Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, this writing workshop invites participants to use the page as a container for an assortment of forms, feelings, and ideas. The event will open with a screening of A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), a surreal blend of Daoist allegory, Cantonese opera tropes, and contemporary drag. Employing absurdity and non-linearity, the film revels in the porosity of binaries such as waking and dreaming, mind and body, to embrace the possibilities that emerge from their slippages. Drawing on the film’s themes, writer Khairani Barokka will facilitate a collective discussion and writing session on speculative storytelling and queer worldmaking. Participants are encouraged to share their work, and a digital zine made up of contributions will be distributed after the event.

This is the inaugural edition of the programming series SCREEN//WRITING presented by Counter Archives.