Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
We encourage participants to bring an item each week—a T‑shirt, a pair of jeans, or any textile you’re ready to transform, repair, or experiment with.
Each session is free, open to all skill levels, and guided by artists who delight in subversion and play. Come for one or come for all—together we’ll stitch, alter, repair, and imagine new forms of expression.
Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
October 11: “OPEN AT YOUR OWN RISK”
Taking inspiration from Schaden (Damage), an artist magazine produced in East Berlin in the 1980s, we will make a sealed “magazine” that can only be read by cutting open the edges of the envelope that contains it. In exemplary samizdat fashion, Schaden magazines were handmade and limited in scope, with just 15 copies of each issue produced. The magazine contained poems, prints, charts, musings, photographs and ephemera, including pages made of foil and tissue paper. Hidden, secret, and filled with discarded and surprising materials…what’s not to love?!
We are approaching Days of the Dead and Halloween, times when many remember their lost loved ones. Perhaps your Schaden-style magazine is a memorial book to one you’ve lost (person, pet, idea, place, etc), or perhaps yours is a continuation of the series pieces we made last week. Like the Schaden magazines, ours will be an envelope with pages inside that are stapled/sewn/fixed on the binder side so that the envelope has to be cut open for the magazine to be read. We will have a collection of envelopes of various sizes, including some that are absurdly small and others that are quite large. Perhaps your Schaden-style magazine will fit in your back pocket; perhaps yours will need a custom-made envelope because it is so large. As always, see where these ideas lead you and go with it! Your envelope (and its contents) may be made of cloth, requiring an unraveling to open, or perhaps your envelope will be an idea of an envelope rather than a physical thing. Will yours have a warning on it, as I’ve titled this week’s project, or will yours have an invitation, like a bottle of potion in Alice’s Wonderland, asking someone to “Open Me?” Or perhaps yours will have only an address or no marks at all.
About the teaching artist
Kate Ingold is an LA-based artist and poet working with the discarded, the damaged, and the worn out. Materials and methods include textiles, collage, photography, video, ceramics, and performative installation. She works in series driven by conceptual concerns and is currently making work in two interwoven projects: Relics for Future Rituals and Damaged Goods/Small Repairs.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission. Limited seating is available on a first come, first served basis.
An ADA-accessible entrance to the Wende Museum Community Center is available through the garden gate from the parking lot. This gate will be opened approximately 15 minutes prior to the program.