Falschrum Center for the Rejection of Received Forms
This fall at Falschrum Books! This is a learning center dedicated to creative practice across, between, and beyond conventional modes. Our anti-curriculum is a series of experiments to elaborate on the pleasures which are usually peripheral, often found while in pursuit of something else.
We teach in harmony with Falschrum Books’ mission of amalgamating art, literature, and research, in order to overturn expectations and create an environment of possibility and hope. The facilitators at the Center for Rejection teach exactly what they are interested in—this is not a professionalizing space, it is a space of mutation.
We are a collective of autonomous artists interested in teaching and learning for its subversive and convivial potential, and we welcome you to join with us in these practices.
Inaugural Semester - Fall 2025
C. Bain teaches “She Went Too Far: Women and Killing” Sundays starting October 19
Rebekah Smith teaches “Feeling Translation” Wednesdays starting October 15
Magdalena J. Härtelova teaches “Department of Para-professional Poets: Closing-Down Resistance Unit” Mondays Starting Oct 20
These are series of 6 weekly sessions, offered on a suggested donation basis.
Fair price: 300 Euro (sliding scale range 100-450)
Do you want to register or have a question? Fantastic. Reach out to tiresiasprojekt [at] gmail [dot] com
Course descriptions:
“She Went Too Far: Women and Killing”
Picture it: you’ve done something suicidal, homicidal, insane, something which discredits you utterly. Picture it: there is such a thing as women and you are one. This is a reading and writing class (other forms of creative output also welcomed!) working with source material by women who killed someone, or wanted to, or were treated as if they had.
This class looks at writing by women, examining their suffering and aggression as critical political positions, partly in an effort to dethrone “Sadism” as a concept. In this political moment, we do not know what will be demanded of us. Nonviolence and radical softness, attractive and ethically compelling as they may be, are not the only tools. This class asks us to move towards visions and fantasies that are foreclosed by conventional formulations of violence and gender.
This class is open to people of any academic background, creative discipline, gender or sexual expression, or lack thereof. Sharing your own work in the group is supported but not required. The reading expectation per week is between 30 and 50 pages, none of it academic texts.
About your facilitator:
C. Bain is a gender liminal writer and performance artist who works on the body as a site of violence. His plays have been shown at the Tank, Dixon Place, and the LGBT Center in NYC. Previous performances include the Getty Center, MOCA Los Angeles, the Highline, and HKW Berlin. The author of the books Debridement and Sex Augury, he makes books with Ugly Duckling Presse, Falschrum Books, and by himself. He has a studio art MFA from CalArts and a social work degree from Hunter College. He was a 2023–24 Fulbright scholar in Leipzig, researching the end of the world.
***
Department of Para-professional Poets: Closing-Down Resistance Unit
In a world that asks us to define our personal style in three words, we commit to exploring our multiple personalities. In this six weeks bootcamp, we will put ourselves through a series of proven, intentionally haphazard yet elaborate exercises against the closing down of our creative practice. We will coax out our curiosity to the point of the ridiculous. Can we get to know the frankenstein parts of us a little better? What would we say if no one was listening? Would it be possible to be incoherent to ourselves? How do we have to surrender to hear the creature inside whisper: I hear you too, I want you too?
This class is for everyone who feels stuck or pressured to arrive at their destination. It is for everyone writing poetry who feels like an alien, for those of us trying to hide the tentacle being inside, for all monsters, automatons, and ancient hybrids. You will be required to bring three to four poems that you consider representative of your practice to the first meeting. From then on, we just write and make ourselves transfigure. The operative language of the class will be English. We would hate it if you were perfect at it though.
(This is inspired by Brian Conley's Anti-Closing-Down Machine class)
About your facilitator:
Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova is a Czech-Sorbian curator, poet, organizer and a hypnotist. They wrote It Is: You Appeared Once. A Story about Potential Dimensions, Abortion, and the Blurry Appearing and Disappearing of Matter [2022, s.L.A.p] and published their poetry in several anthologies [Bridge, Berlin Untelevized, whyrwehere]. Together with John Broback, Magdalena is also a part of a poetry and synthesized music duo Lightbush. Apart from their poetic practice, you might know them as one of the founders of Casino for Social Medicine or through The Hologram project, a peer-to-peer health protocol practiced from couches all over the world.
***
Feeling Translation
I believe deeply in the power of experimental art and artistic experiments to transform consciousness and communities. To this end, I want to break the frame: reconsider the forms, sites, materials, practices, and audiences of our work; rethink which art for which people when and where, how and why.
– Gabrielle Civil, from Experiments in Joy
Picking up from Gabrielle Civil’s proposal, in this workshop we’ll experiment with sound, syntax, form—and hopefully even joy—to break the frames of both our translations and writing. Through readings and practice, over the course of 6 weeks, we’ll reconsider what it might mean to be “faithful” in translation, and will try a wide range of methods for opening up new possibilities of what in/fidelity might be able to offer. We’ll explore the sensory aspects of our practice, how it feels to walk through the words and sounds and syntaxes of another. We’ll ask questions of what it means to be seen in translation and what it might look like to stay invisible, creeping in from the outside, troubling vision and hiding in the shadows. Some of our guides for this exploration and practice will include JD Pluecker, Jen/Eleana Hofer, Madhu H. Kaza, Don Mee Choi, Sawako Nakayasu, Cal Paule, Gabrielle Civil, John Keene, Mónica de la Torre, Elisa Taber, Urayoán Noel, Anne Carson, and others.
Ideally participants will have some level of connection to at least two languages. The course will be conducted in English, and people with all kinds of English abilities and knowledges are very welcome. Folks who speak 2 or more languages and have never thought of themselves as translators are particularly encouraged to join. The format itself will be a bit of an open-ended experiment, favoring an approach which follows the energy and enthusiasms of the people in the course, and it aims to be fun.
About your facilitator:
Rebekah Smith is a writer, editor, and translator. Her translation of Susana Thénon’s Ova Completa was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She edits books (often in translation) at Ugly Duckling Presse, and makes experiments with language and form with her side project, johan johan editions.