Chloe Zimmerman
Chloe Zimmerman is an artist, filmmaker, writer and educator working across analogue film, video, installation, drawing, language art and pedagogical experiments. Chloe founded and facilitated the Mycological Research Playgroup, a research group for artists to learn about and with fungi, and Meshwork, a study group for poets and scholars with a focus on correspondence, entanglement and relational outcomes. She teaches creative practices in spaces that have included a community biology lab, a floating food forest, public libraries and parks, museums, multilingual learner spaces, community centers, alternative art schools and universities (including Brown University and Massachusetts College of Art & Design). Her films have screened via the Criterion Channel, UnionDocs, Anthology Film Archives, the Poetry Project and MoMA PS1, among other venues. She is a recipient of the LEF Flaherty Fellowship, the SMFA Traveling Fellowship and the UnionDocs Collaborative Fellowship and holds an MFA from Brown University.
Courses
Fall 2023 Courses
DM 2252-01
FUNGI ARTS: MYCELIUM AS MODE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Fungi Arts - Mycelium As Mode is a graduate-level collaborative studio for learning and making in conversation with fungi. Research will happen through local field trips, place-based observation, hands-on experiments, readings, conversations with artists and mycologists, and participant-driven inquiry and artistic practice. We will encounter work by artists who engage with fungi, decomposition and interconnectivity across moving image, sound, text, performance, visual and digital arts. Together, we will attune to local ecosystems through identifying mushrooms in a variety of habitats and observing mycelial growth. Periodic workshops will take place at the RISD Nature Lab, and participants will have the opportunity for extended lab-based work. We will ground ourselves in creative, theoretical, cultural and activist discourses, considering texts by the likes of Anna Tsing, John Cage, Guiliana Furci, Bayo Akomolafe, Merlin Sheldrake, and Macarena Gómez-Barris. Participants will follow their own lines of experiential and critical inquiry to support creative work, sharing findings with the class and teaching one another. Final projects can be in participants’ media of choice. Individual and collaborative work is welcome throughout the semester.
Open to Senior or Graduate Students.
Elective
Wintersession 2024 Courses
LAS E409-101
TEXT AND THE MOVING IMAGE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOP
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Our explorations in this interdisciplinary workshop will center around the interplay of image and text, particularly in film and video. We will tend to the space between words, between images, the movements from one to another, what’s alive in the cracks. How might poetic devices translate to film? How might film theory inspire our writing? What are the myriad ways text, voice and image can layer and entwine?
This workshop is for students interested in practices that live and migrate between moving images and language art. Together we will consider essay films, cinepoetry, video art, installation and live performance. Class time will include screenings, discussions of texts by artists, poets and film theorists, and open-ended prompts for individual and collaborative experiments. No prior experience is necessary, only a desire to engage deeply with films and writing, experiment with new forms and media, and create in thoughtful community.
Elective