After 30 editions, The Reading Room has come to an end. Since 2015, curators Jonathan Reus, Sissel Marie Tonn, and Flora Reznik have invited 33 artists researchers, theorists and scientists to share their insights and passions. Below is their statement:
Dear Reading Room community,
You might have noticed that we haven’t announced any new events in the last months. When we started The Reading Room in 2015 we were freshly graduated from art school and looking to create a platform for reading and learning within our community.
The series started small, but always central to it was the spirit of bringing our local community into fruitful contact with new and exciting ideas. Since then we have invited 33 artists, researchers, theorists and scientists from the Netherlands and abroad to share their insights and passions with us in open-ended, intimate discussions.
We have organized an amazing 30 (!) reading sessions and workshops with topics as diverse as they were challenging; from ‘media archeology’ to ‘the edges of the voice’.
In 2017 we started an effort to trace the ephemeral exchanges taking place in The Reading Room through a kind of informal interview/discussion process. This secondary project quickly took form as The Relay Conversations, which are now a significant body of 12 online micro-publications written in tandem with our guests.
So what next? We’re aiming to compile a hybrid (print and online) publication that further explores the role of study, reading and discussion in artistic practice – with The Relay Conversations as a starting point. We are hoping that this publication becomes a tool for study and re-interpretation of the various texts we have read together, as well as an opportunity to extend the conversations we have had over the past four years to a larger online audience. A celebration of what we’ve accomplished while still sowing the seeds for a future community.
We mostly end with thanks. Our thanks go to all those who have participated in The Reading Room and have therefore helped to create the foundation for these beautiful encounters. We thank you for your ideas, your curiosity, your enthusiasm. We also want to thank iii, for producing and making possible this amazing journey. And finally, thank you to our funders Stroom Den Haag and Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie for making it financially possible to bring so many guests to The Hague.
Finally, a special thanks to our guests:
Eric Kluitenberg
Sher Doruff
Toni Pape
Rick Dolphijn
Iris van der Tuin
Wybo Houkes
Jamie Allen
Will Scrimshaw
Charlotte Farrell
Thijs Witty
Maciej Ożóg
Marco Donnarumma
Archipelago Lab
Yvonne Volkart
Julia Bee
Christoph Brunner
Alanna Thain
Nik Forrest
Nishant Shah
Lila Athanasiadou
Marcel Cobussen
Andrej Radman
Yvonne Förster
Jaime del Val
Warrick Roseboom
Joel Ryan
Raviv Ganchrow
Douglas Kahn
Florian Cramer
Rebekka Kiesewetter
Joana Chicau
Alessandro Ludovico
Amelia Groom
Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman
Until next time,
The Reading Room facilitators
Jonathan Reus, Sissel Marie Tonn & Flora Reznik
