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 October and November 2021, we will be exploring the theme Community Memory. Libraries and archives have similar aims, to preserve memory and knowledge and to pass it on to further generations. How can we imagine anti-imperial, anti-racist, community-led practices for disseminating, passing on and maintaining knowledge, customs and beliefs?
READ
Date: Sunday, 31st October 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 text selection and our reading choreography in October was made by Sofia Boschat-Thorez who is an artist, researcher and fellow Varia member. Her work focuses on knowledge organisation systems and the stories which can be extracted from them. She primarily investigates archives, collections, datasets, and museums, with an interest for variability, circulation, community and access. Her practice materialises in installations, performed lectures, printed matter or online interfaces. Sofia has been trained in Fine Arts at the ERG in Brussels and Media Design at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
During this session we will dive into a recent paper by Abeba Birhane entitled Algorithmic injustice: a relational ethics approach. Abeba has recently completed a PhD in cognitive sciences and her research sits at the intersection of complex adaptive systems, machine learning, and critical race studies. The paper investigates ways to address algorithmic injustice that go way beyond efforts to build more inclusive/representative, and “debiased” datasets.
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.