Reading on Reading: Ecologies of Reading

Emma Cocker

Reading on Reading is a series of experimental reading practices developed collaboratively by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin whilst working together in the Research Pavilion #3, Venice, 2019, for exploring what alternative modes of sense making are produced when reading is undertaken artistically, as an aesthetic activity. Reading on Reading explores three interrelated foci: How can aesthetic practices of reading: (1) Shed new light on the phenomenology (or how-ness) of reading? (2) Transform the often-solitary activity of reading into a shared or communal act — and explore what modes of sociality, solidarity and emergent ‘we’ emerge therein? (3) Operate as a disruptive process unsettling normative conventions of reading through focus on the poetic, affective and material dimensions of readerly experience? Within this artistic research collaboration, we consider the act of reading beyond the relation of the reader to a text read, as a micro-political or ethico-aesthetic practice through which to re-consider — perhaps even re-organise — the relations between self and other(s), self and world. Drawing upon Félix Guattari’s notion of ecosophy with its three ecological registers of environment, social relations and human subjectivity, in this exposition we consider how the modest practice of reading together could contribute to a wider ethico-aesthetic project: for cultivating shared poetics of attention, for the re-sensing of language through embodied vocalisation, for tending to the temporary gatherings of ‘we’ that reading together affords. The aim of this exposition is to share the reading practices tested and explored in and through the collaboration of three artist researchers, alongside reflection on the questions and concerns emerging within this enquiry. Whilst operating as a document or archive of a specifically time-bound research activity, the intention is that our reading practices have scope to be activated by other readers.

[PRACTICES]

[APPENDIX]

REFERENCES

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[THEMATICS]

POETICS OF ATTENTION

SITE + SUBJECTIVITY

VOCALISATION

Walking Reading: attend to the rhythmic relation between walking and reading. Increase one's speed, slow it down.

DOCUMENTS / REFLECTIONS

Walking-Reading was tested by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin in the interior and exterior spaces of the Sala del Camino between 6 - 10 May 2019, including as part of the opening event for the Research Pavilion. The practice was following by a period of reflective conversation that we recorded and subsequently transcribed. Extracts from the conversation are included in the wider exposition.

On 16 June 2019, this practice was expanded to include participants within the 3-day event Convocation, who were invited to engage in a practice of Walking-Reading from from the Campo in front of Chiesa di San Gerardo Sagredo in Sacca Fisola, along Calle del Large Lavraneri and Calle Convertite, arriving at Campo San Cosmo, Giudecca, whilst reading Perec's text Reading: A Socio-Physiological Outline.

Notes and Credits

1. Proposition for Campo to Campo, Walking-Reading.

2. and 3. Video documentation of Walking-Reading, a collective action as part of Convocation on 16 June 2019. Setting off from the Campo in front of Chiesa di San Gerardo Sagredo in Sacca Fisola. Video by Mika Elo.

4. Document of Walking-Reading. Still image taken from video documentation from a collective action as part of Convocation on 16 June 2019. From video by Mika Elo.

5. Recreation of the route taken,from the Campo in front of Chiesa di San Gerardo Sagredo in Sacca Fisola, along Calle del Large Lavraneri and Calle Convertite, arriving at Campo San Cosmo, Giudecca. Photography by Emma Cocker.

PRACTICE DESCRIPTION

Find a location with space to wander. Take some printed pages of text or an open book. Hold the text gently in your hands. Allow your shoulders to relax and soften; feel your feet as they meet with the ground. Begin to walk, slowly. Take your attention to the words on the page, reading slowly, with care. Pace the speed of your reading to the rise and fall of your feet, of your breath. Take your time. Slow down your reading further: read one word at a time, then letter by letter. How does this change the rhythm of your steps? Now, increase the speed of your walking – does the speed of your reading change? Experiment. Let go of any sense of destination or direction. Tune in to the rhythms of both reading and walking.

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