Stills Reading Group

For May’s reading group Glasgow-based artist Agnes Nedregard has selected ‘About Action Art, the Museum and the Object Between’ by Sergio Edelsztein. If you would like to take part in this lively conversation you can download a copy of the text here or request a copy of the texts in advance by asking at Stills reception / emailing info@stills.org

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Contingency is what that which falls falls into, that which, stemming form what is below the stars, belongs to becoming, to unveiling, to the covering over and to the forgetting of what is: to fall it to forget. (Technics and Time: Vol. 1, Bernard Stiegler, p. 96)

To sculpt, to paint, to draw is to go forth to an encounter with the tangibility of the visible, it is to see with one's hands while giving to be seen, that is, to be seen again: it is to train the eye of the beholder and, thus, to sculpt, paint and draw this eye - it is to trans-form it. (Anamnesis and Hypomnesis, Bernard Stiegler, Ars Industrialis)

The City and the Stars, and many of Arthur C. Clark's science fiction novels, explore the idea of the positive power of technology to aid the development of mankind. Using memory as a key theme, explored by the artists in their work and with reference to the impact of digital technologies on contemporary society, this reading group will focus on the work of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and the artist Lindsay Seers and her transformation of artist-cum-camera/projector.

Brian. A. Smith is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Dundee specializing in contemporary French philosophy. Kam Chan is an artist practicing in printmaking, photography, performance and philosophy.

To join this lively conversation, texts can be downloaded here or please ask at reception for hard-copy versions.

Image: Hand, Lindsay Seers, 2003/4 Courtesy of the artist

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In The Skin of the Film (2000) Laura U Marks explores the notion of haptic visuality, in which 'the eyes themselves function like organs of touch... not to distinguish form so much as to discern texture'. Matt Lloyd has selected an extract from Marks to consider the uses and implications of haptic viewing in moving image work.

Matt Lloyd is a short film curator, filmmaker and festival producer. His book on Edinburgh International Film Festival in the 1970s is shortly to be published by College Gate Press. Based in Glasgow, Matt programmes shorts for The Magic Lantern. His short documentary 'Pollphail' is currently touring the international festival circuit.

If you would like to join this lively conversation, the selected texts can be downloaded here.

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Jenny Gypaki is a doctorate researcher and tutor in the History of Art Department at The University of Edinburgh. She is currently conducting her PhD research on the Surrealist Aesthetic in Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video looking at the work of artists such as Matthew Barney, Jane & Louise Wilson, Eija-Liisa Athila, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist and Shirin Neshat.

Jenny has selected texts 'the Stinking Ass' (Dali) and The cinema, instrument of poetry (Salvador Dalí Luis Buñuel)

Download the texts here;
The Stinking Ass.
The Cinema, Instrument of Poetry

Ruth Barker and Catherine Street are two artists whose individual practices exist in relation to both performance and the written word. Together they have chosen two extracts for Stills' January reading group.

In an extract from Sadegh Hedayat's hallucinatory novel, The Blind Owl (1937, translated from the Persian by DP Costello), a painter navigates a nightmarish world in which he is increasingly isolated and detached from his own actions. His unreliable perceptions of his own body and the objects around him suggest the blurring of mental and physical properties.

Meanwhile in a short extract from his recent book, Personal Agency (2008), philosopher Jonathan Lowe discusses ideas about the distinction between physical and mental properties and substances. He looks at the implications for the way in which we identify with our own bodies, minds and actions.

If you would to take part, both texts can be downloaded here: PDF1 and PDF2.

Ruth Barker is a Glasgow-based artist with a predominantly text-based practice. She develops performative and sculptural works for public contexts as well as gallery spaces. Click here for more infomation. 

Catherine Street is an Edinburgh-based artist whose practice incorporates writing, performance, video, installation and work on paper. She took part in the artists' residency programme at Stills in 2007. Click here for more information.

Responding to the theme ‘Fear of Photography’ local artist and research student Rachel Adams has selected an excerpt from Robert O'Harrow’s No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society pages 281-300 together with the exhibition press release for Controversies A legal and ethical history of photography.

If you would take part in this lively conversation you can request a copy of the texts in advance by asking at reception or by emailing info@stills.org

To kick start our new monthly reading group we’ve invited The Reading Band over from Glasgow. Join us for an in-depth Sunday afternoon discussion centred around Steven Connor’s text Seeing Sound: The Displaying of Marsysas. Just follow this link: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/marsyas/ or contact info@stills.org for more details.

The Reading Band brings together a group of musicians and artists to discuss critical texts selected by band members. Theory and critical debate are at the root of much of our practice and this shared core is where our discussions begin. We’re interested in exploring different artistic perspectives by looking at different responses to the same material.

Our informal reading group continues with a text selected by Nicky Bird: Safety in Numbness: Some Remarks on the problems of 'Late Photography', by David Campany, in Where is the Photograph? Published by Photoforum and Photoworks, 2003. For more information please contact us on 0131 622 6200.

Selected excerpts from The Martha Rosler Library.
Stills Resident, Lyndsay Mann, has selected a series of short texts from Martha Rosler's extensive library for September's Reading Group. Centering around Edward Said's Culture & Imperialism, individual snippets offer an idiosyncratic taste of the wonders of the collection. If you would like to come along to the reading group you can request a copy of the texts in advance by asking at reception or by emailing info@stills.org