Reading on Reading: Ecologies of Reading

Emma Cocker

Reading on Reading is a series of experimental reading practices developed collaboratively by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin whilst working together in the Research Pavilion #3, Venice, 2019, for exploring what alternative modes of sense making are produced when reading is undertaken artistically, as an aesthetic activity. Reading on Reading explores three interrelated foci: How can aesthetic practices of reading: (1) Shed new light on the phenomenology (or how-ness) of reading? (2) Transform the often-solitary activity of reading into a shared or communal act — and explore what modes of sociality, solidarity and emergent ‘we’ emerge therein? (3) Operate as a disruptive process unsettling normative conventions of reading through focus on the poetic, affective and material dimensions of readerly experience? Within this artistic research collaboration, we consider the act of reading beyond the relation of the reader to a text read, as a micro-political or ethico-aesthetic practice through which to re-consider — perhaps even re-organise — the relations between self and other(s), self and world. Drawing upon Félix Guattari’s notion of ecosophy with its three ecological registers of environment, social relations and human subjectivity, in this exposition we consider how the modest practice of reading together could contribute to a wider ethico-aesthetic project: for cultivating shared poetics of attention, for the re-sensing of language through embodied vocalisation, for tending to the temporary gatherings of ‘we’ that reading together affords. The aim of this exposition is to share the reading practices tested and explored in and through the collaboration of three artist researchers, alongside reflection on the questions and concerns emerging within this enquiry. Whilst operating as a document or archive of a specifically time-bound research activity, the intention is that our reading practices have scope to be activated by other readers.

[PRACTICES]

[APPENDIX]

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[THEMATICS]

POETICS OF ATTENTION

SITE + SUBJECTIVITY

VOCALISATION

Lettering: Attend to the phonetics of single letters; to the feeling connected with a word.

DOCUMENTS / REFLECTIONS

Lettering was tested by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin in the interior spaces of the Sala del Camino on 8 May 2019, following by a period of reflective conversation that we recorded and subsequently transcribed. Extracts from the conversation are included in this section. We also conducted a further series of Lettering experiments within the frame of the InfoLab exhibition at Exhibition Laboratory on 25 October 2019, as well as a series of remote experiments where we recorded our own experiments from our respective locations in Berlin, Helsinki and Sheffield.

Conversation after the exercise, an (edited) transcript:

You were asking what is reading... When I do the lettering I don’t understand. Does reading mean that I have to understand? I feel that this is the cultural imperative in the reading gesture: The way we read, the way we are taught to read in a classroom, we are told to understand. Can we dissociate reading from understanding?

It touches on what I would call the hidden authority of the call of the text which is to be with the author, to be there. But you can also read differently. For example by finding our ways of rebelling against it, or to explore what touches us or why it touches us, and why this might be more important than what he writes. I mean the way to relate to the text might be more important than the content, you know. The relationality that is generated through the reading. It is interesting what you say about this slow reading.

I think it is about an attentional form of non-instrumentalised, non-utilitarian form of reading, where you are reading in such a way as to welcome in the possibility of transformation through reading. Rather than acquisitional reading. Or reading as a resource where you are just trying to grasp the content.

Really reading in the phenomenological sense could be understood to be in and bring forth the inner meaning of that text. Does this mean to be with the author?

But then even if you think you're with the author, no one will know where you are. And who knows what the author really meant when writing it.

Institutionised kinds of reading tend to train us to skim texts to get to the quotes that we want to use. This kind of reading clearly fails to transform you as a reader.

I wonder is it possible to be transformed by reading even if you are not touching the content as such? Even if I am not necessarily understanding it on a cognitive level, can that transform me? Can I be transformed by the quality of attention in lettering? Does this transform me more than if I am reading to see what quote I can get from Perec?

Example 1) Three readers, two sharing the same physical space, one joining via skye, 2:20 min.

Example 2)) Three readers, each recorded separately, reading the same text starting at different entry points, 2:00 min.

Example 3) Three readers, each recorded separately, reading the same text starting at the same point, 2:00 min.

Notes and Credits

1. Johann Amos Comenius: Initial sound table out of Orbis sensualium pictus, public domain.

PRACTICE DESCRIPTION

You may letter a single word or entire sentences. Lettering means to chop a word into its phonetic units by saying 'w' 'o' 'r' 'd'.

You may letter phonetically or alphabetically. If you letter phonetically, try to pronounce the letters how they would sound in your mothertongue. It is easier and has an effect of its own especially when you're reading a text which is not written in your native language. Alphabetical lettering means to pronounce the letter as it is called in the alphabet: 'double u', 'o', 'ar', 'de'. This form of lettering has a less disturbing effect. The words appear almost automatically in our minds as we're used to this technique through spelling.

Start to read a text of your choice and stay attuned to its effects. What are the words that disturb you? Where does your attention fade? Which sentences would you like to silence or emphasise?

During Reading on Reading we have used lettering in two ways: as a means to hold our attention or to 'disable' a word and thus its meaning. In this sense, lettering is related both to Lapse Louding and to Re-sensing.

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