To read, to listen: an evening event

28 July 2023. Free entry.

Friday 28 July, 6-8pm
The Physics Room
Mulled wine and comfortable seating provided

Made in collaboration, informed by biographical or historical narrative, often in dialogue, Emma Fitts and Rosalind Nashashibi’s practices are both underpinned by connections with people, and with text. For this event, each artist and the curator, Abby Cunnane, invited friends and past collaborators to nominate a short published text suitable for reading aloud, along themes related to Fitts and Nashashibi's exhibition, The air, like a stone: alternate temporalities, weather and astronomy, alchemies and omens, and bodies.

These were read aloud throughout a low-lit evening in the gallery. All the selected texts were printed out, and attendees were invited to choose one to read, or, to just sit and listen to others reading. The intention was to shift the focus from being predominantly visual, to allow room for embodied experiences of listening, resting, and for multiple voices.

You can find links to the texts contributed below, with page numbers referring to the extracts identified. Where the text is not available in full online, the link will take you to the relevant publisher's website, or where the publication is out of print, to a library or place it may be purchased from. Where the link corresponds to an audio file, it will take you to The Physics Room's Soundcloud.

Hinemoa Elder, Wawata: Moon Dreaming (Tāmaki Makaurau: Penguin, 2022), 12, 14, 15, 16, 20, 22–23, 166, 196, 219, 223.

Lucy Lippard, ‘3 Short Fictions’, Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics 2: ‘Patterns of communication and space among women’, Vol.1, No.2 (May 1977), 22–24.

Etel Adnan, ‘The morning after my death’, The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (Sausalito, CA: The Post-Apollo Press, 1990).

Bernadette Mayer, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (New York: Nightboat Books, 2023), 150–53.

Catherine Becker, illustrated by Doya Nardin, Mana Cards: The Power of Hawaiian Wisdom (Hilo, Radiance Network Inc.,1998).

Sky Hopinka, Perfida (New York: Wendy’s Subway, 2020), 32, 33, 26, 37, 40, 41.

Rosemary Waldrop, ‘Conversation 12: On Hieroglyphs’, Reluctant Gravities (New York: New Directions, 1999).

Svetlana Boym, ‘The Off-Modern Mirror’, e-flux journal 19, October 2010.

Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, (Delhi: Hamish Hamilton, 2017), 73–77.

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), 105–107.

D.Y. Dryansky, ‘Traces of the Future's Past: Nicola Trussardi’s Palazzo in Bergamo’, Architectural Digest, May 1987.

Bernadette Mayer, ‘Birthday Sonnet for Grace’, Sonnets (New York: Tenderbuttons Press, [1989] 2014).

René Dumal, Mt Analogue. Translated by Carol Cosman. (Woodstock and New York: Overlook Press, 1952), 77–79. 

Quinn Latimer, ‘Anticipator Landscape’, Rumoured Animals (Felton, CA, Dreamhorse Press, 2021), 66.

Audre Lorde, Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Parker 1974–1989, edited by Julie R. Enszer (Berkeley, CA: Sinister Wisdom, 2018), 88–95.

Lisa Robertson, Proverbs of a She-Dandy (Paris/Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2018), 6–25.

Rebecca Giggs, Fathoms: The World in the Whale (Melbourne: Scribe Press, 2020), 121-123.

Patricia Grace, ‘Moon Story’, Small Holes in the Silence (Auckland: Penguin Books, 2006), 111–118.

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Translated by Tim Parks. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf [1988]), 1993).

J.C. Sturm, ‘Let Go, Unlearn, Give Back’, Postscripts (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2000).

Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life. Translated by Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 7–9.

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Edinburgh: Canongate Books [1977] 2011), 2–6.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Ode to the West Wind’, Poetry Foundation

Laub, Puddles of Isle of Lewis. Field recordings taken by Laub on his iphone on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, Autumn 2022; composed and read by Laub, 2023. Sources are: poetry reading by Dolina Maclennan, Angus Macleod Memorial Lecture at Pairc School, Gravie, South Lochs, 28 October 2022; Shauni Baki singing Orain Mhuradani Mast piece; Psalm 107 in Gaelic; unknown hymn; two unknown songs on the radio.

Hafez, Ghazal 356, The Divan of Hafez. Translated by Azita Chegini and Selina Ershadi; read by Selina Ershadi.

With thanks to all those who contributed readings for this event: Alison Annals, Amelia Bywater, Amy Howden-Chapman, Binna Choi, Bopha Chhay, Charlotte Prodger, Deborah Rundle, Elena Narbutaite, Emma Fitts, Fiona Connor, Gintaras Didziapetris, Kasia Lassinaro, Louise Menzies, Marnie Slater, Milli Jannides, Nicola Farquhar, Rosalind Nashashibi, Ruth Buchanan, Sarah Forrest, Sarah Rose, Selina Ershadi, Sriwhana Spong and Abby Cunnane.