Free Saturday Workshop #3 — Transformation: Language as adaptation (expressions of humor and absurdity)

Free Saturday Workshops at Kunstinstituut Melly

Education & Participation Space

Since the opening of our Education & Participation Space, Kunstinstituut Melly has become a vibrant place for workshops, lectures, and collective learning experiences. Every Saturday, we organize free workshops open to everyone, where creativity, connection, and personal expression are at the heart of the experience.

In January 2026, the Saturday workshops led by Nurdan Ariöz in Key Stories gave participants the space to explore personal memories, images, and sounds. These contributions came together in a collective story archive and small tangible objects, inviting reflection on their own experiences and meaning.

In February 2026, the Saturday workshops led by Sabrina Schoop in Poetic Diaspora gave participants the space to experiment with language, words, and personal memories.

In March 2026, the workshops led by Veronika Babayan explore multilingualism, migration, and memory through dried fruit. Participants create fruit chains inspired by expressions from different languages, reflecting on care, loss, humour, and change. Language becomes something you can see, touch, and assemble. Come experience a language that cannot be expressed in words!

The Education & Participation Space functions as a place for learning, exchange, and collective imagination, where participants meet each other, share ideas, and explore new forms of creation together.

Workshop Series — Veronika Babayan

Kunstinstituut Melly will host in March 2026 a special workshop series led by Veronika Babayan. Language is transmitted from mouth to mouth, from tongue to tongue. In Tip of the Tongue, participants explore multilingualism, migration, and memory through collective and sensory processes of making. By cutting, layering, assembling, and working with material, language shifts beyond literary fluency. Expressions from different languages are translated into visual and tactile forms. Multilingualism is approached as non-linear, interrupted, and constantly adapting.

The first workshop focuses on transmission and inheritance through expressions of care. The second addresses rupture, silence, and loss. The third explores transformation, working with humour, hybridity, and absurdity to imagine how language survives and shifts across time and distance.

The workshop series requires no prior knowledge and is accessible to anyone interested in multilingualism.

Workshop #3 — Transformation: Language as adaptation (expressions of humor and absurdity)

In the third and final workshop, participants explore how language adapts. Using dried fruit, twine, and collected materials, they create chains that embody invented words, mixed languages, or untranslatable jokes. Through this playful and sensory process, participants reflect on how language changes, combines, and persists, creating a personal and collective experience of linguistic transformation.