Working Group

The WGNS was a series of gatherings for clarity and direction in a messy moment of distance and collapse. We came together so that we could learn from each other.

In the spring we learned together around a selection of texts, from bell hooks to Lamentations, Fanny Howe to Essex Hemphill.

In the fall, we considered INVENTORY.
We spent time with new texts and the offerings of three guest artists:
Katherine Agyemaa Agard
Eyad Houssami
Rebeca Medina

For more information, email [email protected].

Fall 2020

Week One - 10/19/20
On "our lot," the lives of plants, and sentimental politics.
with Rebeca Medina
Source Sheet here.
Chat transcript here.
Recap here.

Week Two - 10/26/20
On reading, writing, translating, and "native language."
with Katherine Agyemaa Agard
Guiding questions here.
Chat log here.
Recap here.

Week Three - 11/3/20
An inventory of feelings, the night before an election.
with Rebeca Medina.
Recorded only in our collective memory.
Chat log here.
Recap here.

Week Four - 11/10/20
Plumbing the ancestral tarot.
with Katherine Agyemaa Agard.
Chat log here.
Inventory of images here.
Recap here.

Week Five - 11/16/20
On collapse and resilience.
with Eyad Houssami
Lina Mounzer, "We Lebanese Thought We Could Survive Anything. We Were Wrong."
James C. Scott, from Against the Grain
Chat log here.
Recap here.

againstthegrain.pdf
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Week Six - 11/23/20
On knots, cords, umbilicals.
What ties us down, together, gives us life.
from Camila Marambio & Cecilia Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, a toda raja
one and two
From Bartenura on Mishnah Kilayim
Chat log here.
Recap here.

vicuna1.pdf
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vicuna2.pdf
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Week Seven - 11/30/20
On "speculation" and "unsettling."
with Eyad Houssami
Capek, R.U.R. excerpt here.
Tuck & Yang, "Decolonization is not a metaphor" excerpt here.
Chat log here.
Recap here.

excerpt_-_rur_capek.pdf
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excerpt_-_decolonization_is_not_a_metaphor_by_tuck_and_yang.pdf
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Week Eight - 12/7/20
There's a Nishnaabeg word I learned from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: biiskabiyang. "...the process of returning to ourselves, a reengagement with the things we have left behind, a reemergence, an unfolding from the inside out."
Chat log here.
Recap here.

~ Ann Lauterbach, "The Entangled Imagination: A Fictive Dialogue"

Working Group for a New Spirit, First Session, April 2020

Turning
April 8, 2020
Texts:
Pirke Avot 5:22
Fanny Howe, from "Bewilderment"

Breaking
April 9, 2020
Texts:
Simone Forti, from A Handbook in Motion
CAConrad, "SIN BUG: AIDS, Poetry, and Queer Resilience in Philadelphia"

Loving
April 10, 2020
Texts:
bell hooks, from All About Love
"Nishmat Kol Chai"
from Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy

Making
April 12, 2020
Texts:
Essex Hemphill, "Fixin' Things" & "American Wedding"
Avot D'Rabbi Natan 31:3

Grieving
April 13, 2020
Texts:
Nina Simone, "22nd Century"
Lamentations 2:5-16

Shifting
April 14, 2020
Texts:
from Nahum Ward-Lev, The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets
from James Hillman, Healing Fiction

Noth-ing
April 15
Texts:
None.

Re-Turning
April 16, 2020
Texts:
Where we've been.

Working Group for the New Spirit, Second Session, May 2020

Primary text:
Song of Songs, trans. Ariel and Chana Bloch

Additional texts:
Hilary Plum and Lucy Biederman, "Literature, Capital, Catapult, and the Kochs: A Dialogue"
Hilary Plum, "27 Essays I'm Not Writing About Elizabeth Koch"
Isaiah 5:1-7
Leviticus 25:8-16, 29-31, 26:1-2
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Pirke Avot 6:6