The Department of Reading is an online-based project displayed in different spatial configurations and designed to promote new forms of reading. In order to expose the act of reading in its potentiality the Department of Reading investigates, how the disposition of readers to comment and interfere with text can be made public as well as a mode to open texts towards their intricate textures. Thus one of the most crucial questions of the Department of Reading concerns the collectiveness of reading and asks, in how far such a collectivity is potentially implied within the very texture of a given text. Examining the mechanisms of reading through reading, the labour reading takes, its time and space, the Department of Reading attempts to redraw the concept of reading and expose other textures of predication.
During the course of one and a half years the Department of Reading has witnessed several forms of readings with a changing group of readers, using such online facilities as Wiki and Skype. Since 2007 a series of online sessions addresses among other questions the act of reading in its temporal, spatial and technological dimension. To each session the Department of Reading invites a host, to set up and accompany the reading. Each session is defined differently with regard to its mode and space of time. In principle all sorts of texts can enter the Department of Reading, but a particular attention is paid to contemporary philosophy, modern literature and artist writings.
If one intention of the Department of Reading is to collectivize the process of reading another is to further a practice of writing while reading. Therefore the Department of Reading has developed a digital platform that supports this process and provides the conditions for its different reading practices. In applying computational tools that have become an integral part of the current online culture this digital platform allows for the creation of further performative and interpretative modules that provide the different approaches to collaborative reading, writing and interpreting. These modules also open up new layers of reading and interpreting of the relevant texts themselves.
In order to participate online in the Department of Reading, all one needs is an account on Skype and a connection to the Internet for the time of each reading session. Alongside its current practice in 2008 the Department of Reading will investigate the performative aspects of reading, set up a collective commentary on Giorgio Agamben’s writings and apply its interventional practice in different spatial situations.
Department of Reading is initiated by Soenke Hallmann and supported by the Jan Van Eyck Academy.
      |
    |