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 our thoughts and ideas.
In 2021 our Read & Repair sessions will be paired, we will take two months to explore one theme. During January and February 2021, we will be exploring the theme Wireless Imagination. Transmission, radio, resonance and orality are at play in these sessions, where we will learn from, and act on, methods used in activist radio and the polyphonous histories of radio art.
On Sunday 28th February we have a REPAIR, led by Dennis de Bel followed by a READ with Agustina Woodgate.
REPAIR
The Repair session of this theme is hosted by Dennis de Bel with the contribution of Danny van der Kleij.
Dennis de Bel (1984, Rotterdam, NL) is a hands-on artistic researcher, educator and radio amateur. His practice oscillates between various configurations of collaborations focusing on collectively exploring hardware, software and a plethora of waves.
In this live soldering session (on Jitsi) Dennis and Danny will take you through the steps to recreate a simple analog television transmitter as designed by Tetsuo Kogawa. We will cover the actual construction of the transmitter, what to transmit and how to receive the signal. In the end we will take requests from the audience.
READ
The text selection and our reading choreography in February was made by Agustina Woodgate.
Agustina Woodgate (1981, Argentina) practice focuses on the politics of landscapes and infrastructures as public geography. She often collaborates with a team of international agents testing new ways of exploring the networked planet, developing strategies that can seize new opportunities, exposing and reprogramming tools and information technologies. She broadcasts with radioee.net, pub.sandberg.nl and tvgov.info.
Participants can choose to read all or select any of the short texts below:
- Urban Auscultation; or, Perceiving the Action of the Heart by Shannon Mattern
- The Airocean World Town Plan -4D (pages 70 - 75)
- Orban Space (pages 450-455)
- The Roots of Coincidence by Arthur Koestler (pages 38-41, 131-133, 138-140)
- The Hidden Language of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (pages 1-30)
This selection brings together architecture, public common space and alternative means of comunication.
Tune in to http://varia.zone/en/pages/stream.html for an experimental multi port broadcasting session with the contribution of Angeliki Diakrousi.
In this sonic session we will read all together over the multi-port stream creating a collaborative response. The radio trasnsmission will brings us together through a broadcasted soundscape. The readers are invited to send voice notes via telegram translating excerpts over audio clips (whispering, screaming, languages, special fxs, sounds, noises, etc.) During this session readers become listeners and radio hosts. No preparation is required.
Interaction/Reaction:
You can send the audio files in two ways: through a Telegram group or through a shared folder.
A Telegram Group has been created for participants to send their audio clips.
To join the group please click https://t.me/joinchat/UIiPn-4giRHKiG3T from your mobile. You will have to use the app Telegram.
Or you can also upload files to this URL: https://cloud.disroot.org/s/6ZGErPzJnypqyHq
All voice messages sent to this group will be deleted after the live radio show.
A recording of the radio transmission will be saved and archived.
REPAIR
Date: Sunday, 28th February 2021
Time: 13:00-14:30 CET
Location: https://meet.greenhost.net/readandrepair
NOTE: This repair session will be held in English.
READ
Date: Sunday, 28th February 2021
Time: 19:00-21:00 CET
Location: http://varia.zone/en/pages/stream.html
NOTE: This reading session will be held in English.
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.
The further themes we'll be looking at in 2021 are Digital Solidarity, The Automated Body, Sense-full Pedagogy 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-September 2021 programme is funded by Gemeente Rotterdam.