawing exercise. Listening to a podcast with cultural critic, monster expert and poet, Bayo Okomolafe, the group will draw on large pieces of paper pinned to the classroom walls while letting the subject and conversation inform the imagery. Participants will be encouraged to move around the room freely, continuously, drawing with and/or over top of existing drawings, drawings by their classmates, and/or in collaboration with other participants.

Participants will engage in a short discussion of the day’s activities, sharing experiences of drawing and listening and discussing the drawings made during the exercise.

Daily Sketchbook Exercise

The day will end with a journal/sketchbook entry. Participants will be asked to reread the entries from Day 3, looking for related themes, patterns, and questions.

Day 5
(RE)MONSTER ME

Morning Session:
Writing Exercise: Clusters

Using the journal/sketchbook entries made in the previous classes, participants will create new hybrid-monster “clusters” based on their writing. Reviewing their entries, each participant will write a new entry or “cluster” based on the similarities, overlaps and/or connections found between days. The new “cluster” should be an experimental writing piece that reflects the individual’s ideas about hybrids, monsters, the new divine and how it relates to their individual practices.

After finishing the “clusters”, participants will share their writing with the group with opportunity to answer questions and offer feedback.

Afternoon Session:
Durational Drawing: TBA

Participants will then engage in a final durational drawing exercise using the “clusters” as guides for images. Exercise to be designed according to previous exercises, outcomes and participant requests.

The final day of the course will end with a recap and group discussion of the course ideas, themes and activities with opportunity to discuss, ask questions, and reflect on how the materials have impacted participants’ ideas and/or approaches to their work.

Participants will have the opportunity to share their work and ideas and provide feedback.

Hours: Each day from 10 AM – 4 PM (including several breaks & lunchtime)

Seats: Min: 6 | Max: 20 | Language: English

Fees: There is a one-off registration fee of €50. The participation fee is €850 per person (without accommodation).

The fee is VAT-exempt by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery Higher Education and Research pursuant to Paragraph 4 No. (21) (a)(bb) UStG (German Value Added Tax Act).