AFTER HOPE READING GROUP

Facilitated by Collective Çukurcuma (Naz Cuguoğlu, Mine Kaplangı, Hakki Serhat Cacekli) and Padma Dorje Maitland.

A horizontal learning space for deep-listening, a purposefully uncomfortable cocoon, a possibility, an intimate glitch. In this reading group, we will discuss the dialectic qualities of hope and fear, while approaching “after hope” as an alternative methodology for our times.

When the world is on fire, both literally and metaphorically, where does hope hide? How does one find it in the dark, inside or outside? Is there hope in the chaos of an orange apocalypse as described by Etel Adnan in Arab Apocalypse? Can poetry save us from surpassing disasters as Jalal Toufic and Bifo asks in their work? How does ecofeminist writer Donna Haraway’s notion of “staying with the trouble” offer new ways of imagining invisible tentacles through which to engage a world always in transition? Can the speculative-fiction of Ursula K Le Guin and Octavia Butler inspire us to work for alternative futures? Is hope available to everyone? 

Each session will focus on a specific set of short readings and will be moderated by a facilitator who will help guide conversation and help record key ideas and questions that emerge during the discussions. Articles will be shared before each meeting so that participants can prepare beforehand. Moderators will also take notes during the meetings, recording the questions that arise and themes that emerge. Session notes will become a score to be shared at a public event in the spring. 

 TIME TABLE AND READING LIST:

SESSION 1:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 7
6PM PST | 9AM+1 HKT

Gayatri Spivak, “The Rest of the World” in Hope: New Philosophies for Change, ed. Mary Zournazi (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 
Isabelle Stengers, “A Cosmo-Politics, Risk, Hope, Change” in Hope: New Philosophies for Change, ed. Mary Zournazi (London: Pluto Press, 2002).  
Clarice Lispector, Água Viva (Cambridge: New Directions, 2012).

SESSION 2:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21
6PM PST | 9AM+1 HKT

Introduction: Rebecca Solnit “Looking into Darkness.” Hope in the Dark (Nation Books, 2004).
Duggan, Lisa, and Jose Esteban Munoz. “Hope and Hopelessness: A Dialogue.” Women and Performances: A Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no.2 (2009): 275-83.
Trinh T Minh-ha, “Speaking Nearby: A Conversation with Trinh T Minh-ha,” Visual Anthropology Review, no:8 (1992): 82-91.

SESSION 3:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4TH
6PM PST | 12PM+1 HKT

Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Breathing: Chaos and Poetry (South Pasadena: Semiotext(e), 2018): 7-22.
Etel Adnan, The Arab Apocalypse (Sausalito: The Post-Apollo Press, 1989): 23 - 24.
Etel Adnan, The Cost of Love We Are Not Willing to Pay, 100 Notes -- 100 Thoughts, dOCTUMENTA (13).
Jalal Toufic, “Resurrecting the Arab Apocalypse STOP [THE WORLD]” and “Q and A” in The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (California Institute of the Arts/Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater [REDCAT], 2009): 78-83.

SESSION 4:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18
6PM PST | 9AM+1 HKT

Donna Haraway, “Sowing Worlds” in Staying with the Trouble, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). 
Octavia Butler, “Amnesty” in Bloodchild and Other Stories (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005).
Ursula K Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest (Berkeley: Berkley Books, 1976).

 Collective Çukurcuma was founded in Istanbul in 2015 by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı, and was joined by Hakki Serhat Cacekli in 2017. Their experiments mainly focus on collaborative thinking and writing through their reading group meetings, international collaborative exhibitions, curatorial and editorial projects, and public programs. They organize these projects, highlighting the potential of transdisciplinary collaborations within contemporary art and making use of process-based rather than outcome-based research with an intuitive approach. 

With their reading group project (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık, founded in 2015), their exhibitions' research processes are shared with artists and other participants. The reading group’s archive is open to all and can be accessed from the collective’s website. They are currently working on their collaborative writing methodologies to overcome the authority of the voice in art writing and a pirate radio station, “CC Station”, inviting artists, researchers, and thinkers into the conversation. Their events are open to everyone and free. They are currently based in San Francisco, London, and Istanbul but together with their nomadic events, exhibitions, reading group meetings, and projects, they are always on the move and open to all collaborations.