Workshop CREATIVE STRATEGIES: BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS: Implementing Fear, the Uncanny, and Hidden Desires in Narrative Storytelling by Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo

How can the parts of ourselves we consider too much, too weird, too bad, or too difficult become the foundation for our most innovative creative work?

This 2-day workshop will focus on learning how to integrate fear, the uncanny, and hidden desires as storytelling devices that express broader themes of belonging, love, and desire in both still and moving imagery. In the workshop Beautiful Monsters, participants will learn how to strengthen their personal storytelling skills by structuring time into a narrative work and by implementing psychological motifs related to fear and the unknown into their creative practice. How can participants integrate stronger thematic material and identify questions that drive their creative work? How can personal and, moreover, social fears such as shame be interrogated in creative practices? Within the frame of the workshop, participants will create their own story in the form of a zine that illustrates a specific desire or fear. The workshop will also observe how different artists position the body in relation to societal “disgust” to challenge and reveal new conditions around sexuality, class, and perceived “difference”, through the work of artists such as Lee Bul, Greer Lankton, director Dario Argento, Michael Richards, and Narcissister. 

Throughout the workshop, participants will concentrate on structuring time to narrate a thematic story that uses suspense and the unexpected to drive a narrative through a variety of visual and textual workshop exercises that support participants’ thematic and aesthetic development. The workshop also aims to strengthen and expand participants’ visual language by exploring chiaroscuro, dramatic scaling, symbolic opposition, and materiality to build compositional tension that holds the audience’s attention. In doing so, the workshop aims to support participants’ visual and narrative storytelling skills through learning time-based story structures and integrating the uncanny as a storytelling arc that communicates universal themes of inclusion and connection, creating resonance among diverse audiences. 

At the completion of the workshop, participants will:

• Learn how to structure a story and identify thematic ideas that drive and unfold through still and moving imagery
• Develop dramatic visual storytelling techniques that coincide with psychological themes based on fear, desire, and the uncanny 
• Be able to independently create and identify story plots, characters, and emotional development using imagery, text, and tempo
• Gain a wider knowledge of artistic work that concentrates on psychological themes that challenge and allude to social taboos and conditions
• Create a visual story that uses fantasy, realism, and the unknown using motion and stillness to hold friction and audience attention
• Be able to translate an analog story into a moving image work 

Day 1: Finding the Monster

10.00 – 10.30 am – Introduction
Introduction of the participants and the workshop. We will observe different artists who work with fear and the uncanny as visual story-telling devices. These will serve as references for the workshop participants in supporting their own visual storytelling and conceptual development. 

10.30 – 11.00 am – Outlining Story Structure, Timelines, and Desires
Participants will create an outline for a story plot that identifies a desire driven by a fear that connects to broader social conditions. Together, we will develop and plot a character’s fear, desire, and drive and structure them on a timeline. This allows participants to understand how time and tempo operate as suspense agents. 

11.30 – 12.15 pm – Studio Visualization
Participants will then visualize their story in the form of a zine through a series of images that are drawn, collaged, and illustrated, giving participants time to design a story that is driven by personal fear and desire. Participants will elaborate on how to express themselves using time and imagery to narrate their story. 

12.15 – 12.30 pm – Reflections of the First Day
We conclude the first day of the workshop and reflect on what we constructed and learned through the first day. 

Day 2: Chasing the Monster 

10.00 – 10.30 – Visual Drama and Movement
We will open the day by returning to the stories developed from day 1 and explore how to visually move through time by working with compositions that experiment with scale, darkness, disruption, and transition. These references will inform the participants’ stories and thematic content that can be transferred to moving image works (video, performance, text, etc.). In doing so, participants will have a greater sensitivity and awareness in choreographing time and space. 

10.30 – 11.45 – Finalizing
Participants will return to their zine/story and incorporate visual motifs that emphasize dramatic composition and tension and will finish executing their zine. In this area, we will work on resolving storyline areas and address any questions or blind spots in the participants’ story. This time is also dedicated to creating visual motifs and symbols that help strengthen the visual vocabulary and story elements in the participants’ zine. 

11.45 – 12.30 pm – Conclusion and Group Critique
Participants will display their work and discuss what they learned in this workshop and how they can continue working and integrating the workshop themes in their future visual work. 

Duration: Coming soon

Hours: Each day from 10 AM – 12:30 PM

Seats: Max. 20

Language: English

Fees: The participation fee is €95 per person including material (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).

Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo is an American artist born in Busan, South Korea. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland, where she majored in painting, and works with video, artist books, installation, sculpture, and neon. Her work stages a frontal assault on conventional thinking to reveal subconscious levels of lust, fetishism, and fear. In her practice, she has delicately unveiled the unruly emotional economy behind intimate topics like HIV, familial violence, incest, domestic abuse, and racism. Drawing on camp horror and popular culture, her work stems from bloodthirsty lesbian vampires, bad romance, South Korean cinema classics, and the Hollywood blockbuster “Terminator 2”.

She has exhibited at The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Halle 14 Center for Contemporary Art Leipzig, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Kunstverein Braunschweig, and Tempesta Gallery Milan with upcoming shows at Museum Aan de Stroom Antwerp and Flucoplasma Festival Hamburg. Her forthcoming video, Steel Hearts, was selected by Visual AIDS for the 2027 A Day With(out) Art film commission program premiering at the Whitney Museum of American Art in winter 2027. She has designed music video sets for Fever Ray and was part of MTV Germany’s 2021 Pride Campaign. Her first monograph, Fatal Attraction, was published by Mousse Publishing in 2023. She has been a visiting lecturer at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, as well as Humboldt University. Her work is included in The Federal Collection of Contemporary Art Germany. 

More information on the Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo Website.