KNOWING WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH
Georg Simmel's sentence "Knowing who you're dealing with is the first condition for the deal to be possible" serves as the starting point of this reading group, and it inspires a debate about the different agreements, contracts and relationships that accompany and define our everyday life. Contracts, whether explicit or latent, configure the different ways of doing, but always under minimum conditions: the first of them being among whom is the pact established; the second, how is the agreement reached; and the third, what does it cover.
In order to answer the first question, we can say that we would like to establish a deal with those interested in reviewing the terms that regulate our day to day lives, and imagining new models of possible agreements. How are we going to do this? Through the constitution of a stable reading group, extended in time. In the group, we will engage in a discussion from the vantage point of four frames - curating, criticism as a literary genre, social theory, and contemporary dance and choreography - through a selection of texts which could include essays, legal proceedings, conferences, poems, prose, critical reviews, news, interviews, films or audio recordings. What are we going to talk about? We are going to talk about how the definitions of these four areas were defined in specific historical moments, making certain forms and values prevail over others; and about how all this has generated the sum total of practices we are part of.
"Knowing who you're dealing with" is an initiative organized by Bulegoa zenbaki barik, an office of art and knowledge based in Bilbao, on the premise of the previous experience of "EL CONTRATO", a two-year long project in collaboration with Alhóndiga Bilbao, developed in two parts: a reading group and an exhibition. The sessions at the CA2M will be moderated by Tamara Díaz Bringas in dialog with Bulegoa Z/B (the members of which will be part of the first four sessions). The texts will be sent out to participants two weeks before each reading session. The requirement to participate will consist in reading the texts before each session, which should be attended in a participatory spirit.
www.alhondigabilbao.com/programacion/el-contrato
Proposed readings:
Roland Barthes: “Sobre la lectura” in El susurro del lenguaje. Barcelona: Paidós, 1987
Bruno Latour and Émilie Hermant: “Esas redes que la razón ignora: laboratorios, bibliotecas, colecciones”, in Retos de la postmodernidad, Fernando García Selgas y José Monleón, José (ed.). Madrid: Trotta, 1999.
Clifford, James: "Sobre el surrealismo etnográfico", in Dilemas de la cultura. Antropología, literatura y arte en la perspectiva postmoderna. Barcelona: Ed. Gedisa. p.149-188
Gertrude Stein: If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (Si yo le dijera: un retrato completo de Picasso), 1923.
Ingeborg Bachmann: “Música y poesía” (1959) and “Sobre poesía. Segunda conferencia de Fráncfort” (1959-1960). En Bachmann, I.: Literatura como utopía (Selección de escritos críticos). Pre-textos, Valencia, 2012.
John Cage:Lecture on nothing (Conferencia sobre nada), 1959.
Joseph, Isaac: “Dramas” and "El orden de la interacción y su vocabulario" in Erving Goffman y la microsociología. Barcelona: Gedisa. [p. 51-67 and 119-121]
Kunst, Bojana: "Danza y trabajo: el potencial político y estético de la danza", in Lecturas sobre danza y coreografía, Isabel de Naverán and Amparo Écija (ed.). Madrid: Artea, 2013.