Otros libros, y eso. Reading club

"The strangest thing about being alone here, in Paris, in the room of an ethnographic museum, almost under the Eiffel Tower, is to think that all those figurines that look like me were torn from the cultural heritage of my country by a man whose last name I share."
Gabriela Wiener, Huaco retrato (2021)

Other books, and so, the Reina Sofia Museum's reading club, resumes its journey together with hablarenarte for the 2023/2024 year.

The club is formed as a choral group of neighbors of the Lavapiés neighborhood, art professionals, avid readers or simply curious women who come to read novels, artist's books, essays or poetry books. Through ten sessions and encounters at the museum, Otros libros, y eso, proposes literary and artistic mediations, polysemic readings of the collection, operating as a safe space in which to put personal experiences in common.

The program is organized around four readings that address issues, problems or concerns of the present. These books will be discussed through "tertulias" (meetings to share sensations within the group) and activations (artistic mediation proposals in which a guest brings the reading to the museum context).

From them, we proposed to Iki Yos Piña to add her trans-border voice to the schizo polyphony of Ada, the protagonist of Agua dulce, in a session that took place in the vault room of the Museum and under the lit candle of Santa Marta la dominadora; with Yeison García, with whom we delved into several works of Episode 7 "Dispositivo 92. Can history be rewound?", while creating a poetic dialogue around racism, migration and exclusion based on Brenda Navarro's novel and various migrant poetic voices. Vidas a la intemperie was read again with a transmaio vegetal, Fran Quiroga's ecodrag character, who pointed out the exclusion of the rural from the narratives of modernity; finally, Jaime Vallaure proposed, in the Richard Serra's hall, a masterful performative action for Obra maestra.

For this new cycle of readings that starts in September 2023, hablarenarte proposes the works Huaco retrato (Gabriela Wiener), Todo lo que se mueve (Valeria Mata), Las primas (Aurora Venturini) and the selection of Relatos lumbung, around which we will propose artists and mediators for their respective activations.

Registration for the reading club, in which a dozen people are participating, and which is free of charge, can be made through the following link, between September 1st and 8th.