About

Read-in is a self-organized collective that experiments with the political, material, and physical implications of collective reading and the situatedness of any kind of reading activity. Some of the formats that Read-in experiments with include going door-to-door and requesting neighbours to host a group reading session spontaneously (Read-in Classic); memorizing workshops which focus on the links between reading and memorizing and experiments with memorizing collectively; and BookshelfResearch, for which Read-in examines specific private or public libraries according to categories such as gender, nationality, materiality, resulting in a statistical breakdown of inclusions and omissions.

 

Initiated in February 2010 in Utrecht, NL by artist Annette Krauss and theater maker Hilde Tuinstra and further developed in collaboration with artists Laura Pardo, Marina Stavrou and Leonardo Vargas. Read-in developed in collaboration with ‘The Grand Domestic Revolution. User’s Manual’ (GDR) a long-term collective research project initiated by Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory. After a year of monthly actions, events and readings, a few ‘Read-iners’ (Hyunju Chung, Annette Krauss, Serena Lee, Laura Pardo, Maiko Tanaka) have formed a research group to contextualize the reading practices and expand it towards other ends, as well as to grapple with ideas of representation of this practice for various contexts.

 

The Read-in research group continues in different formations. Current members are Hyunju Chung, Svenja Engels, Annette Krauss, Serena Lee, Sanne Oorthuizen, Laura Pardo, Ying Que and Marianna Takou

.

 

 

Read-in, which is unavoidably rooted in the specificity of the places where it is practiced, also calls attention to the relationship between the content of a book and the reading of a space. Through relocating and communalizing a typically private and solitary activity, Read-in opens up new spaces for grappling with the material, affective and political dimensions of “reading together” trying to conjure feminist histories of reading together for political action.

 

For the web-site and some of the printed matters that Read-in has produced, we work together with designer and researcher Anja Groten http://anjagroten.com/

 

Read-in considers itself as an open practice and invites interested people to join the events. For those who want to commit to a more in-depth research into reading, please contact us, and to join our research group: info@read-in.info.