Paul Gangloff, Stephan Geene , Sönke Hallmann, Tsila Hassine, Karolin Meunier, Michael Murtaugh, Tim Stüttgen, Marina Vishmidt , Tanja Widmann, Inga Zimprich, Gon Zifroni
— two-day symposium, online
— Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin, DE
The Department of Reading would like to invite you to the Symposium for Readers to take place on 1/2 December 2007 online as well as physically in the space of the GfKFB, Berlin.
The Symposium for Readers understands itself as an intervention into the discourse on reading as well as the set of conditions, through which this discourse becomes actual and effective. The Symposium for Readers invites theorists, artists, performers, designers and programmers to address such questions as:
How to theorise on the very gesture that reading is? What about the discrete, but insistent gestures of reading itself? How to affirm and intensify the repetitive, but also performative mode of reading, the disposition of readers to interfere with the actual body of the text? What spatial concept does a reading practice demand that at the very moment it takes place already has entered the realm of writing? Are reading and writing just modalities of a contingent relation? What about the affective as well as intellectual labour that reading demands? How to conceive of this labour in the framework of gender and technology? What are the technologies of reading alike nowadays? What impact do these technologies have on the process of reading, its temporality in particular? What is the time of reading? How to extend or even contract the time that reading takes? Where do we locate the economy of reading in contemporary production and property regimes? What are the political effects of such an economy of reading? What usage, habit or custom is with reading at our disposal?
During the course of forty-eight hours the Symposium for Readers will assemble, specify and perform different modes of reading within six online sessions, each with their own temporality and degree of publicness. The formats of these reading sessions are determined by the current practice of the Department of Reading. The Symposium for Readers opens on Friday, 30 November, at midnight and will be closed on Sunday, 2 December, at midnight as well.
hosted by Paul Gangloff
on excerpts from the Department of Reading
hosted by Tanja Widmann
on an essay by Giorgio Agamben
hosted by Marina Vishmidt
on an essay by Steve Rushton
hosted by Tim Stüttgen
on an essay by Terre Thaemlitz
hosted by Karolin Meunier
on a visual essay by Mary Kelly
hosted by Stephan Geene
on an essay by Maurizio Lazzarato
Taking the possibility of the Symposium for Readers to translate the different lines of the Department of Reading – its silences, gaps, distances and parallel movements – into the premises of the GfKFB, we want to set up a space for reading that no less enables access and modes of appropriation than it allows for disengagement, contextualisation without relating and entering in withdrawing. In that manner the Symposium for Readers aims to bring the duration and spatialization of reading with electronic technologies into such a proximity that will address the act of reading both in its collective as well as individual modality.
Together with Michael Murtaugh the Department of Reading has developed a digital platform that supports this process and provides the conditions for the Symposium for Readers to perform its different reading practices. In applying computational tools that have become an integral part of the current online culture this digital platform allows for the creation of further performative and interpretative modules that provide the different approaches to collaborative reading, writing, and interpreting, but also open up new layers of reading and interpreting of the relevant texts themselves. The modules were developed and designed by Michael Murtaugh, Tsila Hassine and Gon Zifroni in close relation to each of the different sessions of the Symposium for Readers.
In order to participate online in the Symposium for Readers, all you need is an account on Skype and a connection to the Internet for the time of each session. Alongside the online reading you can attend the symposium physical at the GfKFB (Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin). Please let us know your Skype-name in advance.
The Department of Reading is an online-based project displayed in different spatial configurations and designed to promote new forms of reading. In order to expose the act of reading in its potentiality the Department of Reading investigates, how the disposition of readers to comment and interfere with text can be made public as well as a mode to open texts towards their intricate textures. Thus one of the most crucial questions of the Department of Reading concerns the collectiveness of reading and asks, in how far such a collectivity is potentially implied within the very texture of a given text. Examining the mechanisms of reading through reading, the labour reading takes, its time and space, the Department of Reading attempts to redraw the concept of reading and expose other textures of predication.
During the course of one and a half years the Department of Reading has witnessed several forms of readings with a changing group of readers, using such online facilities as Wiki and Skype. Since 2007 a series of online sessions addresses among other questions the act of reading in its temporal, spatial and technological dimension. To each session the Department of Reading invites a host, to set up and accompany theses readings. If one intention of the Department of Reading is to collectivize the process of reading another is to further a practice of writing while reading.
The Department of Reading is an initiative by Sönke Hallmann and was founded in 2006 together with other researchers from the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Concept and moderation of the Symposium for Readers: Sönke Hallmann and Inga Zimprich
Text, information and infrastructure design implementations: Tsila Hassine, Michael Murtaugh and Gon Zifroni
Printed matters: Paul Gangloff
The Symposium for Readers is supported by the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
The Symposium for Readers takes place at GfKFB, network for artistic research (Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin), project by flutgraben e.v., IRRTUMsFORSCHUNG/ERROR-RESEARCH is supported by Berlin Department for Cultural Affairs