One week before the start of Kirsten Johnson’s workshop, each of us will ask a friend to visit a thrift store and purchase a large coffee table book—something random or that they feel might be meaningful to us. Each week, Kirsten will lead us in remaking this book: cutting, pasting, writing, collaging, reshaping its contents through reflections on our own art practice with doubt and uncertainty as our guides.

We’ll ask ourselves: How might artistic approaches help us navigate the everyday? How can not-knowing give us a way forward? What methods and processes can help us confront, embrace, and transform our own fears about why to make, how to make, what to make? In Not-Knowing, Kirsten will help us embrace the materials of the world as we find them to move through increasingly uncertain times. 

Kirsten Johnson is an American filmmaker and cinematographer whose work includes Cameraperson (2016) and Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020), which earned her Sundance, Primetime Emmy, and International Documentary Association awards. As a cinematographer, Johnson has worked on more than 40 feature documentaries, including Citizenfour (2014) and The Oath (2010).