HOW TO BECOME A MOTHERFUCKINGELEGIST

I am Welton Santos reenacts a dialogue between the Brazilian geo-bio-architect Welton Santos and an Interviewer. The book, which is always read collectively, is used in reading performances by groups of at least 3 people.

Printed on the occasion of an artist residency at PAV, Parco d’Arte Vivente, Turin, July 2016. Texts based on transcripts of interviews with Welton Santos.

‘Kamer I - Oesters’ is een kort verhaal geschreven in het kader van het kunstproject Beste Anna,. Hierin fungeert de figuur van de openlijk lesbische Rotterdamse schrijfster Anna Blaman als motor voor vragen, gesprekken en correspondenties rondom feminisme, schrijvende vrouwen en de canon, anders zijn, eenzaamheid en vriendschap.

Ook verkent Katinka met dit onderzoek Anna Blaman als personage voor een toekomstige roman. In ‘Kamer I - Oesters’ betreedt de hoofdpersoon Anna’s met een rolkoffer vol boeken van andere schrijvers, fluistert ze hun woorden in de kieren in Anna’s muren en verleidt ze Anna met een pauwendans.

Anna Blaman (1905-1960) was openlijk lesbisch, in die tijd een groot taboe, maar zag zichzelf niet als voorvechter van een beweging. Een belangrijk thema in haar werk is de vraag of we een ander werkelijk kunnen kennen. De personages in haar romans zijn vaak alleen en verlangen naar een ander, die altijd onbereikbaar blijft. In 1948 publiceerde Blaman de roman Eenzaam Avontuur, die erg veel stof op deed waaien vanwege enkele (homo-)erotische personages die in het boek voorkomen. 

First edition of the Engagement Arts Zine.

Published May 2019

"I spent some time looking for this quote in Moyra Davey’s Index Cards: “To do without people is for photography the most impossible of renunciation.” When I found it, I realized Davey was quoting “George Baker quoting Walter Benjamin.” Later on, I came upon the same quote again in Quinn Latimer’s Woman of Letters, where Latimer also talks about the way “critics adopt Davey’s unique literary style when writing about her work.” For writing to do without repeating the words of others is clearly an impossible renunciation.

Davey, who had internalized the critique of representation in the 1980s, describes the set of circumstances and coincidences that led her to photograph people in the subway after years of self- imposed restraint. For photography to do without people is not impossible, but merely hard and conceivably lonely. Until recently, Kristien Daem’s photographs mostly did without people. It took the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing obligations for her to feel the urge to photograph fellow artists. Daem has most often aimed the lens of her camera towards the quiet architecture of her native Belgium. She spent time researching and unearthing the unrealized works or forgotten projects of artists such as Fred Sandback. And when documenting the work of others, she tries to turn the task into a trade of her own."

The Poeticians is a publication of the performance of the collection of clothes and poetry called Writing Wounds To Heal by Swedish choreographer Pontus Pettersson. Made in velvet silk with the poetry burned out in the fabric exposing the texts, the poetry exposes both itself and the skin of the performer. Throughout the durational piece the performers are doing Pontus Petterssons cat practice and is one of the main ingredients of the project as well as the clothes/poems. The Poeticans is also a choreo-curational event that hosts different choreographic proposals inside of it. It is seen as module or installation where pieces, objects, performers can be inserted rather than a performance that executes and performs the same over and over. It was created as an extension of Pontus interest in poetry and choreography where hospitality and proximity is seen as key concepts in the development and execution of the event.

How to Sleep Faster is published as part of the collaborative discussion that form the critical direction of the gallery. and sits alongside the first two exhibitions – Sleep Faster (February), and How to Carve Totem Poles (March). It has been put together as an open ended continuation of this dialogue through which we seek to understand the contradictions / complexities that define and form our experience, existence and participation in a contemporary digital-analogue creative environment.

Arcadia Missa Publications; Rozsa Farkas, Tom Clark, Jammie Nicholas, Laura Farley (eds).

Cait McKinney traces how lesbian feminist activists in the United States and Canada between the 1970s and the present developed communication networks, databases, and digital archives to use as a foundation for their feminist, antiracist, and trans-inclusive work.

For decades, lesbian feminists across the United States and Canada have created information to build movements and survive in a world that doesn't want them.

In Information Activism Cait McKinney traces how these women developed communication networks, databases, and digital archives that formed the foundation for their work. Often learning on the fly and using everything from index cards to computers, these activists brought people and their visions of justice together to organize, store, and provide access to information.

Focusing on the transition from paper to digital-based archival techniques from the 1970s to the present, McKinney shows how media technologies animate the collective and unspectacular labor that sustains social movements, including their antiracist and trans-inclusive endeavors. By bringing sexuality studies to bear on media history, McKinney demonstrates how groups with precarious access to control over information create their own innovative and resourceful techniques for generating and sharing knowledge.

ROT is a publication reflecting the research “Wicked technology/Wild fermentation,” by Sara Manente that focuses on forms and practice of fermentation as ways to rethink bodies and their making. This glossy magazine performs research, aiming to infect the reader, and questioning how to spread, publish, and help the work survive. 

Sara Manente is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher born in Italy and living in Brussels. She is interested in narrowing the distance between the performer, the audience, and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation, and ways of doing. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration, et al.