Read-in (active since 2010) experiments with the political, material and physical implications of collective reading and the situatedness of any reading activity. Recurring investigations include the legacy of feminist reading groups, reading aloud, the infectiousness of words, memorizing, and (un-)disciplinary pedagogies.
Scene 1 [Image]:
Filmstill from Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut): A resistance group forms on the wooded margins of society, dedicated to memorizing books as a means of founding a new society. Each member of the resistance chooses a book to commit to memory; they recite the books out loud to one another to maintain their grasp of the words.
Scene 2:
Excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) p. 112–113 – with an intervention by Read-in (Annette Krauss and Serena Lee)
"I don't belong with you," said Montag, at last, slowly. "I've been an idiot all the way."
"We're used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I've been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?"
"Yes." "What have you to offer?"
"Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes Aint’t I a woman? and maybe a little more of Revelation Sojourner Truth’s speech at the Women Rights Convention, but I haven't even that now."
"The Book of Ecclesiastes Ain’t I a woman? would be fine. Where was it?"
"Here," Montag touched his head. "Ah," Granger smiled and nodded.
"What's wrong? Isn't that all right?" said Montag.
"Better than all right; perfect!" Granger turned to the Reverend. "Do we have Ain’t I woman?"
"One. A man named Harris of Youngstown."
"Montag." Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. "Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are Ain’ I a woman? See how important you've become in the last minute!"
"But I've forgotten!"
"No, nothing's ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you."
"But I've tried to remember!"
"Don't try. It'll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?”
"Of course!"
""I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus."
"How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons.
"Hello," said Montag.
"I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Everyone laughed quietly.
"It can't be," said Montag.
"It is," replied Granger, smiling. " We're book-burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they'd be found. Micro-filming didn't pay off; we were always travelling, we didn't want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it's here. And the hour is late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colours. What do you think, Montag?"
Scene 3
A memorizing session guided by Read-in. Instruction: Read the texts out loud collectively - over and over again - until reading turns into memorizing. Excerpt from transcriptions of the speech ‘Ain’t I a woman’, held by Sojourner Truth at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron Ohio 1851.
[Sojourner Truth: png – 3 verschiedene Transkriptionen – TEXTE MÜSSTEN GLEICHFALLS ÜBERSETZT WERDEN]
Scene 4
“Did you do the reading? The political economy of reading groups in the art world” Excerpts from a text by Read-in member Maiko Tanaka
In May 2013, three members of Read-in orchestrated a reading group of over 75 people at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna. We guided the public audience in simultaneously reading out loud and collectively memorizing three different transcriptions of the speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and self-emancipated African American former slave. Questions around embodied and collective reading were entangled with gender, race, memory and language in this twenty-minute reading session, and were facilitated later in a smaller group discussion with interested participants. The event was unique as this was the first time Read-in had manifested our experimental reading sessions for a formal performance event, as opposed to the more informal and “backstage” spaces we normally worked within, opening up an opportunity for insight into a movement from “supplement” to “content.” In order to keep with a critique of the “un-innocence” of neo-liberal life-long learning ideologies, and the elitism that reading groups can reproduce even in non-institutional contexts, I’ll attempt to critically assess a few moments that stood out from the event, structured around the following question: What, how and for whom do we read?
The speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” was never written down by the celebrated orator. The printed handouts that we passed around to the audience were three of several transcriptions that exist of the speech, written from memory by white abolitionist journalists who witnessed the event. Of the versions we used, two took the racialized and politicized words and phrases spoken by Truth (who was born in New York and sold to a Dutchman) and falsely attributed an imaginary accent of a universalized Southern slave in its transcription. [3.1/3.2] The third transcript we gave out was written in “standard” late twentieth-century American English, [3.3] removing the trace of any accent at all. Right off the bat, the text already offered a complicated matrix of relations for us and our fellow readers. The what to read in this case included contested authenticities, multiple versions inflected with different accents, racist appropriations and projections, and the utterly undeniable physical body which Truth constantly makes present in her spoken words.
There were several problematic power relations we left critically untouched in terms of what we read. For instance, to present such texts in Vienna, an environment in which English is not the primary spoken language, reproduced the dominance of English as the standard language for the Western-centric contemporary art world. This blind spot emerged in a conflict between the members of Read-in during our rehearsals, as well as after the event when one member expressed frustration with the speed and aptitude of English speaking and the difficulties this presented for non-native listeners.
Another unintended effect was the power of novelty in the experience of reading a text out loud with a large group of people. Reading out loud is a consistent strategy for Read-in, as a way to stay with the physicality of reading, and to have participants engage with the texts in the present rather than prepare them individually in advance. This how to read, for the Read-in collective, has been our way of trying to counter the urge to “go solo,” virtuoso contributions of something smart or performing one’s expertise in the presence of one’s peers.
In considering the for whom, perhaps the most challenging aspect of collective reading in a highly public environment is that aside from the people we invited to join, we had no idea who would be participating. By taking on a practice that calls into question the borders between public and private spaces, as demonstrated in our door-to-door activities, this was perhaps the most generalized public environment we had encountered. The usually small size of the kinds of spaces we read in limit the accommodation for larger attendance. Our regulars, and most other people who join our sessions, find out about them through our mailing list, or through common networks and personal or institutional invitations, depending on our hosts. As much as such a “self-selecting” audience can create an enriching and productive reading group environment by constituting a group whose members share critical questions, political trajectories and/or living and working lifestyles, these conditions can also produce more homogenous profiles than open and diverse interactions, and at worst, they reproduce elitist segregations.
So how can we critically investigate alternative practices to draw out different potentials and in what ways might such an investigation play out in the form of a reading group?
Scene 5
There is no such Thing as an Innocent Memorizing!