Collective Reading of the Glossary of Cognitive Activism by Warren Neidich
Featuring Guest Readers:
Fiona Bowie, Emily Butler, Sai Di, Jesse McKee, Eldritch Priest
People's Co-Op Books
1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC
April 24, 7–9pm
The Glossary of Cognitive Activism is an iterative activist dictionary composed of 330 words that together describe and navigate the technological, ecological, sociogenic, artistic and philosophical landscape of our planet today. It provides readers with the intellectual tools to guide them through and dissent against our difficult and precarious moment.
Berlin-based Warren Neidich and invited readers ignite the audience into a conversation by reading a definition or part of a definition from the book, briefly contextualizing it within their own practice and interests. Neidich is the director of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, and he will be exhibiting artwork at Gachet in July.
A collective audience activated performative reading is a methodology that Neidich created as a means of engaging an audience in a group learning experience. It is an alternative to a book launch where the author reads and thus is about giving authority to an audience and community. Invited guest readers instigate the process. Then the audience discusses it together. Usually after 3 or 4 such instigations the assembled audience takes over the role of choosing a word or words. This will be the fourth iteration following events in Paris, Berlin, and NYC. The book itself is a map for creating solidarity in our moment of digital dis-solidarity.
Review in Zerodeux:
(EN) https://www.zerodeux.fr/en/reviews-en/warren-neidich-2/
(FR) https://www.zerodeux.fr/reviews/warren-neidich
Organized by Sol Hashemi, Associate Curator and Operations Director, Gallery Gachet
Warren Neidich was trained in fine art, architecture, and neuroscience. He founded the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, of which he has been the director since 2015. He is a former tutor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and he has been a visiting lecturer at Brown University, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University, Princeton University, Sorbonne University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, among others. He is the coeditor of the three-volume collection The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism (2013, 2014, and 2017) and the editor of An Activist Neuroaesthetics Reader (2021).
Fiona Bowie is a visual and sound artist from and based in K'emk'emeláy (Vancouver, Canada). Bowie's work over the last two decades emerges from an interest in temporality and divergent scales or environs in relation to consciousness. An ongoing theme is the desire to broaden and deepen temporal and structural relations to other organisms to focus awareness of and respect for the interlacing of all living and non-living entities.
Emily Butler is a freelance curator and writer. She is a Curating PHD candidate at the University of Reading researching the topic of artists and curators as (mis)translators, as they work increasingly across borders, between languages, sign systems and cultures. Previously she was Head of Programmes, Contemporary Arts Society, Vancouver; 2024 Platform Talks program curator, Art Toronto; Curator, Conversations at Art Basel, 2021-2023; Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2010-2022. She held roles in the Visual Arts team at British Council, Antony Gormley Studio and the Centre Pompidou. She contributes to international publications and projects.
Sai Di worked as a recruiter in the technology capacity building software, business intelligence, and system integration teams for various industries before her transition into the visual art field. Her current practice engages discursive material methods to explore how symbiosis unfolds between biological organisms—such as mycelium and bacteria—and cultural or technological narratives. Her installation works often take the form of sculptural assemblages, incorporating sound, circuitry, and improvised systems drawn from DIY electronics. Her current research explores how affect and emotion circulate through human and nonhuman systems, drawing from biosemiotics and the idea of communication as a multi-species phenomenon.
Jesse McKee is Head of Digital Strategy at 221A, a non-profit cultural organization in Vancouver. Since 2019, he has led research and development initiatives focused on emerging technologies and data governance. As initiator and leader of the Node Library at 221A, McKee works to advance public sector stewardship of FAIR data infrastructure, while building towards a commons-based and redistributive vision of the internet. His work involves art, technology and civic participation, with a particular focus on building sustainable funding models and digital infrastructure for cultural communities.
Eldritch Priest writes on sonic culture, experimental aesthetics and the philosophy of experience from a ’pataphysical perspective. He is Associate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Eldritch is also a composer and improviser, as well as a member the experimental theory group The Occulture.
