The “Usufructuaries of earth” focus on Prospections is a reader that undergirds the project as an usufructuary of knowledges, turning the research into a collective research and publishing resource.
The reader emerges, to begin with, as a constellation of archival texts assembled here through the “Usufructuaries of earth” focus on Prospections. Throughout the duration of Usufructuaries of earth project and beyond, diverse content—long reads, interviews, conversations, and visual interventions—will incrementally be (re)published into a public research and learning curriculum that studies histories and propositions of usufruct, of renewing shared practices of usership of and with earth.
To begin, archival contributions are republished and read through a federated structure of reading groups in Rotterdam, Berlin, and Amman.
The Rotterdam reading group Undoing Debt gathers on 28 April 2024 at book and print workshop KIOSK, Rotterdam, and is convened by artists Iliada Charalambous and Philippa Driest. Undoing Debt explores selected chapters of activists and theorists Lucí Cavallero and Verónica Gago’s book A Feminist Reading of Debt (2021) and selected excerpts from Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s “Debt and Study” chapter in The Undercommons (2013) to collectively unpack debt as a form of gendered and financial violence and how, in turn, to “undo debt” through learning common political tools and vocabulary inspired by transnational feminist movements.
The Berlin reading group takes place over two consecutive days 4–5 May 2024 and is convened by curator and artist Joud Al-Tamimi and writer and curator Lama El Khatib. The first Berlin reading group gathering titled And in your throats, a sliver of glass, a cactus thorn, on 4 May, and hosted by bookstore khan Aljanub, is an invitation to dwell on Palestinian resistance in the wake of genocide, to reflect on its very essence—the struggle over land—in a moment marked by a systematic attempt to annihilate all Palestinian presents and futures. The second gathering on 5 May, titled On Value-Disrupting Activity, hosted by Hopscotch reading room, continues from the first day to explore in further depth the political and theoretical stakes of value as it links to violences enacted on and through land and property in Palestine and elsewhere.
The artist-led research group Bahaleen 9–13 May 2024 convenes a roaming, multi-day reading group along the hilltops of Jerash and the edges of Palestine, one hour’s drive from Amman. Invited artists and researchers join Bahaleen in traveling by car and on foot, navigating notions of access and return in an attempt to grasp the fluctuating manifestations of property and political agreements that have facilitated the transfer of ownership. They visit the infrastructures that have enclosed lands and restricted mobility—such as nature reserves, tourist projects, dams, gas pipelines, and private farms of Jordan’s political elites. Throughout these days they connect the readings to these sites, and, in so doing, vie for an emancipatory articulation of the commons and geographic rehearsal of collective resistance.
The discussions that emerge out of the reading groups mingle with the ideas of the other Usufructuaries of earth chapters: chapter one, exhibition 7 March–2 June 2024 and chapter three, convention 24–25 May 2024, and may generate—alongside texts republished for the reading groups—newly commissioned texts, interviews, annotations, and artistic contributions and other yet-to-be published material as part of this reader-in-the-making.
Please take a look at the “Usufructuaries of earth: a slow-growing table of contents” to browse and click through to the (reading, listening, and other) material that is being compiled together as part of the Usufructuaries of earth slow-growing reader.
EDITORIAL TEAM:
Marwa Arsanios, Maria Hlavajova, and Wietske Maas
MANAGING EDITOR:
Aidan Wall
PRODUCTION COORDINATION:
Alexandra Martens Serrano
READING GROUP CONVENORS:
Joud Al-Tamimi, Bahaleen, Iliada Charalambous, Philippa Driest, and Lama El Khatib
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