RSVP Google Cal Eventbrite
When Sunday, October 23rd, 2pm-5pm (London time)
Where Collective Ending HQ 3 Creekside SE8 4SA, London & on Zoom
Schedule
Reading list
Apologies, we lost the audio recording starting minute 40 so most of the discussion part of the meeting has not been recorded, but our introduction of the themes is available above.
Hi team!
Apologies for taking a while to schedule this next session after our last, I’ve been scheming something special for you. I am excited to announce that Collective Ending have taken us under their wing, and that our next reading group session, called 🦑 Glitch, Mutate, Dissolve to Water ❄️, will take place as a hybrid event both at the gallery and streamed to Zoom. Our session will also happen in conjunction with But Not Blue, a 3-artist exhibition I am co-curating together with Alia Hamaoui, so the works will be together with us in the space when we meet.
Also very happy to announce collective member Fenella Brereton have joined me in organising this event for you. Fenella is an artist-chef and will make special treats conceptually aligned with our readings and the show 🍵 👀
Recipes here:
This time around we will discuss Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. He makes up for the fact that he's a white Western man by writing of an incredibly leaky, amorphous, transitional landscape, in a book I can't describe in any other way other than Bio-Horror. Or at least I found it horrifying, in a healthy, challenging way. I found this book interesting because it challenges our concept of what is Natural, where “I” end and “It/We/You” begin, what we can and can’t perceive, the virtual, the glitch, the beautiful and the horrifying. Note we are not going to talk about Annihilation, the 2018 film, as I find the visuals limiting, and the story succumbs to ‘normal’ Hollywood plot tropes the book does not share. Annihilation is available on paperback and as an audiobook.
We will be pairing Annihilation with chapter 01 of Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell, called Glitch Refuses. Legacy’s text draws beautifully on the natural mutation described in Annihilation and introduces the virtual, gender, racial, societal glitch to the natural one. I think they (unknowingly?) elevate each other, contextualising the worlds the other exists in. Glitch Feminism is available on paperback, as an audiobook, and as a PDF (attached below).
Together with Glitch Feminism, we will watch Astrida Neiman’s We Are All At Sea, a talk given in June 2020 at the Rīga International Biennial of Contemporary Art. Astrida discusses care, our bodies-of-water (”sloshy sacks of matter that hold the possibility for other kinds of bodies still to come”), our communal, watery beginnings, and the quality of our relations to other watery beings. Like the world of Annihilation, our bodies-of-water are porous, ever-changing, ever-sharing; she brings a softness and a liquidity to the discussion which I think nicely contrasts the ethereal quality of Legacy’s world. The talk is available on YouTube.