Sala de lectura
Sala de lectura is a physical reading room in Lima (Peru) and part of the Mundos habitables online platform. Sala de Lectura is a site for exploring practices of reading together as a form of accompaniment.
Sala de lectura and Mundos habitables are projects by Susie Quillinan
Score for accompanied reading
by Sala de lecturaLet’s read together.
You are invited to gather with others to read out loud, together.
Maybe you would like to read with those who have taught you.
Maybe you would like to read with those you think-feel with.
Maybe you would like to read with those you collaborate with.
Maybe you would like to read with strangers.
Maybe you would like to read with those who work with textiles, or who think about how knowledge is produced and circulated, or who are connected to the land of your birth, or who like to read.
Maybe you would like to join an existing group. (We don't always have to start from scratch.)
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You may like to gather together physically or online, or a mix of the two forms.
You may like to walk while reading, or weave or stitch or cook while reading.
You might like to read outside or in your home or in a studio, or in a nail salon, or in a park.
Maybe you would like to read while one hand rests in a bowl of water, or buried in soil, or holding a handful of beans.
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What happens when we read together with others?
What is made or unmade?
What does reading together make possible?
What does it encourage us to notice?
To share?
What kind of thinking-feeling (sentipensar) happens when we read together with others, rather than silently, alone?
How do you think-feel the relationship between reading and weaving? Or reading and other crafts?
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As you read, you might like to annotate the text.
You are encouraged to annotate the text however you like, each on your own copy or together on one central copy.
Annotations can take many forms:
Notes
drawings
erasures
citations
re-orginasations
translations
letters
questions
songs
maps
diagrams
glossaries
choreographic scores
lists
conversation notes
added chapters or images
removed chapters or images
even silence/refusal
(etc).
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You may like to include the conditions of the reading, for example:
Drawings or descriptions of the space where the reading takes place
the time of day
changes in posture
interruptions
the rhythm of the voices reading
what do you hear / sense / smell / taste?
what do you feel?
what intuitions are making themselves felt?
are you following along while others read aloud or are you only listening until it’s your turn?
(Are you touching the page? How does it feel?)
What allowed you to be here?
(Did you have to arrange childcare? Adjust mealtimes? Take different transportation?)
What mood are you in?
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You might want to imagine the conditions that made the text's creation possible. Make a note. Draw a diagram.
What/who made this text possible?
What micro-gestures of care enlivened it?
What or who is missing?
What if we thought about the text itself listening to us read it? What would you read to it?
minor movements 25.06.25
Reading sessions and conversations focused on weak histories and weak resistances, micro-gestures and microbial entanglements.
^Minor movements include the rhythms of maintenance and repair that exist alongside public moments. How do we recognize and value the routine, unglamorous work and micro-practices of support and care that sustain our practices?
^^How can attending to minor movements help us to develop what Haraway calls "response-ability" - the capacity to recognize and respond to unexpected possibilities? When crisis occurs, how do we know when to abandon planned projects and when to tinker with them?
^^^What would it mean to cultivate a minor curatorial?
exercises
