Relaunch of The Reading Room at One Thoresby Street!

Wednesday, 17th June 4pm – 8pm

Open afternoon/evening for the brand new Reading Room at One Thoresby Street (next door to Moot gallery on the ground floor)

Join us for refreshments and peruse the shelves as this new resourse for Nottingham artists is relaunced. Come and find out about the new Reading Room programme that will accompany Hinterland Project’s events until Christmas.

Pierre Menard Author of Don Quixote

Here’s a link to a download of the Pierre Menard text by Borges needed for the session this Wednesday.

You can print it from here….

It may also be useful to familarise yourself with the original Cervantes Don Quixote by taking a quick gander at these handy summary notes.

See you on Wednesday at Broadway at 6pm.

Happy reading….

FICTIONS

A Reading Room event in collaboration with Hugh Dichmont of Tether.

Selected texts: Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Originally titled El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Part I published in 1605; Part II in 1615. Translated to English in 1885 by John Ormsby (1829-1895). Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (original Spanish title: “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”)

Jorge Luis Borges. Published 1939 in Spanish, 1962 in English (Translated by Anthony Bonner) Written in the form of a review or literary critical piece about (the non-existent) Pierre Menard, a 20th century French writer. It begins with a brief introduction and a listing of all of Menard’s work. Borges’s “review” describes Menard’s efforts to go beyond a mere “translation” of Don Quixote by immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actually “re-create” it, line for line, in the original 17th century Spanish. Thus, Pierre Menard is often used to raise questions and discussion about the nature of accurate translation.

Screening sections of: Lost in La Mancha (2002), a documentary movie narrated by Jeff Bridges about Terry Gilliam’s failed first attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a movie adaptation of the novel Don Quixote. Lost in La Mancha presents Gilliam’s quest to make this movie as a parallel to Quixote’s quest to become a hero.

BOOKING ESSENTIAL: Please email jennie@hinterlandprojects.com to receive the exerts of texts in preparation for the session over the weekend.

FICTIONS Private View (All welcome) Thursday 19th March 6pm – 8pm Featuring work by Hugh Dichmont, Eugenia Ivanissevich, Glen Jamieson & Aaron Juneau, Girolamo Marri, Fay Nicolson, Helen Perkins and Marianna Simnett. For more information on the show, please visit: www.hugh-dichmont.com/fictions.html To compliment the exhibition, Nottingham-based Hinterland Projects (curated by Jennie Syson) will install a Reading Corner that acts as a contextual resource for gallery visitors. Drawn from the shelves of the Reading Room, this diverse collection of writings will provide useful links between disciplines such as the social sciences, humanities and contemporary art. Visitors will be able to take away a bespoke reading list, which has been compiled around the themes and topics in the exhibition.

Thursday 26th February, Reading Room session cancelled.

Due to unforseen circumstances, Tonight’s reading room session has been cancelled. Feel free to download the marvellous texts featured on the glass screen at Broadway, which would have been discussed tonight – and feel free to send me your comments too!

Very best wishes, and apologies for any inconvenience. Reading Room events will commence shortly at The Bonington Gallery as part of the next exhibition, entitled ‘Fictions’.

Happy reading,

Jennie

The Reading Room at Broadway: A month long library event

The project will take over the Broadway building for one month during February, transforming the space into a makeshift library. Visitors are encouraged to share, swap and discuss their favourite reading material, and view work by artists, writers and filmmakers.

• FILM & VIDEO INSTALLATIONS

(top to bottom) The Strange Names Collective, (Phil Stanier)451,  Ongoing archival project; Leanne Bell Gonczarow, Astronomy for Beginners, Digital Video (10 mins 35 secs), Altered Book and Magnifying Glass, 2007

In association with MACE ARCHIVE and OXFAM

The outdoor façade of the building will read as an open book with scrolling text contributions and accounts from artists and writers of what lies within the doors of Broadway from their own perspectives.

• CINEMA SCREEN

Featuring shorts by artists and filmmakers inspired by the written word or the environment of libraries, including Bang! Film Festival lo fi favourite Jack Welsby’s Count Library, 2002; the classic Associations by John Smith, 1975 and Bruce Webb’s beautiful Rare Books and Manuscripts from 2005.

Rare Books and Manuscripts (still), 2005

READING ROOM EVENTS IN THE MEZZANINE

Every Thursday at 7pm during February there will be a Reading Room session in the upstairs Mezzanine.

5th February: The Reading Room discussions at Broadway will commence with a session on Jorge Luis Borges story ‘The Library of Babel’, 1941. The session will be led by Reading Room curator Jennie Syson.

Borges’s narrator describes how his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for many of the texts some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents.

Despite — indeed, because of — this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. However, Borges speculates on the existence of the “Crimson Hexagon”, containing a book that contains the log of all the other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God.

12th February: Join Nottingham Writer’s studios Richard Pilgrim for an enlightening discussion of a section of Julian Barnes’ 1989 novel ‘A History of the World in 10 and a half chapters.’

A stowaway aboard Noah’s Ark gives us his account of the Voyage – a surprising, subversive one, quite unlike the official version, but one that explains a lot about how the human race has subsequently developed. A guest lecturer on a cruise ship in the Aegean has his work interrupted by a group of mysterious visitors who place him in a cruel dilemma. And an ecclesiastical court in medieval France hears a bizarre case . . . Barnes creates a kaleidoscope of narrative voices – from fiction and fact, painting and snatches of autobiography – that comes slowly and compellingly into focus. This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader’s imagination...

19th February: Reading of Steve Martin Play ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’ led by  Nathan Miller, co-director of Hatch. Join in with this informal reading and discussion of this seminal piece of comic theatre, with strange parallels to the social hub of Broadway Bar. (event to be confirmed)

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a play written by Steve Martin in 1993. It features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin AgileMontmartre, Paris. It is set on October 8, 1904, and both men are on the verge of an amazing idea (Einstein will publish his special theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907) when they find themselves at the Lapin Agile, where they have a lengthy debate about the value of genius and talent while interacting with a host of other characters.

26th February: Readings and discussion of commissioned pieces for the glass screen.

The final Reading Room at Broadway will be a critique of written and read pieces during the month. Including writers and artists commissions for the glass screen plus interventions in the bar.

Booking information: these event are free but spaces are limited. Please book well in advance to receive the texts to prepare for the sessions. email jennie@hinterlandprojects.com

• EXCHANGE LIBRARY IN THE CAFÉ BAR

Fresh from the dusty shelves of The Reading Room, Broadway presents an installation of second hand classics for your perusal. Books have been provided for patrons of the café bar through an ‘honesty/swap’ system. Bring a book you no longer want and swap it for one you’d rather give shelf space to at home. Leftover or unwanted books at the end of the project will be donated to Oxfam’s book recycling scheme.

Coelacanth Journal issue 2 out now: feat. Hinterland Projects and Wayne Burrows

The launch of the second issue of The Coelacanth Journal (Hysteria: Winter 2008) at Donlon Books on Cambridge Heath Road, London on Wednesday December 10th, from 7-9pm.

The journal features work from Oliver Basciano, Phoebe Blatton, Wayne Burrows, Captain Zip & Claire Suckall, Hinterland Projects, Susanne Oberbeck, Ezra Pound, Rowland Thomas, Mimei Thompson and Susan Finlay.

The launch featues films from Zoe Brown and Captain Zip, and performances from Adam Christensen and The Dolly Mixtures.

Foucauldian Reading Room in The Impossible Prison

The next Reading Room session will take place on 10th December in High Pavement Police Station as in response to Nottingham Contemporary’s The Impossible Prison exhibition. The selected text, The Eye of Power, is part of the reader which accompanies the exhibition, and is free when you visit the venue. Readers should arrive half and hour early at 5.30pm if they would like a tour of the exhibition. Visiting beforehand is strongly recommended, as there are many excellent video works which require more considered viewing.

The text, is an exert from an interview conducted between Foucault, Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrott and originally from Jeremy Bentham, La Panoptique, Pierre Belfont, Paris 1977. The conversation touches upon Bentham‘s idea of the Panopticon as well as wider concerns pertaining to security, society and different use of buidlings and institutions.

ATTENDING THE READING ROOM:

It is essential to read the text in full before attending the Reading Room session in order to participate in the event. To book a place please contact jennie@hinterlandprojects.com Booking is essential for this session as space is limited.

The Nottingham Contemporary logo featured here is ‘The world turned upside down’ by Olivia Plender. Many thanks to Fiona Parry and Abi Spinks from Nottingham Contemporary who will be co-hosting this event.

Documentation from the Secular Hall

Artistic Activism & Agonistic Spaces

Some questions to consider in advance of Tuesday’s session.

• Do artists play critical role in the East Midlands region?
• Has art lost its critical power? (Did it ever have any?)
• Is imagination essential for self-understanding?
• Is it important that the content of art in public places makes an attempt to reach a public consensus or is ‘antagonistic confrontation’ a more healthy approach?
• How important is the relationship between theoretical discussion and artistic practice?
• How much do you think artists work is now commodified?
• Is it possible for artists to still be politically radical?

Total GHAOS, 2005, Reactor

Thomas Hirschhorn 24H Foucault » (Auditorium), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2-3 octobre 2004 as featured in Nottingham Contemporary’s The Impossible Prison

S Mark Gubb, The death of Peter Fetcher, 2007

Next Reading Room session announced

The next Reading Room session will take place in Leicester at the Secular Hall to coincide with the Arena Festival organised by DOT. The text, Chantal Mouffe’s essay Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces, first published in Vol. 1, No.2, Summer 2007 edition of Art & Research magazine and was suggested by The City Gallery in Leicester. This will be the final Mobile Library event before The Reading Room opens in Sneinton, Nottingham at Christmas.

Chantal Mouffe comments eloquently on the use of public spaces in contemporary societies.  Her ideas on agonistic-pluralism which have a particular relevance for the pluralistic cultures of Leicester, is of particular interest in the context of a site specific art project like Hinterland, and amidst a city-wide festival. The text examines the value and semantics of ‘culture’ itself. The Secular Hall was chosen to make a historical link through secularism to particular social institutions and forms of democratic discourse.

“Chantal Mouffe (born 1943 in Charleroi, Belgium) is a Belgian political theorist. She holds a professorshipUniversity of Westminster in England. She is best known as co-author of at the Hegemony and Socialist Strategy with Ernesto Laclau. Their thoughts are usually described as post-Marxism as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s and were thus active working class and new social movements (notably second-wave feminism in Mouffe’s case). They rejected Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle being the single crucial antagonism in society. Instead they urged for radical democracy of agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion, ‘…there is no possibility of society without antagonism’; indeed, without the forces that articulate a vision of society, it could not exist.” (wikipedia exert.)

ATTENDING THE READING ROOM:

It is essential to read the text in full before attending the Reading Room session in order to participate in the event. To book a place please contact jennie@hinterlandprojects.com

DOWNLOAD ‘ARTISTIC ACTIVISM & ANTAGONISTIC’ SPACES TEXT

FIND OUT HOW TO GET THERE…

Further reading (optional):

Editorial from Art & Research: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/v1n2editorial.html

Brian Holmes, ‘Artistic Autonomy’ www.u-tangente.org

The Secular Society, Leicester: www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk

Many thanks to Kathy Fawcett, Hugo Worthy, Chris Slowe and Eric Rosoman.