Reading Rivers #3

Reading Rivers Sessions 2021: 31.03.21; 30.09.21; 27.10.21; 01.12.21

Part of the public programme Soil Times, curated by BAU.

We are located in a drained swamp, upon which a factory was built, due to its proximity to the flowing river. It was fertiliser that flowed through the steel pipes. Until the 1940s, the Montecatini in Sinigo, a suburb of Merano, produced tons of artificial fertiliser. The marshland became an industrial zone and a village grew.

What if we were to understand this landscape as a body and perceive our human body as a fluid organism within it? This relationship between the bodies, the human and the earthly, is investigated by artist Katrin Hornek in her solo exhibition, which opens at ar/ge kunst on 26.11.2021, starting from the local history and the interwoven ammonia production.

Reading Rivers #3 and #4 invite participants to deepen their encounter with both the ongoing exhibition and Katrin Hornek’s artistic practice by reading, exploring, and discussing relevant texts by authors such as María Puig de la Bellacasa, Sabina Holzer, Sarah Demeuse, Myra J. Hird, Kathryn Yusoff, Anna L. Tsing among others that consider humans in relation to and as part of the environment.

The reading group is formed by prior registration and participants are requested to read the texts in advance. During the event, the texts will be listened to via a podcast and then discussed together. A booklet with the text excerpts and further logistical information will be sent out on registration.

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.

Podcast Soil Times Credits
Voices: Simone Mair, Sabina Holzer, Amy Franceschini, Rosalyn D’Mello
Editing: Daniel Mazza