In Collaboration with Topozone

April 19th & April 26th, 2020
5:00 pm (PDT)

Sign up here︎

Art in these times of distress offers not only escapism, but hope. Besides the terrible toll on people’s lives, the healthcare system and livelihoods around the world, our social and psychological well-being is also threatened.

This reading group is a space of reciprocity whose absence we feel deeply as we maintain our physical distance from each other. Join us to read about how art can help in a time of crisis, along with literary ventures into physical connection, grief and pleasure, radical care in the context of geography, the work of maintenance and repair, the ethics of inhabiting, and more. We will be working through our current condition both emotionally and intellectually.  

Topozone is a graduate research group exploring visual culture, critical geography and critical spatial practice. This exploration has so far been facilitated largely in reading group sessions that have focused on surveying urban theory, critical spatial theory, concepts of post-nature, and counter-cartographic practices. Through Topozone, we are experimenting with collaborative practices of learning, research and writing, which has led to hosting the upcoming panel Art, Architecture and Sustainability for the HOPES Conference at the University of Oregon, and to submitting reading lists to online journals. We look forward to continuing to explore these themes and modes of collaboration with Eugene Contemporary Art.

Self Zoning as Emergent Care is a selection of readings that aim not to achieve a theoretical understanding or mastery over the COVID-19 pandemic, but to serve as tools for thinking through the ethics, limits and potentials of care, what is left in the periphery and how new methods and displays of care can escape structures of violence embedded in capitalism.

This reading group is free and open to the public, but is capped at 30 participants and requires signing up in advance.

Join the reading group for April 19th and/or April 26th by signing up here.

You will be emailed materials and further instructions for how to join the discussion.