The Reading Room

The Reading Room and Dan Goodman collaborated to select a series of books that reflect the themes and ideas that helped form The NewBridge ‘Open’ Open.

The NewBridge ‘Open’ Open was made by focusing its process on ‘people rather than objects.’ It encouraged work from both those who ‘identify as artists and those who do not’, creating a welcoming environment and rooting itself in inclusivity.

Through this process The NewBridge ‘Open’ Open captured the relationships, connections and communities formed in and around NewBridge, holding them in a room together through Jenny Alderson’s installation Making Space. This exhibition helped us think about non-hierarchical curation and selection processes, the importance of interaction and collaboration when making (art), and the connectedness of art, people and place.

The Reading Room collaborated with Conal McStravick, Holly Argent, Kaan K and Leo Hargreaves to create a contextual reading list to sit alongside Kaan K’s Programme Committee Season Cuttings: Ceremonies of Trans Grief. Cuttings offers a programme for collective grieving, gathering and revisiting queer and trans histories.

The books selected help us to reflect on these ideas as well as queer British history; from section 28, the AIDS Epidemic to the current debates around the Gender Recognition Act (England) and Gender Reform Bill (Scotland). This collection of selected texts provides insight into what we have learned from those who organised, rallied, and stood in solidarity with each other.

It is important to look at these books and remember the resilience, joy and community found and maintained throughout LGBTQ+ history. This reading list doesn’t just help us to reflect on queer history, but also prompts us to look forward, figure out what we need to do next and imagine what a queer future could look like.

Everyday Algorithms is an exhibition and public programme curated by Programme Committee member Shelly Knotts that explores how we interact with algorithms in our daily lives. The exhibition includes work from Sofia Barton, Joana Chicau, Polina Chizhova-Wright, Kin, Paul Dolan, Dave Griffiths, Mara Karagianni, Alex Leigh, Alex McLean, Richard Scott, Rob Smith, Winnie Soon, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado and Creative Code Club members.

The Reading Room has collaborated with Shelly and the exhibiting artists to create a reading list that reflects the themes of Everyday Algorithms. The reading list spans a range of topics data and feminism, digital exclusion and inequalities, ways to re-imagine current power structures within Big Tech and how to reclaim data, algorithms and technology to create support structures that benefit both humans and the planet.

The Reading Room has collaborated with Ellie Armon Azoulay to create an online resource in response to her exhibition Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds.

We have created an in-focus Reading List of books available from our library, pictured below. An expanded reading list can be downloaded as a PDF and contains additional titles added from Ellie Armon Azoulay’s personal collection.

Alongside these reading lists, there are also links to archives, radio shows, articles and zines that explores music as a marker of history and as a form of resistance. This list has been shaped and formed by suggestions from the artists in the exhibition.

Alongside the screening of The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, a Scottish film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, The Reading Room has put together a reading list which feature books and zines about the history of Palestine and Palestinian resistance.

The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing is a tender film essay by Theo Panagopoulos, who unearthed a rarely seen film archive of Palestinian wildflowers and decided to reclaimed the footage. The film questions the role of image-making as a tool for both testimony and violence when connected to the entanglements between people and the land.

We have put together a list of books from our partners Pluto Press and Left Book Club, that amplify crucial voices in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and explore different ways we can demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Reading Room has worked with artist Henna Asikainen, landscape architect Usue Ruiz Arana, and art historian Olga Smith to create a reading resource in response to Henna’s new sound installation Lintukoto.

The books delve into the politics of listening, to solidarity beyond borders, to the entanglement between plant worlds and colonialism, and movements to protect the earth and people’s rights.

Visit us at NewBridge Project to borrow a book or read in our small library space. An expanded reading list can be downloaded as a PDF and contains additional titles added from Henna’s personal collection.

The Reading Room has worked with artist and choreographer Lizzie Klotz and designer Bethany Wells to create a reading resource, in response to Abundance, a new installation from Lizzie, Beth and community neighbours in Shieldfield.

Abundance is a new sculptural installation made by artist and choreographer Lizzie Klotz, designer Bethany Wells, and a host of collaborators from NewBridge’s neighbourhood programme. You are invited to walk, lie down, rest and be held in the space, connecting to the feeling of abundance – however that might be accessed in your body – through moments of stillness, play and reflection. Explore a curated selection of books that reflect the exhibitions’ themes and ideas, these books are available to borrow from The Reading Room.