Reading group

The evening we read Delicious Monster, a short story by the Jamaican-born Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson, we asked the question what does a monster know and what does a monster taste like, and what does it mean to read from knowledge or from taste. We will talk about monsters, birds, demigods, humans, non-humans and plants, like monstera deliciosa which is also known as fruit salad plant, Swiss cheese plant, monster fruit, and balazo, while the Spanish name costilla de Adán compares it with the ribs of Adam. After the session we agreed to exchange cuttings, so that everybody would look after somebody else’s plant at home. This gave rise to gardens and stories. Shortly afterwards we agreed to continue the reading group and fiction. Almost as if we were always dealing with a new cutting, each reading group at CA2M has led to a new experience: from Know Who You’re Dealing With (2014 ̶ 2015) to The Body as Archive (2015 ̶ 2016) and from there to Vaster that Empires and More Slow (2017).

Delicious Monster proposes conversations and readings within the confines of science fiction, terror and fantasy short stories that rethink some of the guises taken by the “monster”, especially those related with women: mermaids, medusas, witches, bearded women, cripples, outcasts... will be the focal point of sessions to think about horror as a landscape of the limits of the known world and to address the monster as a place from which to generate the surprise of the unexpected; to question what does monstrous or horrific mean; to challenge the order that regulates what is natural, normal or strange; to invent other ways of understanding each other. And we will do so through narrations from, among other, Mario Bellatin, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Nalo Hopkinson, Ena Lucía Portela, Jean Rhys, Mary Shelley and Samanta Schweblin. Delicious Monster is also an invitation to experiment sensorial and collective ways of reading.

The group is moderated by Tamara Díaz Bringas.

To partake in any session members of the group must have read the texts in advance and attend with a participative attitude.

Enrolment free from 19 September at biblioteca.ca2m@madrid.org

Enrolment at biblioteca.ca2m@madrid.org  

The only requirement to take part is to have read the books before each session, and to attend with a participative disposition. The group will be moderated by Tamara Díaz Bringas

You’re looking at a clock. It has hands, and figures arranged in a circle. The hands move. You can’t tell if they move at the same rate, or if one moves faster than the other. What does 'than' mean?

The crew of the ship Gum –a nickname meaning something like “pet”– is sent to outer space to gather information on unexplored worlds. One of the scientists on board has a special gift, a talent for "wide-range bioempathic receptivity", which allows him to pick up emotions and perceptions from his surroundings. When the group lands on a distant planet on which there seems to be no life forms, they are faced with unexpected events and mysteries in which empathy proves critical. Vaster Than Empires and More Slow by Ursula K. Le Guin will be the starting point for the reading group which will now focus on science fiction.

To give ourselves time, to take time on fiction stories that participants in previous reading groups wanted to share. The first group came together at the end of 2014 with an invitation to Saber con quién se trata (Know Who You are Dealing With) from Bulegoa zenbaki barik, the art and knowledge office located in Bilbao, which proposed a programme of readings on different agreements, contracts and relationships that define our everyday life. The participants in the opening experience played with and transformed the initial programme, and between 2015 and 2016 we opened up a new phase that expanded our desire for collective reading and experimentation. The second group, called El cuerpo como archivo (The Body as Archive) asked itself, among other questions, about the body as a political and cultural archive and technologies –legal, medical, architectural, media– for the production of the body, gender, sexuality.

Although a large part of our reading is based on essays, science fiction has also crossed our paths on numerous occasions. For instance, Albert Meister’s La soi-distant utopie du Centre Beaubourg (1977) argued: "the only way to reject the system is to ignore it, to deny it. Not against it, but beside it, creating a parallel universe, the parallel space-time continuum of science fiction". Or the inspiring political and multi-species history fictions of Donna Haraway that, as she herself as said, have their stem cells in the creators of science fiction.  

In this third season of the reading group scheduled over ten evenings between February and June 2017, we will take our starting point in stories by Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, as well as Ted Chiang, Clarice Lispector and Macedonio Fernández. Similarly to previous occasions, our meetings will ultimately be shaped by the affinities and derivations of the group. Without any given destination, we instead propose to collectively gift ourselves the stores we deserve, the time we deserve and perhaps along the way we can also gift ourselves tools for the worlds we wish to inhabit. We might spend three to five sessions on one single story or we could read a different one for each session. In any case, we will strive to stroll leisurely towards the unexpected. And more slow.

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.bulegoa.org

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.