Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, November 23 - December 14, 2025
1:00 - 2:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
In this workshop-oriented course, we will invent speculative mythologies rooted in the natural world.
Together, through hands-on creative making, we'll listen deeply to nature's voice so we can craft stories that address our challenging era and offer optimistic new possibilities for transformation.
Today, many prevailing myths center around heroes, winners, and conquerors—fear-driven, dystopian narratives where a lone individual saves the world. These patriarchal stories too often perpetuate cycles of scarcity and violence, merely replacing one system of oppression with another. Instead of inspiring genuine change, they can keep us stuck in destructive loops.
Reinventing mythology can be an essential part of changing our world, both personally and in our society at large. As Joseph Campbell said: "The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world"
By connecting to and listening to plants, animals, fungi, and bodies of water, we can find new stories that foster connection and renewal in a fresh way. Drawing inspiration from science and biology, and science fiction, surrealism and speculative art, we will ask: How can we co-create mythologies—through story, image, art-making and ritual—with and about the more-than-human world?
The course is inspired by how artist Tanja Thorjussens created a new mythology around common eelgrass (Zostera Marina) for her project "Zostera Marina`s Song of Increase" at the Helsinki Biennial with LOCUS.
Through scientific and artistic research, she visualized the goddess of Zostera Marina, made art and enacted performance rituals to activate their presence in the world. This experience of creating myth with a plant entity was especially rewarding and inspiring for her. How many other myths are waiting to be told? What other entities are waiting to be resurrected and blossom?
In this class Tanja Thorjussen will share how she approached connecting to the plant and developed the mythology, and will lead us in creating your own personal mythic universe with the more-than-human.
Classes will be workshop-based, with plenty of time for drawing, writing, and discussion. We will experiment with different media—no previous art experience required.
Tanja Thorjussen (b. 1970) is an artist living in Oslo (NO). Her artistic medium spans between drawing, sculpture, performance and art in public space. Through speculative research her artistic practice revolves around how ancient art and nature can inform the present.
Images: Lady Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, as Cynthia, Maria Cosway from 1782; Leonora Carrington., “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953; Remedios Varo, The Creation of Birds, 1957
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, November 23 - December 14, 2025
1:00 - 2:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
In this workshop-oriented course, we will invent speculative mythologies rooted in the natural world.
Together, through hands-on creative making, we'll listen deeply to nature's voice so we can craft stories that address our challenging era and offer optimistic new possibilities for transformation.
Today, many prevailing myths center around heroes, winners, and conquerors—fear-driven, dystopian narratives where a lone individual saves the world. These patriarchal stories too often perpetuate cycles of scarcity and violence, merely replacing one system of oppression with another. Instead of inspiring genuine change, they can keep us stuck in destructive loops.
Reinventing mythology can be an essential part of changing our world, both personally and in our society at large. As Joseph Campbell said: "The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world"
By connecting to and listening to plants, animals, fungi, and bodies of water, we can find new stories that foster connection and renewal in a fresh way. Drawing inspiration from science and biology, and science fiction, surrealism and speculative art, we will ask: How can we co-create mythologies—through story, image, art-making and ritual—with and about the more-than-human world?
The course is inspired by how artist Tanja Thorjussens created a new mythology around common eelgrass (Zostera Marina) for her project "Zostera Marina`s Song of Increase" at the Helsinki Biennial with LOCUS.
Through scientific and artistic research, she visualized the goddess of Zostera Marina, made art and enacted performance rituals to activate their presence in the world. This experience of creating myth with a plant entity was especially rewarding and inspiring for her. How many other myths are waiting to be told? What other entities are waiting to be resurrected and blossom?
In this class Tanja Thorjussen will share how she approached connecting to the plant and developed the mythology, and will lead us in creating your own personal mythic universe with the more-than-human.
Classes will be workshop-based, with plenty of time for drawing, writing, and discussion. We will experiment with different media—no previous art experience required.
Tanja Thorjussen (b. 1970) is an artist living in Oslo (NO). Her artistic medium spans between drawing, sculpture, performance and art in public space. Through speculative research her artistic practice revolves around how ancient art and nature can inform the present.
Images: Lady Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, as Cynthia, Maria Cosway from 1782; Leonora Carrington., “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953; Remedios Varo, The Creation of Birds, 1957
