Syllabus Reading Group #7: The Common Is Us
Thursday 24/02, 19.00 - 21.00
Hosted by Jesse Jones, Barbara Mahlknecht and special guest Paula Quirke
In English, online
We will read "The Common Is Us", the introduction by Silvia Federici for the publication For health autonomy by Carenotes Collective.
Since 2020, the Syllabus Reading Group is organized by Kunsthal Gent around the work 'Syllabus' by the Irish artist Jesse Jones: a monumental curtain with the arm of Silvia Federici, creating a space for (activist) gathering.
This season is organized in collaboration with Jesse Jones and feminist researcher Barbara Mahlknecht, around the theme of care - from care work to institutional intimacies. How do we create a culture of care in our everyday encounters and social reproductions?
We gather online, once a month on Thursday nights, from February 24 onwards. We will read and discuss a new text every month. By the end of each meeting we suggest several texts and decide together what we will read next time. You can also just join and listen in. Welcome!
SUMMER 2022
The Syllabus reading groups lead up to a live Syllabus Summer School Retreat, to take place in Kunsthal Gent in July 2022. This live Summer school aims to ask the question: How do we return to a space of shared cultural community after two years of lockdown?
PREVIOUS
- Excerpt of SYLLABUS workshop with Silvia Federici, “On Joyful Militancy”
- Previous Syllabus Reading groups and activities
ONLINE
Syllabus Reading Group #7, Thursday 24 Feb 19.00 - 21.00
Syllabus Reading Group #8, Thursday 31 March 19.00 - 21.00
Syllabus Reading Group #9, Thursday 28 April 19.00 - 21.00
Syllabus Reading Group #10, Thursday 19 May 19.00 - 21.00
Syllabus Reading Group #11, Thursday 23 June 19.00 - 21.00
LIVE
Syllabus Retreat 4 - 24 July
Syllabus Summer School 21 - 24 July
Jesse Jones is a Dublin-based artist and teaches visual arts at the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts. Her practice crosses the media of film, performance and installation. Often working through collaborative structures, she explores how historical instances of communal culture may hold resonance in our current social and political experiences. Jones’ practice is multi-platform, working in film installation, performance and sculpture. Jesse Jones represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2017. In 2020, she created the work Syllabus for Kunsthal Gent, which provides the context for a five year programme and the Syllabus Reading Group.
Barbara Mahlknecht - is a feminist researcher, curator and cultural producer based in Vienna. In these roles, but also as a daughter, mother, caretaker, and domestic worker, she reflects on the radical histories of struggles on social reproduction and care that matter to contemporary feminist uprisings and becomings. Building awareness, memory and action through activist, artistic and curatorial practices of past and present, feminist struggles might enable current generations of feminists to engage in a "genealogical politics" (Kate Eichhorn) "to create life on our own terms and to sustain that creation over a long term." (Avery Gordon).
Paula Quirke is an artist, activist and advocate based in Ireland. She is working as a Rehabilitation Coordinator at Spirasi, a national center for torture survivors, where as part of her work she facilitates group sessions in trauma sensitive yoga. She is a director of Cairde, a community development organisation, working to challenge health inequalities among ethnic minority communities in Ireland. Her work as an artist explores the role of representation and political vulnerability in the body and how we may access this embodied knowledge in both individual and collective memory.