#46 Reading Group: Goddess Change

In the coming four months Buro Stedelijk hosts the speculative fiction reading group Goddess Change, initiated by artists Anna Hoetjes and Müge Yılmaz. The year 2024 is the date that marks the beginning of the story in Octavia E. Butler’s masterpiece Parable of The Sower, where young protagonist Lauren Olamina comes of age in the dystopian circumstances of a bleak future. The reading group will focus on this date, 2024, as the year in which the fictional book Parable of the Sower transitions from portraying the future into portraying the past. For this occasion Anna and Müge have invited artists, writers and scholars Adriana Knouf, Fiep van Bodegom, Marly Pierre-Louis and Nat Muller. Each of these experts will lead a different session, where we will be reading and discussing passages from Parable of the Sower and other feminist science fiction texts.

We will collectively look at the agency we find in speculative futures that are scrutinized through a feminist and queer lens. While reading different passages from various books, we will delve into possible translations between the visual arts and science fiction literature.

In this session hosted by Nat Muller we will be reading the film script of artists Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind’s acclaimed post-apocalyptic video In Vitro (2019). Taking place underground, after ecological catastrophe, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, seminal questions are asked what identity, national mythology, history and memory mean when everything has been destroyed. Framed by Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower (1993), which proffers a manifesto of survival and change amidst societal breakdown, we will explore hope, ingenuity, intergenerational trauma, change, and belonging in the wake of ongoing disaster (al-nakba al-mustamirra).

We invite you to join one or more of these events on 23 March, 20 April, 25 May and 22 June, from 15:30 – 17:30 in Buro Stedelijk’s Studio Space located inside Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

You will receive the text beforehand, but preparatory reading is optional. We will also read them on the spot. Traces and thoughts will be documented on the walls of the office, will be expanded and remain visible through the windows during the period of these gatherings.

The reading sessions at Buro Stedelijk lead up to a two-day feminist science fiction event Gathering Earthseed taking place at W139 on 20 & 21 July 2024.

Anna Hoetjes and Müge Yılmaz previously realized Manifestation #20: Taking Root Among The Stars with Buro Stedelijk at UNFAIR23.

The title derives from the first verse of Octavia E. Butler’s The Book of the Living

Buro Stedelijk Studio Space, 15:30 – 17:30
This event will be in English.

Manifestation #46: Reading Group Goddess Change is part of a series of four Saturday afternoon hosted by Anna Hoetjes and Müge Yılmaz in Buro Stedelijk’s Studio Space.