Hangover Reading Club #1 - Ecologies

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 opening session of the reading group will take place from 11 am on September 28, 2019 and led by curator Borbála Soós.

The first reading group will approach the notion of ecology as the complex transversal relations that make up everyday life, producing a series of assemblages in and through which we act. It is a way of thinking that does not start from the opposition of human and non-human, nature and culture, technology and earth, natural and artificial, but instead from relations, and changing the dialogue from oppositional to mutually affirmative. This post-system way of thinking has become more important in recent years, in the era of the Anthropocene.
During this session, we will discover ecology as a useful umbrella term that denotes a complex web of ideas, with the help of which we can attempt to create a mind map of a variety of notions that link together in an intra-active dialogue. We will explore ideas such as ecosophy, the datalogical, self-learning algorithms and emergence, and hydrofemism… The latter talks about an ecology of water and how it flows through and connects us to other bodies and realities. Texts will include a variety of forms, including excerpts of sci-fi novels, art theory, artist texts, philosophy and field studies, and will touch upon key authors such as Gregory Bateson, N. Katherine Hayles, Luciana Parisi, Donna Haraway, Astrida Neimanis, Manuel de Landa, Baruch Spinoza, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad and more.

The texts of Hangover Reading Club will be in English and in Hungarian, while the discussions will be held in Hungarian. We will send the texts of each session beforehand via email for those who are interested. For the first session no prior preparations are necessary. Thinking of heavy sleepers, nighthawks and of those who prefer to do the groceries early in the morning, the sessions begin at 11 am.

Hangover Reading Club is free, all are welcome! For further events in the series please visit the following link.