READING RIVERS #4

reading, listening, walking, flowing, speaking

You are invited to join us for the final Reading Rivers session of the year in the context of Soil Times at ar/ge kunst, at 5 pm on 1 December. This event can be attended in presence or online.

Reading Rivers #4 will take a deeper look at the exhibition Plant Plant at ar/ge kunst (27.11.21 – 12.02.22), and at the artistic practice of Vienna based artist Katrin Hornek, who always advocates a more complex conception of nature and culture in her work.

Following an introduction to the exhibition from the curators there will be a forty-minute podcast with readings from selected texts by authors such as Rosi Braidotti and Jan Willem Erisman, who deal with the relationship between soil fertility and human fertility and speak about the connections between reproduction and productivity. Participants will listen to the podcast from the banks of a river. This might be the Talvera, the Thames, the Navigli, the Spree or the river close to you.

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 the paths of least resistance around them. The flowing water of a river is comparable to knowledge; it is bound up with solid ground but remains in a permanent state of flux, allowing new readings of complex contemporary questions.

How are we influenced by the dynamics of our bodies and the movement of water when we read and listen to texts and landscapes? This two-hour Reading Rivers session will close with a free-flowing exchange of ideas on the substance and experience of the event.

Participation in presence with Green Pass only.

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