READING READING ROOM: Dealing with Illegibility

18.03.2025 / 10:00 – 22:00
With Angélica Freitas, Kinga Tóth, Nhã Thuyên

With Barbara Bausch, Ulrike Draesner, Robin Coenen & Danielle Rosales, Angélica Freitas, Elias Kreuzmair, Anouk Luhn, Karolin Meunier, Kinga Tóth, Nhã Thuyên and more

Reading as a practice is both mundane and mysterious: We commonly understand it as a mental technique that involves the visual recognition of written signs, the actualisation of the sound image of words and the comprehension of their meaning. But at the same time, reading produces something that cannot be derived from what is read alone, operating along the lines of a black box: We can only ever grasp it ‘in flagrante’. In response to this difficulty, READING READING ROOM brings together artists and scholars to explore and discuss the precarious practice of reading by reflecting on its absolute limit: the illegible. Paying special attention to the question of what happens when what we perceive as successful reading is blocked, the event highlights reading not only as a functional act of decoding information, but also as an aesthetic, sensual, affective, experimental and political practice in its own right.

Workshops

10:00 am – 1:00 pm:
How to Sing a Picture? Performance-Workshop with Kinga Tóth

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm:
Mapping Textual Spaces: Visual Strategies to Approach the Unreadable. Workshop with visual intelligence

To take part in the workshops, please register with Barbara Bausch, b.bausch@fu-berlin.de. No prior knowledge is required, participation is free.

Exhibition

5:30 pm – 10:00 pm:
Mapping Textual Spaces by visual intelligence and others
Illegible Writings and audio installation by Angélica Freitas

Evening program

6:00 pm:
Barbara Bausch: Dealing with Illegibility. Welcome and Introduction

6:15 pm:
Ulrike Draesner & Elias Kreuzmair: Zum Erkenntnisversprechen des Unlesbaren. Conversation

7:00 pm:
Nhã Thuyên: âm u əm˧˧ u˧˧. A Moving Poem of the Vietnamese Alphabet. Screening

7:30 pm: Break

8:00 pm:
Karolin Meunier: Reading a Code. Performance followed by a conversation with Anouk Luhn

8:45 pm:
Kinga Tóth: How to Sing a Picture. Performance

The event will see the launch of con·stel·la·tions 03: Illegibilities Reflecting Reading.

Curated by Barbara Bausch with Mathias Zeiske

A cooperation between the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and the project “READING READING” of the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”, Freie Universität Berlin.

daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
10969 Berlin