The Story-Telling Eel-Orgy: A Workshop by Noam Youngrak Son

Thursday 3 March 18:50

On Saturday 26 March from 14:00 to 17:00 CET, interdisciplinary queer designer Noam Youngrak Son presents a hybrid storytelling workshop with Sonic Acts. Taking inspiration from the complex and enduringly obscure reproductive cycle of eels, the workshop involves collaborative and generative writing processes, with participants producing short stories about water that will be combined into a riso-printed zine. Participants can either join online or in person at W139 in Amsterdam.

About the Workshop

Eels have sex in such an obscure way that no human has ever witnessed their spawning behaviours in nature. Unlike the linear, fragmented, aimlessly extending routes of humans, eels have drawn numerous circular paths overlapping, over generations, accumulating stories in their cells. The aquatic intercourse of eels resembles the collective process of writing that will take place in this workshop. Led by Noam Youngrak Son, an interdisciplinary queer designer, ‘The story-telling eel-orgy’ is a workshop that turns its participants into freshwater eels gathered in the Sargasso Sea to procreate. As sexually aroused eels, every participant in the workshop will produce short stories packed in ‘reproductive cells’, based on their lived (or fictional) experiences around water. In the workshop, the process of blending bodily histories will be demonstrated using a simple algorithm called a Markov Chain, a model ‘describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event’. Applied to generative writing, a Markov chain can be used to find the most probable phrase that will come after a specific phrase—in other words, an endless stream of text starting from the first word. The short stories created by participants will become the source materials for the algorithm to construct hybrid myths, like infant eels emerging from the Sargasso Sea. The ‘offspring’ will be published into riso-printed zines at the end of the workshop, which all participants will get to take home. Noam Youngrak Son is a designer based in Ghent and Eindhoven. They inscribe myths for the underrepresented in various mediums, from books to performances to 3D printed sex toys. They are excited about the unexpectedness that a well-designed fiction can open up, and the critical political discussions that it may cultivate. Their identity as a queer person of colour is one of the crucial axes of their design practices.

Practical information

Participants can either join in person onsite at W139 in Amsterdam, or they can join online. All participants, whether joining in person or online, will get a copy of the zine following the workshop. Participants will need a phone, computer, or tablet to participate in the workshop onsite. Date: Saturday 26 March 2022 Onsite location: W139, Warmoesstraat 139, Amsterdam* *Please note that the location is not wheelchair accessible. Time: 14:00 - 17:00 CET Cost: €10 onsite participation (full price) – SOLD OUT €5 onsite participation (discount tickets are available for queer, trans*, BIPOC identifying participants) – SOLD OUT €3 online participation A link to purchase tickets will be sent via email on completion of the sign up form.

Sign up for the workshop by 23 March

Sign up via Homerun and receive ticket options by e-mail. All applicants accepted. The few questions and optional CV that we ask for are simply to get to know you! We ask for an address so that we can send you a zine after the workshop. This workshop forms part of a new series of events, Sonic Acts Practicum, focused on informal education and sharing knowledge between artists and researchers.

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