Reading/Viewing/Speculating

Within the context of the public programme for Agnė Jokšė’s exhibition REALITY CRACKS, Index presents Reading/Viewing/Speculating, a curatorial research project organised by Michaela Yarmol-Matusiak, with author Alvina Chamberland and her novel Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024).

Introduction
Reading/Viewing/Speculating is a curatorial research project focused on developing and testing a new method for co-reading-visiting contemporary novels and contemporary art exhibitions. Grounded in an exploratory approach towards fiction and fictional spaces, the method centers on reader/viewer reception and interpretation of space, time, narrative, and senses. As such, in each application of the thinking, the methodology prescribes an open perspective and intimate encounter with thematically paired novels and exhibitions.

Exploring the similarities and differences between the acts of reading novels and attending exhibitions – interacting with two distinctive forms of media – the project considers what it looks like reading contemporary novels and attending contemporary art exhibitions together within a set structure.

Project Content
Reading/Viewing/Speculating offers a series of 3 workshops and seminars within a reading group, alongside a public presentation with Alvina Chamberland.

Utilising lyrical prose, autofiction, and formal experimentation, Chamberland’s novel Love the World or Get Killed Trying will be read by participants in pairing with Agnė Jokšė’s moving image and performative text-focused practice, in which language is used as an investigative tool. In addition to testing a new methodology, the project thus explores themes of linguistics, gender, and auto-ethnography. Underscoring the pairing is a foundational discussion of the important potential of imaginative storytelling and self-representation across literary and artistic practices in the contemporary.

The research project is aimed at those interested in experimental approaches to fiction, multimodal and intermedial literacy, narrative, and contemporary art. Within the project, participants will read the novel and visit the exhibition with a guided structure, introduced and provided during the first workshop. For example, to mirror the mode of exhibition attendance, the method outlines reading the novel cover-to-cover, in 1-3 sessions with set prompts and annotative tasks. Subsequently, similar reading approaches are brought to the exhibition. In order to bridge the distinctive practices of novel-reading and exhibition-attendence, an emphasis is placed on participants’ attentiveness to space, time, and medial interaction.

Sessions
Introductory Workshop and Seminar: Sunday, May 10, 10:00 –12:00
(Open to registered participants)

Alvina Chamberland’s Public Presentation: Saturday, May 23, 16:00 –18:00
(Open for all)

Closing Workshop and Reflection: Sunday, May 31, 10:00 –12:00
(Open to registered participants)

Alvina Chamberland will participate in a capstone public presentation at Index on Saturday, May 23, 16:00–18:00. Taking place within Jokšė’s exhibition, the presentation will include live-readings and reflective discussions on the project and novel’s themes, in relation to the exhibition.

Participation Details and Registration
Through participating in the project, each participant receives the requisite workshop materials, including Chamberland’s novel and additional readings, and commits to attending the workshop sessions. Participants are asked to read the novel and visit the exhibition within the methodological structures of the project, in the three-week time frame.

For registration and/or questions, please email michaelayarmz@gmail.com by April 28.

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Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels, residing in Athens. She has an MA in Gender Studies from Södertörn University, with a thesis on trans feminine sisterhood and intersectionality in New York City. In 2015, she published her co-authored book Allt som ar Mitt: Våldtäkt, Stigmatisering och Upprättelse (All that is mine: Rape, Stigmatization and Reparation). In September 2018, her novel Utelåst – Uppvaxt- nostalgi for freaks (Locked Out – A nostalgic account of growing up for freaks), a parody of the coming-of-age genre, was released. Her latest novel and English language debut Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024) presents an autofictional journey through the wilderness of Iceland and city boulevards of Berlin and Paris probing questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you’re a ceaseless target of straight men’s secret lust and open disgust. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction and listed by the bookstore Shakespeare and Co., Paris, as one of the 121 best books of the 21st Century.

Michaela Yarmol-Matusiak is a curator working with research-based methodologies, with a focus on the interaction between contemporary art and literature. More information on Yarmol-Matusiak’s research on the combined study of the novel and the exhibition can be found in the recent publication here.

Reading/Viewing/Speculating is a degree project within the Curating Art, International Master’s Programme at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.