Join Thirdspace Artist & Mentor-in-Residence Erdem Taşdelen for Staging Narratives, a three-part master class series exploring graphic design, moving image, and sound as tools for reimagined storytelling.
Each session draws from a project in Taşdelen's own practice, using it as a springboard for hands-on work in Adobe Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Audition. Through hands-on exercises, participants will develop skills in writing, image-making and sound design, while approaching narrative as a flexible and experimental process.
Masterclasses:
🗓️ Saturdays July 4, 11 and 18
🕜 1:00 to 4:00 pm
📍 OCAD University
🔗 Register for all workshops here
Free Artist Talk:
🗓️ Wednesday, July 29
🕜 5:00 to 7:00 pm
📍 OCAD University
🔗 RSVP for talk
Masterclass Price:
| 3-workshop package: | $300 + applicable taxes |
| Per workshop: | $120 + applicable taxes |
Workshop 1: Movie Posters
July 4 from 1:00 - 4:00pm
This first session will draw from Tasdelen's project Unmade Films, which includes posters for imaginary movies.
Using Adoble Illustrator and Photoshop to design posters for films that they will never make, participants will learn how writing and image can articulate narratives that remain speculative, fragmentary and provisional. Participants will be introduced to techniques for using text to create narrative frameworks, employing the ready-made form of a movie poster to “stage” their narratives.
By the end of this workshop, participants will take home a printed poster.
🔗 Register for workshop 1
Workshop 2: Moving Image
July 11 from 1:00 - 4:00pm
This first session will draw from Tasdelen's work A Moving Target, inviting participants to use their cell phone cameras to record short video fragments around campus. Focusing on light, texture, colour, and movement rather than plot, the exercise cultivates attentiveness to the world around us, and skills for intentional framing. Selected clips will be reviewed together, exploring how fragments can carry narrative potential without resolution.
In this session, participants will:
🔗 Register for workshop 2
Workshop 3: Sound Design
July 18 from 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Drawing inspiration from the sound component of Taşdelen's THIRDSPACE residency project, this session explores sound as a narrative device. Participants will learn basic recording and editing techniques, layering voice, found audio and ambient soundscapes to construct atmospheres that guide perception and emotion.
In this session, participants will:
🔗 Register for workshop 3
About Erdem Tasdelen, 2026 Summer Artist and Mentor-in-Residence:
Erdem Taşdelen is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. Through the use of diverse materials and media, he constructs semi-fictional narratives that incorporate unique historical figures, events and texts to implicate contemporary sociopolitical realities. At the core of his artistic practice lies an exploration of how narrative interacts with its form, and how different forms “stage” narratives.
Taşdelen has exhibited at venues including The Power Plant, Aga Khan Museum and Mercer Union in Toronto; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; VOX, Montréal; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg; and Pera Museum, Istanbul. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Delfina Foundation and Studio Voltaire, London; Hangar, Lisbon; Rupert, Vilnius; and KulturKontakt, Vienna. He was awarded the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Visual Arts by the Canada Council in 2016, the Charles Pachter Prize by Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2014, long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2019, and selected as a finalist for the Taoyuan International Art Award in 2025.
