Softcore Reading is a fortnightly research group led by Violeta Paez Armando and Al Primrose. It’s a warm, informal, interdisciplinary space to have generative, curious conversations that embrace sharing experiences as much as formalised discourses – we’re looking for alternative ways of engaging with theory and other forms of knowledge production.
The next softcore reading session will be conversing with stones on 26 May at 20.00, in the Glass Pavilion at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
Come talk about lists with us! Like in literature, life, art, and... elsewhere... Next Thurs (3rd Dec) we're gunna gather online –
Our next gathering will be a conversation on being tired at Sandberg Instituut (but in a cute way) on Thursday 12th November at 18.00. Everyone welcome, but spaces are limited
Hi! Next Saturday 10 Oct at 18h as part of Gymfest, Softcore Reading is holding a reading group on the topic of working out
commmmme!
The next softcore reading will be online on Tuesday 8th September at 18.00. We’ll be talking about nightclubs – as social, political, sensorial, queer and architectural spaces.
The third softcore reading will be on Thursday 6th August at 18.00, we’ll be talking about haunting – ghosts, presences, apparitions, manifestations... We hope you can join us!
This summer we’d like to gather with you to discuss research, loose ends, new interests, things we didn’t get round to reading in term-time, things we can’t stop thinking about, new projects, old projects and things inbetween. During quarantine, we really missed gentle, informal conversations about friends’ work, and have felt more than ever that talking and group discussions are fruitful forms of research in themselves.
Softcore reading is our way to have more of these good things – it’s a warm, interdisciplinary space to explore research-in-progress and eat good snacks. It’ll be something like a reading group, a research group, a workshop, [other things?] with us as something like facilitators and hosts.
We’ll hold a session every two weeks; come to whichever you fancy – no commitment necessary. Each will be focused on a particular topic – we’re kicking off with octopuses on Wednesday 8 July at 18.00. We’ll send round texts v soon. (Texts is a heavy word; they’ll be short and gentle enough to get through over a hot summer week – a combination of essays, songs, films, chapters, articles and other good things.)
Violeta Paez Armando
Al Primrose
Reading group
The next softcore reading session will be conversing with stones on 26 May at 20.00, in the Glass Pavilion at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
It’s a collaboration with Anna Bierler for her Stone Telling bonanza – three days of conversations, readings, writing and performances exploring what stones hold and how stuff supposedly lingering in the background can help us understand the world around us.
We’ve chosen a few texts from this beaut digital reader made by Anna. As always, no obligation to read everything – pick and choose what you fancy:
- Ursula Le Guin, Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (if you want more Ursula, she has another fun one-page text in the reader, called Being taken for granite)
- Astrida Neimanis, On Becoming a Body of Water
- Eleanor Arnason, The Grammarian’s Five Daughters
- Marcia Bjornerud and Anja Claus, Timefulness: A geologist’s story
And some poems:
- Wislawa Szymborska, Conversation with a Stone
- Naomi Shihab Nye, Hidden
As it’s an in-person event with limited space, it’s extra important that you sign up through this link (there’s loads of other cool events to sign up to there as well!). If you can't make it, no worries but let us know so we can give the space to someone else :)
And as it’s in Sandberg, and we wanna look after you, it is required to bring a mask and remain socially distanced. We'll provide some covid-safe individually packed snacks for your delight.
Aaand, if you want to hear some of our favourite stoney fragments read out loud, we’ll be broadcasting them on https://stone-telling.space/ just before we all meet at 19.00.
Hope to see you soon!
Al and Violeta
