『CATALOGUE』
This event was a public program organized in conjunction with the artwork 『CATALOGUE』 by Display Distribute (co-edited with Kunchi and Read-in), a participating artist group in the 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Eu Zên.
Display Distribute is a thematic inquiry, distribution service, now and again exhibition space and sometimes shop based out of Kowloon, Hong Kong.『CATALOGUE』 is a publishing programme by Display Distribute examining critical practices amidst a network of readers and producers from East and Southeast Asia. The third edition, co-edited with Kunci (Yogyakarta) and Read-in (Utrecht), consists of a series of reading activities experimenting with the architectures of print by way of collaborative enactments of publishing as real-time event. These include embodying elements such as “title page,” “body content” and “index”—lending a performative dimension to processes of stockpiling, editing, translating and knowledge exchange. 『CATALOGUE』 unfolds at a station on-site that will serve as a gathering point, library and editorial bureau for publishing acts.
Program Contents
(1) Front Matters
– 2018. 09. 15. 10.00-19.00
– Participants requested to bring: cardboard boxes, unwanted books, coffee mug
– Considering “title page”, “dedication”, “table of contents” and ‘introduction’ as structures of designation, acknowledgement and attribution, participants will engage in activities ranging from making spore prints to the minor contamination of forms of gratitude and respect via a network of written and performed dedications. Display Distribute and Kunci will initiate the 『CATALOGUE』 publishing process by opening dialogues while we work hands-on, organise together and gather materials with guests.
(2) Chapter 2: Klub Numpang Baca Reading Group
– 2018. 09. 16. 14.00-16.00
– Requirements: RSVP required. Participants will receive text for reading upon registering, to be read before the meeting
– Klub Numpang Baca Reading Group is a platform reading group led by members of Kunci. Contextualised through the location, activity, life rhythm and peoples around Seoul, the 『CATALOGUE』 session will consider in particular workers’ issues, the potential of networking among precarious workers and observe the common phenomenon of overwork and high living costs. Speculative, theoretical texts, song lyrics, poems, literature, etc., will be discussed and explored through reading experiments, and discussions will be transcribed and arranged into a mycorrhizomatic publication that will become part of the “SECOND(hand) MOUNTAIN(fortress)”series produced by Display Distribute.
(3) Chapter 3: Spore, Spore, Sporadic
– 2018. 09. 19. 17.00-19.30
– Chapter Three of 『CATALOGUE』 considers the reading group, study group and editorial bureau as a grounding for forms of commoning and distributed embodiment. Developing an index of keywords in groups of 3-4, growing rhizomatically in unlimited branches via a modular and logistical seating configuration; topics to be addressed include: the Mycellium Network Society, concepts of the ‘latent commons’, coincidental networks, forms of 緣分 yuan fen as binding material, parasitical processes, etc. Participants will be served tea and coffee, the grounds of which will be redistributed back as nourishment for mycorrhizal knowledge sharing.
(4) Translation (Contaminating Languages)
– 2018. 09. 27. 19.30-21.30
– Language(s): Korean, English, Dutch, Chinese, Greek and the language of any participating participant
– Requirements: RSVP required. Participants will receive relevant texts for reading upon registering.
– This issue of the 『CATALOGUE』 project features texts from Anna LOWENHAUPT-TSING, Jong PAIREZ, Yael van der WOUDEN and Shulea CHEANG’s “Rehearsal of a Network”. As part of an on-going writing and editorial experiment, these works’ translation into Korean serves as a foundation for polylingual discussion and mutual contaminations of meaning. “Contaminated Languages” will engage in collectively explored exercises in translation, looking at the potentials of (mis)translation and the potency of ideation as a dialogical process between bodies.
(5) Chapter 5: Haunted Bookshelves
– 2018. 09. 29. 10.30-13.00
– The Haunted Bookshelves Session practices choreographies of memorising—that is, the act of collective memorising. This recurring session convened by members of Read-in speaks to the missing pieces from our bookshelves. However, when something is missing, it does not mean that it is not (t)here. We rather refer to what Avery Gordon writes in Ghostly Matters, as:
Haunting as a way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over (slavery, for instance), or when the oppressive nature is denied (as in free labour or national security). […] Indeed it seemed to me that haunting was precisely the domain of turmoil and trouble.
— Avery Gordon, 2008:xvi-xvii
For the Haunted Bookshelves session of 『CATALOGUE』, each participant will be asked to respond to a specific question by bringing a quote to be collectively memorised.
(6) End Matters: Lateralizing Knowledges
– 2018. 09. 29. 14.30-18.30
– Requirements: comfortable walking shoes; RSVP required.
– Terms developed as part of 『CATALOGUE』’s lexicon will be collated together to form a mapped index. Items listed will be pegged to ‘page numbers’ and revealed as various locations throughout Seoul, offering a one-day exploration of the 『CATALOGUE』 publication as physical, discursive and geo-spatially located endnotes. These locations, references and concurrent discussions hyperlink outwards as a means of ‘lateralising knowledges’. The final colophon page will be comprised of a brief audio-visual trace left at the last stop along the tour.
Elements from all six publication nodes form the components of 『CATALOGUE』’s publishing, to be released as unbound forms of textual and visual documentation. For the remaining duration of the Biennale, these chapters and practices can be distributed only in the form of hand-copied editions made by exhibition visitors on site.
