THE MATERIAL KINSHIP READER
with an introduction by editors Kris Dittel and Clementine Edwards and a reading by Ada M. Patterson at 8.30pm
Thursday May 19, 8pm
Image credit: Femke Hears A Who (film still), Clementine Edwards & Alexander Iezzi, 2019
What does it mean to acknowledge one’s closeness to, enmeshment in or even kinship with the material world? And what does it mean to question family structures – the way they organise, coerce and make deviant certain lifeforms – and dwell in other possibilities of kin-making?
Not just a jolly rethinking of objects or a polyamorous romp through relationships, ‘The Material Kinship Reader’ reckons with the extractavist histories of materials and the social relations that frame much of contemporary life.
Spanning fiction and theory, the collection of texts expand the idea of an artist’s book by bringing words into conversation with an aesthetic proposition. Clementine Edwards’ artwork is the visual weft to the book’s written net. From colonial conquest to climate collapse, The Material Kinship Reader tells toxic and tender stories of interdependence along all things sentient and insentient.
‘The Material Kinship Reader’ includes contributions by Sara Ahmed, Hana Pera Aoake, Roland Barthes, Joannie Baumgärtner, Heather Davis, Kris Dittel, Clementine Edwards, Ama Josephine B. Johnstone, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sophie Lewis, Steven Millhauser, Jena Myung, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Michelle Murphy, Ada M. Patterson, Kim TallBear, Michelle Tea
Kris Dittel is a Rotterdam-based curator, editor and occasional writer. Her recent curatorial research projects include On Kinship, The Voice as Material, and The Question of Value. They materialise in the form of exhibitions, books, events, performances and other.
Clementine Edwards works across sculpture, film, performance, writing and jewellery. Her practice is guided by the ongoing research line material kinship, which thinks material beyond extraction and kinship beyond the nuclear family. The focus of her 2022 Gerrit Rietveld fellowship in Amsterdam is miniatures and poppenhuizen.
Ada M. Patterson (Bridgetown, 1994) is a visual artist and writer based between Barbados and Rotterdam. Working with masquerade, video and poetry, they tell stories and imagine elegies for ungrievable bodies and moments. Their writing has featured in Sugarcane Magazine, PREE, Mister Motley and Metropolis M.
