Every last Sunday of the month the Varia Library and the Rotterdam Electronica Depot hold Read & Repair events. Due to current circumstances, most of them have been in an online format. We invite you to visit our online space, make yourself comfortable, read or repair some things together, and share our thoughts and ideas.
In 2021 our Read & Repair sessions will be paired, we will take two months to explore one theme. During January and February 2021, we will be exploring the theme Wireless Imagination. Transmission, radio, resonance and orality are at play in these sessions, where we will learn from, and act on, methods used in activist radio and the polyphonous histories of radio art.
The text selection for January was made by Varia Library group member Danny van der Kleij. Danny is active in various loosely organized online communities and collectives. Most of his work these days revolves around experiments in online radio, plaintext and supposedly obsolete consumer electronics. He is currently a tutor at ArtEZ Graphic Design in Arnhem.
In this online edition of Read & Repair participants will be invited to pick and mix from different texts ranging from pirate radio zines, media theory on the ephemerality of radio, and accounts of community radio politics.
Texts from:
- Gregory Whitehead - Radio Play Is No Place
- Christina Dunbar-Hester - Low power to the people, Do new media have old politics
- TX - Radio dispatches from eighties London
There is no prior reading needed before we come together to Read, we experience the texts for the first time together and will send out a link for download during the event.
Date: Sunday, 31st January 2021
Time: 10:30am-12:00pm CET
Location: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/wirelessimaginationReading
NOTE: This reading session will be held in English.
The further themes we'll be looking at in 2021 are Digital Solidarity, The Automated Body, Sense-full Pedagogy and Community Memory.
Read is alternatively guided by a Varia Library group member, the following Read (in the next month) is guided by a guest. Both sessions revolve around the same theme, with different texts and methods to read them. The guest Read session is accompanied a Repair session. The Repair session is a practical exploration of the same theme, led by a guest or a Rotterdam Eletronica Depot member. It is an active workshop you can experiment with at home, and one day in our Depot, when we can physically gather.
Our January-September 2021 programme is funded by Gemeente Rotterdam.