Hangover Reading Club #2 - Donna Haraway: Kinship, Chthulucene and the compost

Trafó Gallery's new lazy Saturday morning reading group explores fresh theoretical approaches and critical perspectives that provide insight into larger-than-human worlds and belief systems that flow beyond solidified patterns of thinking and doing. The textual gatherings, led by invited curators, artists or theoreticians, often in conjunction with the exhibitions and events at Trafó Gallery, will include discussions on posthuman theories, ecofeminism, queer ecologies, hydrofeminism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology among others.

The next session of the reading group will take place from 11.30 am on 23 October, 2019 and led by journalist Bence Horváth and artist Gideon Horváth.

Donna Haraway: Kinship, Chthulucene and the compost

"Trouble is an interesting word. It derives from a thirteenth-century French verb meaning “to stir up,” “to make cloudy,” “to disturb.” We—all of us on Terra—live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. [...] The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places." (Haraway, D.: Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, Duke University Press, 2016)

Donna J. Haraway was born in Denver, in 1944, she studied zoology, English and philosophy in the USA, later evolutionary philosophy and theology in Paris before earning her PhD in biology at Yale University. Her work focuses on the interconnections between science and feminism, and on such notions like ecofeminism, new realism, techno sciences or post-humanism. Consequently she highly criticizes anthropocentrism; she searches for new possible relations between different human and non-human worlds, visioning a future where different entities may build up a common, non-hierarchical space together.

The reading group will be led by journalist Bence Horváth (444.hu) and artist Gideon Horváth. Both of them have been studying Haraway’s theoretical texts in the last years; Bence Horváth in connection to his philosophical studies and to the topic of ecological crisis in particular, while Gideon Horváth in relation to his artworks dealing with philosophical questions around ecology and new realism. The session will focus on Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene published in 2016, and will take a closer look into terms like kinship, Chthulucene, compost and tentacular thinking.

The texts of Hangover Reading Club will be in English and Hungarian, while the discussions will be in Hungarian. We will send the texts of each session beforehand via email for those who are interested. Thinking of heavy sleepers, nighthawks and of those who prefer to do the groceries early in the morning, the sessions begin at 11:30 am. Although the different reading sessions of Hangover Reading Club are related, it is not necessary to attend all sessions, the events are drop-in.

Hangover Reading Club is free, all are welcome!

For the themes and dates of past and future sessions of Hangover Reading Club, follow this link.