Estate of Agnes Martin /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
DISCOMFORT
Organized by Ariel March Williams
Readings can be found HERE
Please email addsdonna@gmail.com to sign up and for meeting links.
This virtual study group will be centered around the feeling and concept of discomfort, from emotional disquiet or uncertainty, to physical pain or corporeal unease. What value can be found in the state of discomfort? How do the various experiences of discomfort inform and shape our lives? What does an uncomfortable present and future look and feel like? Readings will be both assigned and contributed by participants, and the trajectory of the study group is open to change. Visual, as well as written, contributions are encouraged.
A note on diversity from the organizer: I have made a conscious effort to include authors and artists from a wide variety of identities, but I wish to be transparent by confessing that my own bookshelf is limited in its scope. This (uncomfortable) fact is folded into the theme of the study group, and I hope to discuss it openly while welcoming contributions and suggestions from participants. The reading list will continue to evolve as I source relevant readings from more biracial and indigenous folx and people of color.
WEEK 1 - Sunday, October 11, 1PM CDT -excerpts from Anne Dufourmantelle’s “In Praise of Risk” two poems by Wisława Szymborska from “Poems New and Collected”, 1957-1997 (‘We Are Extremely Fortunate’ and ‘One Series of Events’) WEEK 2 - Sunday, October 18, 3PM CDT -excerpt from Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies WEEK 3 - Sunday, October 25, 1PM CDT -excerpt from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and chapters from Play it as it Lays, by Joan Didion WEEK 4 - Sunday, November 1, 1PM CDT - "The Resident" from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado and "On the Perfection Underlying Life" lecture by Agnes Martin given at the ICA in 1973 WEEK 5 - Sunday, November 8, 1PM CDT - Zadie Smith, Elegy for a Country’s Seasons, Lynn Nottage + Lorna Simpson, ‘Submerged’ from T-Magazine, NYTimes, and Louise Glück's poem October WEEK 6 - Sunday, November 15, 1PM CDT - "Capitalocene Violence" Chapter 4 of Against the Anthropocene by T.J. Demos and excerpt from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler WEEK 7 - Sunday, November 22, 1PM CDT - excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer; "It Takes an Ocean Not to Break" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; "To the Lights that Never Went Out" by Natasha Tamate Weiss; excerpt from Decolonising Trauma Work: Indigenous Practitioners Share Stories and Strategies by Renee Lynn Broadbridge Legge Linklater WEEK 8 - Sunday, December 6, 1PM CDT - excerpt from Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor; excerpt from When Species Meet by Donna J. Haraway
Reading to include but not limited to:
In Praise of Risk, Anne Dufourmantelle
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay
Beasts of Burden, Sunaura Taylor
Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion
“On The Perfection Underlying Life”, Agnes Martin
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson
Poems (New and Collected), Wisława Szymborska
Being a Beast, Charles Foster
Close Range, Annie Proulx
Carmen Maria Machado
Han Kang
Franz Kafka
more TBD