As part of the Librarians-in-Residence public programming, Alvin and Yuchen will organise a series of in-person group reading sessions throughout the next six months. The groups will meet on a bi-weekly to monthly basis for close reading of selections from recently acquired titles, accompanied by supplementary reading materials selected by the librarians.

The next reading groups of the Librarians-in-Residence programme are themed around ‘wildness,’ and will take place in two parts from May through June. For the first one in the series, we will be reading ‘A New Kind of Wildness: The Rite of Spring and an Indigenous Aesthetics of Bewilderment,’ a chapter in acclaimed queer scholar Jack Halberstam’s Wild Things (2020). In the book, Halberstam recuperates the somewhat touchy category of ‘the wild’ and theorises it as 'an unbounded and unpredictable space that offers sources of opposition to modernity’s orderly impulses.’ More than a spatiotemporal demarcation, Halberstam wields ‘wildness’ as an epistemological campaign and a ‘queer method’ (as Mel Y. Chen so aptly puts it) geared towards the creative unbuilding of the world. In the selected chapter, Halberstam offers an original reading of the now classic ballet, The Rite of Spring (1913), and the work by queer Canadian, Swampy Kree, two-spirit artist Kent Monkman, to think through the entanglement of wildness as an aesthetic with queerness, coloniality and indigeneity.

CORE READING MATERIALS FOR WILDNESS #1:

Jack Halberstam, ‘A New Kind of Wildness: The Rite of Spring and an Indigenous Aesthetics of Bewilderment,’ Wild Things, Duke University Press, 2020

SUPPLEMENTARY READING MATERIALS:

‘Jack Halberstam presents Wild Things with Rizvana Bradley,’ Harvard Bookstore (Youtube)

OPEN LIBRARY

From April through June, during selected Thursday afternoons, our London-based librarian Alvin will be physically present at Asymmetry HQ to introduce newly acquired books and answer any questions RSVPed guests might have.

OPENING HOURS

Thu 25th May 1PM - 5:30PM

Thu 1st June 1PM - 5:30PM

Thu 8th June 1PM - 5:30PM

Thu 22nd June 1PM - 5:30PM

FREE ENTRY, BOOKING HERE