READING~LISTENING GROUP

S~CRG is a radio project linking the rivers Spree and Channelsea in Berlin and London through a series of creative exchanges and public broadcasts.

As part of the project, we would like to organise a regular reading~listening group to develop our thinking together across the project (and gradually establish lasting bridges between the vast networks of actors from both rivers).

Themes reflect our interests and activities in each location, as well as previous work on the rivers with radio and boats. Keywords include:

– flows
– infrastructures
– transmission ecologies
– rivers

Places

The group will take place monthly at about the same time in each city. Each group will meet in a physical location, with options for online connections later on, perhaps on Mezcal.*

In Berlin, we will work with Zabriskie, an independent book shop with a history of hosting reading clubs, including the series: Between Us and Nature.

In London we will meet at the floating Pier room at Hermitage Wharf, with the possibility to find other locations over time.

The listening dimension of the gatherings won't focus on specific listening exercises. Instead, we would like the sessions as a whole to be attentive to the relational, situated, attuned, and multi-sensorial qualities of listening** – encouraging a collective engagement with ourselves and our surroundings.

There will be at least 5 meetings, coinciding with the development of the radio project between rivers/cities.

Times

– 18 April (Berlin, London)
– 16 May (Berlin, London)
– 20 June (Berlin, London)
– 11 July (London) date tbc
– 12 September (Berlin)

From 19:00 to 21:00 (Berlin); 18:00 to 20:00 (London)

Readings

We propose to begin with two texts in common. After that, each group will choose one thing to read next, and we will read both selections together.

#1
Aqualiteracies: Understanding (and sensing) water as a hybrid data carrier by Daniela Medina Poch.

Fishes Should Not Be Taken from the Deep! by Chus Martinez in Tidaletics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science. Stefanie Hessler (ed).

Further resources

The following texts are part of the resources for the reading~listening sessions. They will not necessarily be read during the series but serve as references to the scope of this group:

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan & Nils Bubandt (eds).

'Becoming Salmon' by Marianne E Lien in Arts of Living.

'Beyond boundaries: Earth's water cycle is being bent to breaking point' in Bodies of Water. Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. Astrida Neimanis.

Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies. Sean Cubitt.

Fluid Pasts: Archeology of Flow. Matthew Edgeworth.

influx & efflux – writing up with Walt Whitman. Jane Bennett.
Infrastructures of flow: streaming media as elemental media. Justin Grandinetti, Chris Ingraham.

Interplanetary Machines.

Gathering Waters. Basia Ireland.

'Liquid Scale: Trans-scalar Thinking and the Perception of Water' in In Water in Social Imagination: from Technological Optimism to Contemporary Environmentalism. Scot Slovic.

Methodologies of Kelp: On Feminist Posthumanities, Transversal Knowledge Production and Multispecies Ethics in an Age of Entanglement. Cecilia Åsberg, Janna Holmstedt, Marietta Radomska.

'Rowboat Phenomenology'. Angela Sakrison in Slow Spatial Reader – Chronicles of Radical Affection. Carolyn F Strauss (ed).

'Sounding the Mississippi'by Margarida Mendes in Radical Sympathy.

The Ashley Book of Knots. Clifford W Ashley.

The force of listening. Lucia Farinati, Claudia Firth.

'Synchronies at Risk: The intertwined lives of horseshoe crabs and red knot birds'. Peter Funch in Arts of Living.

The Invention of Rivers. Dilip da Cunha.

'The Sacred and the Superfund' in Braiding Sweetgrass. Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Thinking with Water. Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod, Astrida Neimanis (eds).

Transfiguring the Anthropocene: Stochastic Reimaginings of Human-Beaver Worlds, July Hazard & Cleo A Woelfle-Erskine

Water: A Queer Archive Of Feeling in Tidaletics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science. Astrida Neimanis.

Wet Dream. Erin Robinsong

Connect

For more information and to join, please contact:
Grant, Mort, Dawn at Soundcamp (London)
Monaí, Kate at Archipel Stations/Radio Otherwise (Berlin).

Credits

Spree ~ Channelsea Radio Group is a project by:
Archipel Stations
Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White)
Radio Otherwise
Soundcamp
Surge Cooperative

We are grateful for the framework and support provided by the Cultural Bridge Fund. Cultural Bridge brings together The Goethe Institue and Arts Council England to create cultural projects between the UK and Germany.

Graphic by Sam Baraitser Smith.

Notes

[*] Mezcal is in an online radio space by August Black. It lets people assemble a show together on a virtual mixer, with the option to broadcast it publicly.

[**] From 'Listening towards ecologies of connectivity' by Carla J. Maier, Kate Donovan & Monaí de Paula Antunes.