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(Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies is a series of workshops, performances, and an exhibition, organised by Reading International, interrogating the relationship between artistic practices and protest movements via the performative scores of collective bodies and voices. The interdisciplinary program was inspired by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was active from 1981 to 2000. It was established by women to protest nuclear weapons being sited near Reading at RAF Greenham Common.

Building on the conversations around creative commoning and performative knowledge production, we aim to provide spaces for negotiating the differences between the ‘common(s)’ – the general interrelatedness of human realities, the ‘(un)common(s)’ – generative destructive dynamics – and the ‘(under)common(s)’ – the less socially visible aspects of organization and interaction.

Tali Karen, The Great Seal (2017)

We ask; what do hegemonic scores look like, and what would alternative or activist scores sound like? Can voices and bodies undermine fear and invite empathy? Can the repetition of darkness create light? How do we, as individual subjects, participate in these collective acts, or refuse them?

Participating artists, speakers, and writers:

Zbyněk Baladrán, Željka Blakšić, Susan Gibb, Marco Godoy, Chto Delat/Dmitry Vilensky, Noam Inbar and Nir Shauloff, Jamila Johnson-Small/Last Yearz Interesting Negro and Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Mikhail Karikis, Tali Keren, André Lepecki, Florian Malzacher, Public Movement,Michal Oppenheim, Rory Pilgrim, Yvonne Rainer, Edgar Schmitz, Jack Tan, Nina Wakeford, Catherine Wood, Sara Wookey and Katarina Zdjelar.

Curated by Maayan Sheleff and Sarah Spies.

In partnership with OHOS and Greenham Common Control Tower and Reading International.

In collaboration with the PhD in Practice in Curating, a cooperation of the Reading School of Art at the University of Reading with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK.

The first part of the programme took place at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and Tanzhaus-Zürich on 2-3 November 2018.

Supported by Artis Grant Programme and Reading Buses.

Where to find us

This event is at 571 Oxford Road, Reading. Public transport is available from Reading town center and Reading station if you are visiting from elsewhere.