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A community experiment in the Allegheny Highlands dedicated to rethinking art and education in uncertain times.​​
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WORKSHOP
LVS workshops ask: What is the role of art in the new abnormal? We focus on art problems and process as a means of disrupting the consumer-product pipeline, reclaiming and redistributing our attention, and exploring the role and value of art in uncertain times. If you're feeling stuck, frustrated, and human, we hope you'll join us.
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While we renovate the schoolhouse, all workshops are online. We welcome everyone, everywhere. Limited financial aid is available with priority for participants living and working in countries outside of the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
2026
FEBRUARY 8-15
Lucrecia Martel is an Argentine filmmaker and screenwriter. Her films, including La Ciénaga (2001), The Holy Girl (2004), The Headless Woman (2008), and Zama (2017), interrogate class, gender, power, and perception through radical use of sound, off-screen space, and narrative ambiguity, ultimately privileging sensory experience over plot. In 2025, she premiered her first feature documentary, Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks), a film that investigates the murder of an Indigenous activist, revealing deeper histories of land conflict and colonialism in Argentina.
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For two consecutive Sundays, Lucrecia will meet with participants to share reflections on her art practice. At the close of the first workshop, she will propose an exercise for the intervening week. ​​
From Lucrecia on her upcoming workshop: Do we have any responsibility for the course of events? I am referring to us, the people of cinema. Who are we in this zombie apocalypse? Perhaps the narrative model that governs the West requires greater audacity today. Insomnia, physical exhaustion, and the saturation of useless and irresistible information threaten our bodies, which long to find some meaning that is worthwhile. We feel powerless in the face of history, seduced and frightened by machines. I would like to share some ideas for the adventure of cinema. Which is also the adventure of the space we abandoned long ago. The adventure of talking to strangers.
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Dates:
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Artist Talks: Sunday, February 8th and Sunday, February 15th, 1-3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
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Commons: On Saturday, February 14th, participants will convene to discuss their work and experiences completing the exercise
Language: This workshop will be conducted in Spanish with English interpretation
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Cost: US $200; limited scholarships are available with priority for participants living and working outside of the US, Canada, and Europe ​​​
MARCH 1-8
Rick Alverson is an American filmmaker, writer, and producer. His films, most recently The Comedy (2012), Entertainment (2015), and The Mountain (2018), aim to animate and engage audiences by embracing, then disrupting traditional cinematic conventions such as narrative, metaphor, and casting. His films explore masculinity, power, and American mythologies.
Rick will meet with participants for the first two Sundays in March to reflect on work that has influenced his art practice and propose exercises (during the workshop and for completion in the week between sessions) aimed at embracing problems, disrupting our patterns, and rethinking our practice.
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Dates:
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Artist Talks: Sunday, March 1st and Sunday, March 8th, 1-3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
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Commons: On Saturday, March 7th, participants will convene to discuss their work and experiences completing the exercise
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Language: This workshop will be conducted in English
Cost: US $175; limited scholarships are available with priority for participants living and working outside of the US, Canada, and Europe
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MAY 31-JUNE 7
Carlos Reygadas is a Mexican filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. He emerged with Japón (2002), followed by Battle in Heaven (2005), Silent Light (2007), Post Tenebras Lux (2012), and Our Time (2018), films that confront spirituality, desire, violence, and family life through radically embodied, often unsettling forms. Known for his use of nonprofessional actors, long takes, natural light, and an unflinching engagement with the physical and metaphysical, Reygadas rejects conventional narrative psychology in favor of direct sensory experience.
This spring, Carlos will meet with participants following the completion of his most recent film. In the week between the two Sunday meetings, participants will complete an exercise. Details forthcoming.
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Dates:
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Artist Talks: Sunday, May 31st and Sunday, June 7th, time TBD (workshops are 2.5 hours)
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Commons: On Saturday, June 6th, participants will convene to discuss their work and experiences completing the exercise
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Language: TBD
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Cost: US $200; limited scholarships are available with priority for participants living and working outside of the US, Canada, and Europe
COMING SOON
Kevin Jerome Everson is an American artist and filmmaker whose work spans cinema, installation, photography, and sculpture, with a sustained focus on Black labor and everyday gestures. His films—including Erie (2010), Park Lanes (2015), and Tonsler Park (2017)—use fixed frames, durational takes, and nonprofessional performers to privilege presence and embodied knowledge over narrative explanation, situating ordinary work as a site of historical, political, and aesthetic attention. Details about Kevin's partnership with LVS are coming soon.
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Caveh Zahedi is an Iranian-American filmmaker, writer, and performer, known for an intensely personal body of work that foregrounds autobiography, self-exposure, and the instability of truth. His films include A Little Stiff (1991), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), In the Bathtub of the World (2001), I Am a Sex Addict (2005), and The Sheik and I (2012), as well as the serial projects The Show About the Show (2015–2017) and The World Is a Classroom (2016–2017), which extend his practice into episodic, self-reflexive forms that collapse the boundaries between lived experience, performance, and filmmaking itself. We will share more details about Caveh's work with LVS soon.
2025
NOT-KNOWING
NOVEMBER 2025
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).
One week before the start of Kirsten Johnson’s workshop, participants asked a friend to visit a thrift store and purchase a large coffee table book—something random or that they felt might be meaningful to us. Each week, Kirsten led participants 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. Together, we asked ourselves: How might artistic approaches help us navigate the everyday? What methods and processes can help us confront, embrace, and transform our own fears about why to make, how to make, what to make?
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Kirsten led this workshop in November 2025. Participants can access all workshop materials here. ​
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FRUITS OF FRUSTRATION
SEPTEMBER 2025
Guy Maddin is a Canadian writer, visual artist, and filmmaker who has directed 12 feature-length films, including The Green Fog (2018), The Forbidden Room (2015), My Winnipeg (2007), and The Saddest Music in the World (2003), as well as innumerable shorts.
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Over a month-long virtual workshop in September, Guy Maddin explored the problems and possibilities of his unique approach to cinema, asking: How many directions are there? If the past is a bottleneck, is the future a paper cup?
Guy led this workshop in September 2025. Participants can access all workshop materials here. ​
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