Reading Room: The Afterlife of SoilReading Room: The Afterlife of Soil

In this talk, The Afterlife of Soil, Christina Sharpe will think about wakes, slavery museums and memorials, about soil and dust. In order to do this she will turn to, among other sites, The Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Legacy Museum from Slavery to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama. She will also look to the work of two Black women visual artists Simone Leigh and Torkwase Dyson.

Christina Sharpe is a Professor at York University, Toronto in the Department of Humanities and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University, Toronto in the Faculty of Community Services. She is the author of two books: In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) (named by the Guardian and The Walrus as one of the best books of 2016 and a nonfiction finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award) and Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010), both published by Duke University Press. She is currently working on a monograph: Black. Still. Life.

The Reading Room is a series of evenings dedicated to the act of collective reading. It is a place to decipher and interpret the world with its countless languages and systems, including phenomena that by their ubiquity evade investigation. Led by an artist, researcher or designer, a small audience will reflect upon a concept, a text, an object or an image. The Reading Room is a space for intimate, provocative conversations. It is a place for creative confusion and sometimes even frustration, in which speakers and audience are not looking for concrete solutions but for higher resolutions. Subjects in previous Reading Rooms include exhibition, surveillance, migration, liquidity, museum, insecurity.

Before the Thursday Night you can grab a bite to eat with the speakers and staff of Het Nieuwe Instituut. At 18:00 Het Nieuwe Café will a light vegetarian meal. Dinner vouchers are available for ¬ 7.70 up to a day before the particular Thursday Night event via the Tickets link.

Become a Member of Het Nieuwe Instituut and you'll support our mission to navigate the vast and evolving field of design. You'll also be inspired by our special program of Members' events, meeting up with other like-minded people as we invite you to reflect with us on design's changing role in technology, economics, culture and society.