Hello, our names are Anton Weflö, Rosita Kær and Elina Birkehag. We are very happy that you’re all here. About one year ago we started a reading group together. We were sharing a studio in Amsterdam, and the reading group started as a response to our shared library. Our focus has been to find ways of expanding the format of a reading group. For 4 weeks our reading group has been located at Bibliothek Andreas Züst. Tonight we will do a reading based on a selection of texts we have been reading and writing during this time.*
“The classroom is a reading–free zone. Indeed anyone caught reading is thought somehow to have not done her or his work! Students are supposed to read at home, alone. Even study groups are supposed to discuss assignments, not spend time in each others company reading, much less reading to each other. It is almost as if reading is something about which we are embarrassed. We can do yoga together, pray or meditate together, eat together, but somehow we should read in isolation.” (10.)
“I find that in literature, no writer’s mother compares to mine. My mother, she was a great character, a comical character, too. She had all the attributes of a great character. She was capable of madness, like the affair with her land, but she also possessed a great lucidity. She embodied those contradictions that make for great characters, like when she nearly died upon learning that I enrolled in the Communist Party. But she is not the main hero of my body of work, nor the most permanent. No, I am the most permanent. Writing is to write for oneself.” (13.)
“An atmosphere of
Sha-
Shal-
Messa-
Sha-
Shal-
Cor-
Buil-
Swal-
Dia-
Twi-
Spend some tranquil moments observing this
Ope-
Swal-
Stran-
Vuil-
Cor-
I would often wander into this
Sus-
Pi-
Sere-“ **
“[…] what’s important to listeners, especially children, isn’t hearing a new tale, but how the old one is told. ‘The children make it theirs by repetition’, he says. While endless repetition of the same story may seem uninteresting to adult Americans who have come to privilege information over inflection, substance over subtlety, children everywhere still prefer the retelling of a single, familiar tale, no matter how simple, to the novelty of a new one – at least while they’re young and haven’t fully absorbed the cultural norms.” (1.)
“Do you find me very foolish? Or sadly naive? Did you know that surely no one in the world has looked at the licence plates of more yellow Mercedes than I have. Infinitely hopeful, I imagined as I drove through Berlin that this lemon yellow or that yellow lemon might be your lemon yellow. And I risked disaster many times.” (16.)
*Introduction to reading at Material, Zurich, 28.11.19
**Excerpt from writing excercise
_
Bibliography
1.
Tucker, Marcia
Markus Raetz: In the Realm of the Possible
Publisher: New York : New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988
Call Number: KADR 015
Shelf: Kunst III
2.
Stellweg, Carla
Frida Kahlo: the Camera Seduced
Publisher: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 1992
Call Number: KACK 002
Shelf: Kunst II
3.
Iannone, Dorothy
The Art of Sarah Pucci 1959–1993
Publisher: Amsterdam : Voss Forlag, 1993
Call Number: KAG 112
Shelf: Kunst IV
4.
Iannone, Dorothy
Dorothy Iannone and her Mother Sarah Pucci
Publisher: Aachen : Neue Galerie, 1980
Call Number: KAG 151
Shelf: Kunst IV
5.
Bourgeois, Louise
Destruction of the Father – Reconstruction of the Father : Writings and Interviews 1923–1997
Publisher: London : Violette Editions, 1998
Call Number: KACB 014
Shelf: Kunst II
6.
Berger, John
Road Directions : Zeichnungen und Texte
Publisher: Zürich : Edition Unikate, 1999
Call Number: KABB 004
Shelf: Kunst II
7.
Parkett Nr. 44/1995 : collaboration Vija Celmins, Andreas Gursky, Rirkrit Tiravanija ; insert Hans Danuser
Publisher: Zürich : Parkett, 1995
Call Number: ZI 044
Shelf: Zeitschriften
8.
Laing, R. D.
Knots
Publisher: Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1971
Call Number: LBJ 010
Shelf: Philosophie II
9.
Perec, George
Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books
http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/c/classification/brief-notes-on-the-art-and-manner-of-arranging-ones-books-georges-perec.html
10.
Sealy Thompson, Tonika & Harney, Stefano
Ground Provisions
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/698401?journalCode=aft
11.
Weiner, Hannah
Clairvoyant Journal
http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/CLAIRVOYANT/clairvoyant.html
12.
Bernstein, Charles & Weiner, Hannah
Interview for Linebreak
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/weiner/Weiner-Hannah_LINEbreak_1995_full-transcript.pdf
13.
Duras, Marguerite
Motherhood makes you obscene
14.
The Pleasures of Merely Circulating
Publisher: Zürich : Memory/Cage, 1995
Call Number: KAQ 073
Shelf: Kunst V
15.
Bennett, Jane
Powers of the Hoard
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects
http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1004486
16.
Williams, Emmett; Iannone, Dorothy; Copley, William N.
Emmet Williams: Aleph, Alpha, and Alfala; Dorothy Iannone: Werben um Ajaxander / Courting Ajaxander; William N. Copley: Techniques of Fornication
Publisher: Berlin : Haus am Lützowplatz, 1993
Call Number: KAH 019
Shelf: Kunst IV