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.

REFERENCES

DAVID ABRAM, Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, (New York: Vintage, 1997).

ELIZABETH S. ANKER AND RITA FELSKI, Critique and Postcritique, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).

J.H. AUSTIN, How to Do things with Words, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955/2009).

GASTON BACHELARD, Poetics of Reverie, (Boston Beacon Press, 2010).

KAREN BARAD, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2003, vol. 28, no. 3.

KAREN BARAD, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2007).

ROLAND BARTHES, How to Live Together, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

JANE BENNETT, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, (Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press, 2010).

FRANCO BERARDI, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, (Los Angeles, California: Semiotexte, 2012).

CHRISTIAN BERGER & JESSICA SANTONE, (eds.), ‘Documentation as Art Practice in the 1960s’, Visual Resources: an international journal on images and their uses, Volume 32, Issue 3 — 4, 2016.

HARTMUT BÖHME, The Art of Deceleration: Motion and Rest in Art, (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2011).

YVE-ALAIN BOIS and ROSALIND E. KRAUSS, Formless: A Users Guide, (Zone Books, 1997).

HENK BORGDORFF, ‘The Production of Knowledge in Artistic Research’, in Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, (London: Routledge, 2011).

MICHELLE BOULOUS WALKER, Slow Philosophy: Reading Against the Institution, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).

ROSI BRAIDOTTI, Metamorphoses: towards a materialist theory of becoming (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2002).

CHRISTOPH BRUNNER, ‘Slow Practices – 11 Theses’, in Practices of Experimentation: Research and Teaching in the Arts Today, (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2012).

MARTIN BUBER, I and Thou, (New York: Scribner, 1958).

THOMAS CAMPBELL AND SIMON MORRIS, 'Reading as Art', in Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, (ed.) Andrea Andersson, (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2018).

YVES CITTON, The Ecologies of Attention, trans. Barnaby Norman, (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

HÉLÈNE CIXOUS, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, (London; New York: Routledge, 1998).

PATRICIA TICINETO CLOUGH, The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social Turn (ed.), (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

EMMA COCKER, 'Reading Towards Becoming Causal' in Tanja Baudouin, Frédérique Bergholtz, Vivian Ziherl, (eds.) Reading Feeling, (Amsterdam: If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution, 2013), pp. 21 - 24.

EMMA COCKER, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016).

EMMA COCKER, NIKOLAUS GANSTERER AND MARIELLA GREIL, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).

EMMA COCKER, ‘Conversation-as-Material: Writing without Writing’ in The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, (eds.) Katja Hilevaara and Emily Orley (eds.), (London: Routledge, 2017).

EMMA COCKER, NIKOLAUS GANSTERER AND MARIELLA GREIL, Choreo-graphic Figures: Scoring Aesthetic Encounters, Journal of Artistic Research, Issue 18, Summer 2019, https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/462390/462391

EMMA COCKER, DANICA MAIER (eds.) No Telos!, (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2019).

EMMA COCKER & CLARE THORNTON, ‘The Italic I – between liveness and the lens’, Studies in Theatre and Performance (Volume 38, 2018 - Issue 3, The Alternative Document), pp. 238 – 250.

BRIDGET CRONE, The Sensible Stage: Staging and the Moving Image, (Bristol: Picture This, 2012).

MIHÁLY CSÍKSZENTMIHÁLYI, Flow: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness, (London: Rider, 2002).

CORDULA DAUS, Toponymisches Heft No. 2 – Geophysics of the Voice. (Berlin: Fantôme Verlag, 2013).

CORDULA DAUS, Toponymisches Heft No. 3 – Seismolology. (Berlin: Fantôme Verlag, 2016).

GILLES DELEUZE, Lecture on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect, (Cours Vincennes, 1978).

GILLES DELEUZE, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988).

JACQUES DERRIDA, Politics of Friendship, (London and New York: Verso, [1994] 2005).

ERNST EICHLER, GEROLD HILTY AND HEINRICH LÖFFLER, (eds.), Namenforschung. Name Studies. Les Noms propers. Ein Internationales Handbuch zur Onomastik. An International Handbook of Onomastics. Manuel international d’onomastique, (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995).

RITA FELSKI, The Limits of Critique, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

VILÉM FLUSSER, Gestures, trans. Nancy Ann Roth, (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

MICHEL FOUCAULT, Essential Works of Foucault 1954 — 1984, Vol. 1 Subjectivity and Truth, (ed.) Paul Rabinow, (The New Press, 1997).

MICHEL FOUCAULT, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Lectures at the College de France 1981 — 1982, (Picador, New York, 2001).

KENNETH GOLDSMITH, Uncreative Writing, Managing Language in A Digital Age, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

ULRIKA GOMM, HAMI BAHADORI, MOA FRANZÉN, MINNA HEIKINAHO, BEHZAD KHOSRAVI NOORI, JOANNE LEE, JAIME MENA DE TORRES, PIA SANDSTRÖM AND LENA SÉRAPHIN. Omspelning-Replay-Uusintaotto-Repetición, (Tammisaari: Pro Artibus Foundation, 2017).

MELISSA GREG AND GREGORY J. SEIGWROTH, (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

FÉLIX GUATTARI, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, (Indiana University Press, 1995).

FÉLIX GUATTARI, The Three Ecologies, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014).

BYUNG-CHUL HAN, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).

MICHAEL HARDT, Affective Labour, boundary 2, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 1999).

DONNA J. HARAWAY, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, (New York: Routledge, 1991).

DONNA J. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).

SILVIA HENKE, DIETER MERSCH, THOMAS STRÄSSLE, NICOLAJ VAN DER MEULEN, JÖRG WIESSEL, (eds.), Manifesto of Artistic Research A Defense Against Its Advocates, (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2020).

EDMUND HUSSERL, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Theil, Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Einleitung, §2, (Halle a. S.: Max Niemeyer, 1901).

LUCE IRIGARAY, The Way of Love, (London and New York: Continuum, 2002).

LUCE IRIGARAY, To Be Two, (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017).

WOLFGANG ISER, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978).

JON KABAT-ZINN, Wherever You Go, There You Are, (London: Piatkus, 1994).

SIMO KELLOKUMPU, ‘Choreography as Reading Practice’, University of the Arts Helsinki (2019), https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/437088/438771

MIWON KWON, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2004).

ESTHER LESLIE, ‘Moving Words: Facts of Reading’, in Torque: The Act of Reading, (eds.) Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner, (Liverpool / London: Torque Editions, 2015), pp.73 – 96.

ERIN MANNING + BRIAN MASSUMI, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

BRIAN MASSUMI, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

NINA MÖNTMANN, New Communities, (Public Access, 2009).

JEAN-LUC NANCY, Being Singular Plural, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000).

ROBIN NELSON, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

ALVA NOË, Strange Tools — Art and Human Nature, (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015).

GEOFFREY O’BRIEN, The Browser’s Ecstasy, (Washington: Counterpoint, 2003).

GEORGES PEREC, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, ed. and trans. John Sturrock, (London: Penguin Books, 1974/1997).

GEORGES PEREC, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place In Paris, trans. Marc Lowenthal, (Cambridge (MA: Wakefield Press, 1975/2010).

MATTHEW REASON, Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

PEGGY PHELAN, Unmarked — The Politics of Performance, (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

EZRA POUND, ABC des Lesens, (Zürich: Suhrkamp, 1967).

JANE RENDELL, 'From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing', in Planning Unplanned–Towards a New Positioning of Art in the Context of Urban Development, eds Barbara Holub and Christine Hohenbüchler, (Vienna: VfmK Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2015).

IRIT ROGOFF, WE: Collectivities, Mutualities, Participations(2004). http://theater.kein.org/node/95.

MICHAEL SCHWAB, JAR (Journal of Artistic Research) Issue 18, https://www.jar-online.net/issues/18

HAROLD SCHWEIZER, On Waiting, (London: Routledge, 2008).

NIGEL THRIFT, Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, (London: Routledge, 2008).

MAX VAN MANEN, Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretative Inquiry, (The Althouse Press/University of Western Ontario, 2002).

MAX VAN MANEN, Phenomenology of Practice, (New York: Routledge, 2014).

JAN VERWOERT, Tell me what you want, what you really, really want, (Berlin / New York: Sternberg Press, 2010).

HEINZ WERNER, Grundlagen der Sprachphysiognomik, (Leipzig: J. A. Barth 1932).

VIRGINIA WOOLF, ‘How Should One Read a Book’, in The Common Reader (2nd Edition), (London: Vintage Digital, 1925/2015).

BIOGRAPHIES

EMMA COCKER is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. Cocker's research focuses on the process of artistic exploration and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ emerging therein. Her approach unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches to working with language. Cocker's writing has been published in Failure, 2010; Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought, 2011; Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art, 2012; Reading/Feeling, 2013; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, 2013; Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line, 2017; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, and the solo collection The Yes of the No, 2016.

CORDULA DAUS is a writer and artist working across theory, fiction and performance. Since 2009 she publishes the semi-fictional journal series Toponymisches Heft. Her recent work explores the woman as a site, the reciprocity of body and language focusing on the concept of intensity. For this purpose she has created the fictional character Kay. Daus has presented her work in the format of publications, lecture performances and exhibitions in venues such as Research Pavilion #3 (Venice), Wiener Festwochen/Secession (Vienna), Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Conceptual Poetics Day/Akademie der Künste (Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), among others. She has been a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie and currently is a PhD candidate at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

LENA SÉRAPHIN is a visual artist. Her artistic practice consists of collaborative writing and visual works that engage with fictionality. Séraphin holds an MA from Goldsmiths College and a doctorate from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her dissertation The Don Quixote Complex and Investigations into Fictionality was granted the Aalto University Dissertation Award in 2018. Séraphin has been a post doc researcher at the Department of Fine Art at Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design. She is currently a post doc researcher at the Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies at Åbo Akademi University, and Pro Artibus Foundation artist-in-residence in Vaasa.

Tip

Tip