Short Description
David Gersten leads an intensive twelve-week studio program rooted in his seminal approach to education as an art form in itself, where our studios become open sites of inquiry, where listening, making and perception converge to form a practice of deep attention and transformation.
There is now an urgent need for exploratory works of ethics and imagination, and it is for all of us to find the questions, works, and movements of our time; to listen to unheard voices, to search for unknown linkages, to ask questions that have not yet been imagined, and to create transformations that embody our best hopes and aspirations. Long Tone: Thesis Studio with David Gersten is a space for exploratory, uncontainable, and independent works ignited by the poetic imagination: works that heighten and expand our spatio-material imaginations. It is a space of inquiry into the human condition and a place for creating the world anew.
In this inaugural offering, Long Tone opens the door to a larger initiative: a cross-disciplinary studio experience in which participants construct their own curriculum as a situation, inhabited, embodied, and grown across time. This is the first of many programs that, together, will begin to shape a new kind of year-round school: an interdisciplinary, immersive space for making, thinking, and listening. These programs will take form as onsite, online, and hybrid semesters, seasonal intensives, and long-form studio experiences, each contributing to the construction of a school built not from institutional protocols, but from people, works, ideas, and atmospheres. Unaccredited by design, this evolving school offers a new paradigm for education, one rooted in rigorous inquiry, situated practice, and shared creative transformation.
Class & program overview
The program is structured around three core weekly components, outlined in more detail below. Together, these components form a comprehensive framework for sustained and immersive studio practice. This includes individualized mentorship, collective inquiry, and expansive interdisciplinary engagement. The rhythm of these elements creates the conditions for participants to build their studio as both a personal site and a shared situation.
Studio Visits
Studio Visits are one-hour, weekly, one-to-one sessions with David Gersten. These meetings form the core of the program’s individualized and ongoing mentorship model. They are not institutional critiques or formal check-ins. Instead, these are reflective and open conversations shaped by the participant’s evolving questions and creative process. Whether participants bring drawings, writings, constructions, performances, readings, or loosely formed thoughts, these sessions offer time to explore ideas in depth. Over the course of the program, the studio becomes understood not only as a physical place but as a situation shaped by perception, intention, and presence. This is where a thesis begins, not as a fixed concept or a deliverable, but as a lived inquiry developed through conversation and care.
Listening Non Critiques
Listening Non Critiques are weekly, three-hour group sessions where all Long Tone participants come together to share work, questions, and ideas in an environment of attention and openness. These sessions are not organized around critique or correction. Instead, they emphasize listening as a creative and generative practice. Participants may share in any form they choose, including discussion, gesture, silence, readings, early sketches, or performance. The focus is on what a work reveals, what it invites, and what questions it raises, rather than on how it might be evaluated. Every voice helps shape the tone and direction of the group studio. Listening becomes a shared methodology that supports mutual recognition, creative risk, and collective growth.
Seminar
Seminar is a two-hour weekly session led by David Gersten. It offers a wide ranging and interdisciplinary space for shared inquiry. Rather than following a fixed syllabus, the seminar moves freely through over fifty thousand years of human thought and expression. It draws from areas such as art, architecture, literature, film, theater, music, science, mathematics, technology, philosophy, politics, and religion. The purpose is to open questions and draw connections between individual practices and larger intellectual, historical, and cultural frameworks. Participants are invited to situate their own work in this broader landscape, discovering new perspectives and relationships. The seminar helps develop a shared vocabulary and critical foundation, while allowing new ways of seeing and thinking to emerge through the group’s collective presence.
Eligibility
Long Tone: Thesis Studio with David Gersten is open to all people pursuing any discipline or mode of expression. It is designed for individuals at a pivotal moment in their creative or academic life. It is particularly suited for, though not limited to:
- Those entering the final thesis or dissertation year of academic studies (whether undergraduate or graduate)
- Those who have recently completed a degree and are looking to delve further into or beyond the cumulative project they worked toward
- Those who have been away from their creative practice or taken time away from formal education (for example, a leave of absence, a pause in studies, time off to reflect and regroup) and are looking to reconnect with their work in a meaningful way
The program welcomes artists, makers, and thinkers of all kinds who bring with them a project, a question, or a body of work they are ready to explore more deeply. Participants may arrive with something completely undefined, just beginning, mid-process, or nearly complete. Regardless of stage, the program offers a space to reexamine and reengage, to explore new readings and directions, and to move the work toward a more resonant form.
Open to practitioners across disciplines, including visual arts, performing arts, architecture, literature, film, design, music, and the humanities, the invitation is to construct a studio of your own. This is a space to inhabit your questions, to shape the conditions of your practice, and to build the room that builds you.
Tuition & Scholarships
The total cost of the program reflects a three-month immersive experience at Arts Letters & Numbers, combining housing, studio access, shared meals, seminars, critiques, one-on-one sessions with David Gersten, and guest artist workshops.
Tuition Breakdown:
Program Fee: $2,800
Covers seminars, critiques, individual studio visits, guest artist workshops, and access to all ALN campus facilities.
Housing & Studio Package (includes one communal meal per week):$3,600 — Shared Room$4,800 — Private Room
Total Cost (3-month program):$6,400 — Shared Room$7,600 — Private RoomA limited number of scholarship positions are available. If you would like to be considered, please indicate this clearly in your application and include a brief note about your financial need.
How to Apply
Online Application
Entry Fee
Program fee: (S) $6,400 – (P) $7,600
Location
NY, United States
Timeline
- Application Deadline: 31 August 2025
- Semester Studio: September 15-December 5, 2025
Website Link: https://www.artslettersandnumbers.com/long-tone
