Utopian talk-show line-up is a series of public events with collaborating organisations Eastside Projects, Birmingham / ICIA, Bath / Errant Bodies, Berlin / Bristol UWE / Bilgi University, Istanbul / ResArc, Malmo University and Moderna Museet, Malmo. For each event a talk-show line-up of invited protagonists choose and read passages from science fiction to critical texts according to the rules of an MC. Read in rapid-fire format the spoken texts imagine and attend to the ‘architecture’ of utopia. The video clips you see below consitute a growing anthology of those events. You may play them one at a time or several at once. This collection of readings acts as a testimony to our collective desire to image difference. Thanks to the host organisations, to all our readers and to our intern Libby Clayton. For more information.
Structured alphabetically by author of reading.
Bruce Andrews, ‘Paradise and Method: Poetry and Praxis’ Northwestern University Press (1996) pp. 1-5 and 55-57 read by Gillian Wylde
Iain M. Banks, ‘Surface Detail’ Orbit (2012) read by Gavin Wade
Yael Bartana, ‘And Europe will be stunned’ Revolver Publishing (2010) p.178-179 read by Eric Snodgrass
Roland Barthes, ‘How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces’ Columbia University Press (1st Edition) (2013) pp. 80-81 and 131-132 read by Gene-George Earle
Samuel Beckett ‘Worstward Ho’, Calder Publications, 2nd edition (1999) p.7 read Ida Borjel
Ernst Bloch ‘The Principle of Hope’, MIT Press, (1986) p. 4 read by Fredrik Torrisson
Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver, ‘Invisible Cities’ Picador, Pan Books (1979) p. 36 read by Richard Hawley
‘Christiania målsætning, Fristaden Christianias Tingbog’, 13 November 1971, page 1 and Ludvigsen’s ‘Jakob: Emigrer med Bus nr. 8 til Christiania’, Hovedbladet (2-3 October 1971) pp.10-11 read by Ole Lykke Andersen
Naomi Cumming, ‘The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification’ Indiana University Press (2000) pp. 70-71 read by Richard Hawley
Richard Deming ‘Living A Part – Synecdoche, New York, Metaphor, and the Problem of Skepticism’ in David Larocca (ed.) ‘The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman’ The University Press of Kentucky (2011) p. 193 read by Apexa Patel
Marianne Dubuc ‘Framför mitt hus – gissa vad som händer sen’ Rabén & Sjögren (2010) pp. 3-24 read by Ida Börjel
Stephen Emmott, interview about his book ‘10 Billion’ in The Observer – The New Review (Sunday 30 June 2013) read by Kathrin Bohm
FASS Swedish national drug formulary (U.T.O.P.I.A listings) (2008) read by Lena Mattsson
R. Buckminster Fuller, ‘How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe’ in ‘Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity’ (1969) Penguin Books (1972 edition) p. 303
Maria Fusco, Field Notes from the Urban Pastoral, in Warren and Mosley ‘Beyond Utopia’ Surface Tension Supplement No. 5, Errant Bodies Press (2012) p.118 read by Kathrin Bohm