The Breaking Project

Creative Disruptions in Thinking, Writing, and Creating

Welcome to The Breaking Project!

This is a resource for the sharing of writing, images, and film that come from experiences of Breaking — Breaking away, in, up, through, down, out, . . . ground, free, . . . the cycle, the spell, the mold. Breaking is a way to:

• reconsider the frameworks we come from
• view the viewing-lenses we look through
• disrupt to create.

Radical, conscious change is:multi-media and interdisciplinary.  Any form that interests you interests us. Please take a look at what’s on the Project now, participate in any of the discussions, and then create your own Breaking Project! 

In addition to reading/viewing, there are (at least) 4 ways to participate in this project:

You can ADD A PIECE.

You can COMMENT ON or COMMENT TO EXTEND A PIECE.

You can USE THE WORKBOOK  to CATALYZE your and/or your students' own writing, creating/artmaking, and breaking . . . and/or to offer writers/artists feedback on their work/enter into dialogue with them.

You can ADD TO THE WORKBOOK new prompts, catalyzing agents, queries, ways out, ways in . . . 

This is an open project--

it is not finished--

we want you to send us your work--

so email us!

Yours,

Alice Lesnick and Emma Wippermann, editors

 alice.lesnick@gmail.com and emmawipp@gmail.com

CONTENTS, so far

Hungry Ghosts, Jody Cohen

An Introduction: Breaking into Breaking, Alice Lesnick

“...I’ve called this sourcebook Breaking because it focuses on the necessity and creativity of the work people do to break bonds, patterns, and histories; break into new thoughts and forms; and in so doing change themselves, what they write and know, and the world.”

Breaking: A Life Story in 10 Fragments,  Anne Dalke

Been a Long Time Leaving, Rob Goldberg

Learning from Extinctions . . . and Life, Paul Grobstein

The Role of Smoking Cigarettes in the Education of a Young Jew, Jody Cohen

Walking Poem, Alice Lesnick, Emma Wippermann,

       and You, if you want - comments are not only comments but extensions.

Breaking Down, Samantha Martinez

4-Panel Image Sequence, Elizabeth Catanese

       Image 1     Image 3

       Image 2     Image 4

It's about finding a whole and releasing a hole. Breaking happens first. 

untitled, Jessye Cohen-Dan

Truth and Power in Education, Bharath Vallabha

Breaking in Six Degrees, Hallie Garrison

untitled, Elizabeth Catanese

breaking the surface, breaking through surfaces  . . . freedom to go way down deep, into the unknown and usually unseen . . . down, through, then -- ? . . . the ripples out . . . 

WORKBOOK

Use these catalysts to work and (p)re-visit Breaking pieces:

-- explore, examine, use, and create prompts

-- ask and answers questions with yourself and others to teach and learn 

General Breaking Prompts

General entry questions, quotes, and provocations for beginning disruption -- please feel to add to these.   Their purpose is to invite visions and revisions -- re-mappings, new or dissolved boundaries, sudden illuminations. . .   They aim to help create meaning, dialogue, new fragments and new [re]compositions.

Piece-Specific Breaking Prompts

Click on a given link below to find, and if you like add, prompts for further writing, thinking, and creating that take-off from a specific piece. 

Workbooked: Learning from Extinctions . . . and Life, Paul Grobstein

Workbooked: 4-Panel Image Sequence, Elizabeth Catanese

Workbooked: Breaking: A Life Story in 10 Fragments, Anne Dalke

Workbooked: The Role of Smoking Cigarettes in the Education of a Young Jew, Jody Cohen

Workbooked: Truth and Power in Education, Bharath Vallabha

RESOURCES

sources of inspiration           pedagogical groundwork           linked endeavors       community connections        (others you add)

PEOPLE/BREAKING COMMUNITY 

Including you? As Ursula Le Guin says in The Dispossessed, we are "Members of a community, not elements of a collectivity" and "there [are] as many emotions [here] as there [are] people."