Bookshop Situation Series: The Material Kinship Reader, Clementine Edwards

What does it mean to acknowledge one’s closeness to, enmeshment in or even kinship with the material world? And what does it mean to question family structures – the way they organise, coerce and make deviant certain lifeforms – and dwell in other possibilities of kin-making?

The Material Kinship Reader, edited by Kris Dittel and Clementine Edwards, tells toxic and tender stories of interdependence among all things sentient and insentient. From colonial conquest to climate collapse, it reckons with extractavist histories of materials and the social relations that frame much of contemporary life. As a collection of texts, it expands the idea of an artist’s book by bringing fiction and theory into conversation with Clementine Edwards’ aesthetic proposition.

For this special event marking the book’s publication, Clementine Edwards shares a rat-infested poem that animates some of the book’s themes. It’s called Poison’s Friend Plastic Knows Oil, Who’s Also Friends With Microplankton (Queer Family). You are warmly welcomed to join.

Clementine Edwards is a Rotterdam-based artist who works across sculpture, writing, performance and video. Their ongoing research line is material kinship, which thinks material beyond extraction and kinship beyond the biological family. Their practice asks, How to honour, attend to and enchant the worlds that we are immersed in, and the contexts that shape us, nourish us and resist us?

The Bookshop Situation Series at Index is based on events to present books, magazines, records and other artistic formats. The bookshop situation is a way to test content, to share it, to distribute it, offering situations to be part of a community of experimental producers and users.