First meeting: September 20, 2018 | 5:30pm | GEM Lab, FB-630.15, Concordia University
Contact to register: waitingreadingroup@gmail.com
The Political Imaginary of Waiting aims to engage the graduate community in a collective reflection on the political potential of waiting through the lens of media studies and creative practice. We want to explore the condition of waiting -- its different modalities, temporalities, the economic and political processes that shape it, and the different ways it shapes, affects and subjectivities. We take this project as an opportunity to collectively think about the political imaginaries that the individual and/or collective experience of waiting can engender.
Waiting is a personal experience, and a negotiation of expectations. Waiting also occurs when body and mind are confronted with administrative, economic, and political structures. Waiting both reveals and constructs temporality flows as they are managed by global political economies. Waiting maps out networks of urgency, delays, and priorities. Waiting suspends the life of some and accelerate the life of others. It is akin to seizing the present and possibilities of tarrying as a productive strategy of resistance. What futurity does waiting allow us to grasp?
The project consists of a monthly reading group and screening series, where each reading session is paired with the screening of a film, and culminates in an artist-led workshop.
The Reading Group
The reading group meets once a month, 5:30pm-7:30pm at Concordia University’s Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab (Faubourg Building 630.15, 1250 Guy Street)
Meeting 1 - Sept 27, 2018: Waiting as Method
Meeting 2 - Oct 30th 2018 : Waiting and Labor
Meeting 3 - Nov 29th 2018 : Waiting and the Infrastructures of Attention
Meeting 4 - Jan 2019 (date tbc): Waiting and Embodiment
Meeting 5 - Feb 2019 (date tbc): Waiting and Mobility
Meeting 6 - March 2019 (date tbc): Waiting and Decolonization
Reading group participation: Participation is open, but we ask participants commit to regular reading and attendance as this enriches our discussions as they build over the year. For additional information, and/or to register please email waitingreadinggroup@gmail.com before September 15, 2018.
The Screening Series
Each reading session is loosely paired with the screening of a film. Screenings are open and free, and take place at la lumière collective (7080, rue Alexandra, #506). Films include Wild Relatives by Jumana Manna, Mediterranean by Talal Khoury, Terrace of the Sea by Diana Allan, In the Last days of the City by Tamer el-Said, Excerpts of Qalandia by Helga Tawil-Souri, The Living of the Pigeons by Baha’ AbuShanab and Panoptic by Rana Eid.
The Workshop
An accompanying practice-based workshop will take place, and will be open in priority to the participants of the reading group. To be led by artists Ruanne Abou Rahme and Basel Abbas (tbc), the workshop takes the artists’ praxis as a point of departure, to collectively think through what it means to develop a language and a practice that are not beginning from within a colonial narrative and the colonization of time. How can a different imaginary, language and a practice emerge from a process of waiting that is not bound to colonial/capitalist narratives and discourses?
This project is supported by Concordia University School of Graduate Studies, the GEM Lab, and La Lumière Collective.
- Farah Atoui & Muhammad Khairy