Strangers’ Prompts: Found Ephemera Generative Writing Workshop

Join Ben Bernthal of Strangers' Poems for a generative writing workshop in conversation with materials from the Shapeshifters image collection. Part art assignment, part Fluxus score, part structured writing time. We’ll dig through slides and film reels, engage with found footage, delineate parameters, and explore our intuition through automatic writing. Poetry or prose, all writers welcome. Filmmakers are also welcome to document these happenings.

Ben Bernthal is a writer and social practice artist whose project Strangers' Poems stages poetic interventions in public spaces several days a week across the Bay Area, using poetry, performance and writing prompts as vehicles for embodied human connection. Through street performance, workshops, and activations at institutions including SFMOMA and the de Young, Bernthal’s work invents ceremonies, invites presence, and creates apparatuses for connection.