The Reading Troupe — Disruptive pedagogy

Workshop & zine series

2013 - ongoing

RT #08, 2017, Gasworks, London

THE READING TROUPE (RT) is a nomadic and mutating practice of performative and theatrical reading techniques. Incorporating improvisation, collage, fortune telling, psychogeography and collective cut-ups. RT workshops are contingent to time, place and people. In general RT workshops happen with a group of six or more but the techniques are also effective in pairs and can be adapted for working alone or with disembodied collaborators. RT ’s can happen in a single session or across multiple meetings, like a reading group. In RT sessions “readers” are invited to participate in an active embodiment of knowledge dissemination and production. This collaborative practice is an attempt to collectively enter the body of a chosen text through improvisation and amateur dramatics rather than analytic and academic language.

RT #06 - 2015 National College of Art & Design  Dublin

RT #09 - 2017Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Reading Troupe #13

There is Magic Loose in the World 

Reading (fortune telling) with Samuel R.Delaney’s Nevèrÿon series

As part of Katherine McBride’s exhibition ‘having been breathed out / patriarchy over and out’ at The CCA Glasgow, March 2019

Curated by Ainslie Roddick/Invited by Katherine McBride

RT#14 Zine - customised symbolic references to group fortune telling exchange, embroidered onto clothing, unique objects

Reading Troupe #12

The reduction of politics to the identity of the self

Reading around Vivek Chibber, Asad Haider and Sarah Schulman


As part of The Reading Lounge at Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne, August 2018Curated by Aneta Rostkowska

Photographs by the group

RT #12 Zine - series of cut-up scores, unique objects, edition of one

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Reading Troupe #11

Exercises in Performative, Contingent & Collective Reading

Reading Adrian Pipers’ Notes on Funk

As part of The Klöntal Triennale 2017 - Part of a Moment At Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, July 2017
Curated by Alexandra Blättler and Sabine Rusterholz

RT #11 Zine - Reading Troupe Manual #02 - 24 page hardcopy zine, A5, edition of 250
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Reading Troupe #10

Licking Concrete 

Reading a selection of materials from ‘The Re-appropriation Sensuality’ archive

As part of Legitimate Rehearsals exhibition at D21 Kunstraum, Leipzig May 7, 2017 Curated by Lena Brüggemann & Katharina Zimmerhackl

Photographs by Paula Gehrmann & Emma Haugh 

Publication - 4 collectively made posters, unique objects, edition of 1, exhibited as part of the exhibition Legitimate Rehearsals

Reading Troupe  #09

Considering the utopian queer/feminine performative in architecture

Reading, research & archive materials from The Re-appropriation of Sensuality archive

As part of the ‘Gender/Queer Seminar 2016/17’ at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, School of Architecture, Scenography Department , Vienna, Summer term, 2017

Invited by Univ.- Prof. Anna Viebrock

Photographs by the group

Reading Troupe #08

Making Something Happen

Reading Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone (T.A.Z.)

As part of Itinerant Assembly public program Gasworks, London, March 15/16, 2017

Curated by Alice White, Chloe Hodge, Hannah Zafiropoulos, Xiaoyi Nie, Rosie Hermon and Tiffany Leung as part of the Curating Contemporary Art programme Graduate Projects 2017, Royal College of Art London


Photographs by the group

Reading Troupe #07 

Madness, Witchery & Beastiality

Reading Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound


As part of ›stumble bumble fail fall hurt‹ symposium atHeidelberger Kunstverein
January 21, 2017

_{Curated by A Production e.V.}

RT #07 Zine - 28 page zine, A5  A2 poster (double sided) edition of 200 hardcopy, online PDF download
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DOWNLOAD POSTER

Reading Troupe #06

I could also be a temporary autonomous zone, the body as architecture, as ornament, as archive

Reading Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, Kathy Acker, Against Ordinary Language, the Language of the Body, Hakim Bey The Psychotopology of Everyday Life  & Grace Jones various music videos

As part of The Re-appropriation of Sensuality public programme at the National Irish Visual Artists Library (NIVAL) Reading Room, NCAD, November 27, 2015 

Curated by RGKSKSRG, supported by Anne Kelly

RT #06 Zine - series of decorated drawings of Grace Jones, unique objects, made by the group

More to come...