Every last Sunday of the month the Varia Library and the Rotterdam Electronica Depot hold Read & Repair events. Due to current circumstances, most of them have been in an online format. We invite you to visit our online space, make yourself comfortable, read or repair some things together, and share thoughts and ideas.
In 2021 our Read & Repair sessions will be paired, we will take two months to explore one theme. During May and June 2021, we will be exploring the theme Automated Body. How can we read our bodies? With self-reflective modes of reading and moving we will re-consider our bodies and their actions towards texts and our physical environment. We will discuss movements that cannot be automated, in a machine controlled world.
The text selection for Read in May was made by Angeliki Diakrousi. Angeliki's work engages critically with notions of listening and dynamics of public realms. She is curious, often together with others, about collective memory and public grief, politics of urban landscapes, technological potentialities of voices, high frequencies, critical tools, archipelagic communal practices, networks and infrastructures. She is currently streaming through Varia Broadcasts, hacking within the Feminist Hack Meetings and developing collective platforms in Social Practices of Willem de Kooning Academy. A recent collaboration with Katarina Jazbec, for her film 'You Can't Automate Me', brought her closer to readings on automated bodies.
In this edition of Read participants will be invited to pick a text, read in groups, breath and share their readings through an (un)automated persona.
The selection of the texts aims to bring a perspective on the automation of the human body, that surpasses the idea that 'human' differs from the other animals in that it uses tools. What bodies do we inhabit when they are emancipated through the collectivization of libido, the dismantling of the heterocentric technological perception of sexuality and the 'neighboring' intelligence of the ants?
Texts from:
- Countersexual Manifesto (2018) by Paul B. Preciado
- Full Queerocracy Now!: Pink Totaliterianism and the Industrialization of Libidinal Agriculture (2021) by Comrade Josephine (embodied by Luce deLire)
- Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2002) by Steven Johnson
There is no prior reading needed before we come together to Read, we experience the texts for the first time together and will send out a link for download during the event.
Date: Sunday, 30th May 2021
Time: 11:00-13:00 CEST
Location: https://bbb.constantvzw.org/b/cri-yp7-stj-8oc
NOTE: This reading session will be held in English.
The next themes we'll be looking at in 2021 are Digital Solidarity, and Community Memory.
Read is alternatively guided by a Varia Library group member, the following Read (in the next month) is guided by a guest. Both sessions revolve around the same theme, with different texts and methods to read them. The guest Read session is accompanied a Repair session. The Repair session is a practical exploration of the same theme, led by a guest or a Rotterdam Eletronica Depot member. It is an active workshop you can experiment with at home, and one day in our Depot, when we can physically gather.
Our January-November 2021 programme is funded by Gemeente Rotterdam.