STARVING ARTISTS 101
A Workshop for Ontologically Impoverished Creatives
The Comic Muse Academy Proudly Presents…
STARVING ARTISTS 101
A Workshop for Ontologically Impoverished Creatives
Instructor: Dr. Daniel McInerny
Time & Location: regularly at danielmcinerny.substack.com
Spring 2024
COURSE SYNOPSIS
The aim of this workshop is to awaken artists, art lovers, and miscellaneous “creatives” to the possibility of their ontological impoverishment. What is “ontological impoverishment”? Simply: a paucity of being (ontos in the ancient Greek); an alarming “thinning out” of reality; an inability or perhaps even refusal to contend with the self’s fascinating but too often frustrating attempts to make itself sovereign by blocking itself from the world beyond the self—with the result that the substance of one’s art, and indeed one’s own substance, is gravely diminished. The workshop is aimed both at Beginning Students, i.e., those who have just begun to realize their impoverishment (if only by feeling a certain nausea after bingeing an entire season of their favorite Netflix series); and Intermediate Students, i.e., those who have achieved a certain expertise, and perhaps even financial success, in making the puppets that cast shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave. As this is a workshop, students must be prepared for those who have already managed to escape their ontological impoverishment to come down and release them from their bondage, turn them around, and drag them (most likely by the hair) kicking and screaming up the rough, steep path to freedom. 3 credits.