READING RIVERS #2

Reading Rivers Sessions 2021:
31.03.21 (online); 30.09.21; 27.10.21; 01.12.21

In resonance with the ar/ge kunst 2021 exhibition program, Soil Times approaches the network of relationships between human and soil. Taking our cues from experts and selected texts, we’ll encounter the soil as a mixture of minerals, gases, liquids, organisms and organic substances. As a vibrant matter where different life forms interact, communicate, collaborate and make each other viable.

The cosmovision of the Mapuche people within which the human is perceived as part of the earth he/she lives on and not its owner is at the centre of the second Reading Rivers session. Inspired by the summer exhibition Silver Rights by Elena Mazzi, which is currently on view at Södertälje Konsthall in Sveden the reading group will investigate this animistic perspective that contrasts with colonial approaches to land and soil. Together we will explore this field of tension and counter-read various excerpts to place them in dialogue with artistic practices and the local context.

Unlike an ordinary reading group, where participants sit down to discuss a text together, Reading Rivers invites participants to find a spot by a river. Like water in a river, texts have a clear source. Through acts of collective reading they come into contact and combine with new things before flowing together into a greater whole. They cross different landscapes, periods, characters. They come up against obstacles and find paths of least resistance to get around them. The flowing water of a river is comparable to knowledge; it is bound up with solid ground but it remains in a permanent state of flux, allowing new readings of complex contemporary questions.

Reading Rivers, an active reading group, is part of the public program, Soil Times that is curated by BAU and expands on the exhibitions and artistic practices shown at ar/ge kunst in 2021.

A booklet with the text excerpt and further logistical information will be sent out on registration.

Podcast Soil Times Credits
Voices: Simone Mair, Elisabetta Rattalino, James Lewis, Sheila Romen
Editing: Daniel Mazza