DREAD OR ALIVE
4-week online workshop on fear, imagination and creative transformation hosted by multimedia artist Pepper Levain x DREAD zine.
DREAD is a Berlin-based exploration of existentialism (in print, online & offline) through raw, poetic, and irreverent (dis)content. It confronts the unspoken dread that haunts modern life – not to resolve it, but to dwell in it with honesty and solidarity. It’s a space for feeling seen, for waking up, and for breaking from the illusion that we must always strive toward something.
DREAD is dedicated to elevating emergent artists of all backgrounds and building a community of artists that are united by the sheer desire to express their dread, together.
THE WORKSHOP:
What if your DREAD wasn’t something to overcome but to collaborate with? Swing your creative lasso, the sheriff's got glue!
In this workshop we collect dreams, anxieties, insecurities, imposter thoughts and invite them to dance a hot tango in slow-motion. Affirmations to 90’s pop. Name your phobia Stacey. Through writing, journaling, visual exercises, and group work we explore how DREAD can become a starting point for creation rather than paralysis.
How have artists and thinkers across surrealism, existentialism, and contemporary practice from film to music worked with the irrational, the subconscious and the uncomfortable?
Each session combines short theory inputs, guided prompts and collaborative work. Participants build an ongoing personal “Dread Diary”– inner and outer observations evolving over the four weeks.
In the end, you’ll have:
A personal “Dread Diary” (physical or digital)
A developed personal creative piece (poetry, short fiction, collage, drawing, photography, performance, mixed media)
A collected archive of their process
Optional contribution to DREAD zine in print, online or at one of their events (Berlin)
WHO CAN JOIN?
Anyone, whether you have an established creative practice, a desire to start one or simply a need to explore yourself!