Monday Readings: Catalogs
Monday Readings are an itinerant series of convivial situations to research our technological and infrastructural inter-dependencies (previous iterations: https://apass.be/monday-readings/, https://ntrcltrs.hotglue.me/?screen_no_deal/ ). They bring our everyday technical encounters in conversation with theoretical and political thinking, by close-reading technologies as if they were texts, and viceversa. Each session focuses on a specific set of tools, software, infrastructures relevant for the context in which the event takes place, and unfolds in two phases: a hands-on moment to shift, upset or magnify our ordinary relation to the technical objects in question, and the collective reading of two or more texts that approach the same objects from different modes of writing.
This encounter will engage with librarian practices, taking the cue from the Rietveld library’s own experience and experiments. It will touch upon digital catalogs and their material conditions, classification systems and their promise of universality, the possible modes of questioning categorization biases and the limits of the politics of correction.We’ll read into queer approaches to the issue of classification put forward by Emily Drabinski, learn how to cope with the absurdity of universality aided by Jorge Luis Borges, and be reminded of the technological elephant in the room by Constant.
This session is hosted by Infrastructural Manoeuvres (https://catalogue.rietveldacademie.nl/about.html), starts at 11.00 and goes until 16.00, with a lunch break in between.
Due to the current limitations to the sharing of spaces, the session will be held online on a non-extractive video-or-audio call system. Nonetheless, to ensure active participation and give enough time-space for everybody’s voice, there is a limit to the number of participants. Please send an email to bibliotheek@rietveldacademie.nl to join!
Design by Agathe Gabrielle Delaite