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The reading group gatheres in various parks across London throughout July and August 2018, discussing various ideas around the theme of the current exhibition at Tenderpixel, titled ‘Becoming Plant‘. Tenderpixel invited various co-host to run the individual session.
11 July 2018, 2-4pm, St James’s Park
led by Borbála Soós
Reading group with CSM Art History Criticism and Communication students about horizontal gene transfer and the importance of understanding our world, and especially our bodies, as sites of ongoing exchange and cross-contamination.
> Noticing Microbial World: The Postmodern Synthesis in Biology – Margaret McFall-Ngai, In: The Arts of Living on an Damaged Planet – Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, 2017
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22 July 2018, 3-6pm, Telegraph Hill
led by Lou-Atessa Marcellin
The reading group will be structured around around 4 materials: water, energy (fire), air and soil (earth), and considered how we all, including plants and humans, flow through these.
> Reclaiming Animism – Isabelle Stengers – In: e-flux journal 36 – July 2012
> Symbiogenesis, sympoiesis and art science activisms for staying with the trouble. From Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chtulucene – Donna Haraway – In: The Arts of Living on an Damaged Planet – Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, 2017
> Holobiont by Birth- Scott F.Gilbert – In: The Arts of Living on an Damaged Planet – Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, 2017
>A Seed in Stasis, Seed Banking and the Gardening of the Wild – Kay Evelina Lewis-Jones – In: Botanical Drift – Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium- Khadia Von Zinnenburg Carroll
>The Generative Potential of the Element – In: Through Vegetal Being – Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder
> Prima Belladonna – J.G Ballard – Short stories
> Hydrofeminism: Or, on Becoming Bodies of Vater – Astrida Neimanis
> Story about Feeling – Bill Neidje
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5 August 2018, 3-6pm, Regent’s Park
led by Worm (Angela Chan)
During this session we will be reading a story of Chinese eco-sci-fi / cli-fi.
> The Rainforest – Chi Hui (aka Yulin, 雨林, translated by Jie Li).
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18 August 2018, 3-6pm, Hampstead Heath
led by Gina Buenfeld
This reading group will consider how plants are understood within two contrasting world views: scientific materialism; and the Animist cosmologies common to many indigenous peoples. We will read and discuss the following texts, and the session will include a guided meditation cultivating a sensitivity to the plant kingdom through intuition, sensation and feeling, using the body as an instrument to receive information from non-human beings on their own terms.
> The Spell of the Sensuous – David Abram
> The Cosmic Serpent – Jeremy Narby
> Food Of The Gods – Terence McKenna
(read only the following sections:
3-The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge;
14-A Brief History of Psychedelics)
> Ecology Without Nature – Timothy Morton