Thursday, the 25th of April, will be dedicated to reading Judith Butlers’s Leaning Out, Caught in the Fall: Interdependency and Ethics in Cavarero suggested by curator Angela Serino and artist Maja Bekan. Serino and Bekan were selected from the open call organised at the beginning of this year. As co-hosts of the reading circle in the fold #10 on Responsibility, they will share the reading related to their practice and the theme of the fold. Particularly, they would like to stress Response-ability, as the capacity/ability to respond. Co-hosts connect this specific attitude to the concept of ‘inclination’ elaborated by Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavareo, as the predisposition to act based on acknowledging that we are all connected.

Angela Serino and Maja Bekan worked together as co-editors of “Between the Standing and the Inclined” (Kunstlich Vol.44, n.4), released at the end of 2023 and recently launched in Casco and at Framer Framed in February 2024. At the core of this issue, there is Adriana Cavarero’s concept of ‘inclination’, as a physical posture, an ethical position and a geometrical shape that emphasizes the relational nature of our life. Contrary to a vertical position, that praises a self-sufficient and self-contained subject, inclination highlights the fact of being interconnected, vulnerable and dependent one on the other (human as well as more-than-human) as a shared condition among living beings.

Leaning Out, Caught in the Fall: Interdependency and Ethics in Cavarero

Leaning Out, Caught in the Fall: Interdependency and Ethics in Cavarero was published in Toward a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence: Adriana Cavarero with Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig and other voices, by Fordham: University Press, in 2021, edited by Timothy J. Huzar and Clare Woodford.

To be ‘inclined’ towards another means to be able to feel and move towards someone else: it means to have the ability to respond (respons-ability) and being responsible. As Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig remind us, when someone moves towards another – that other is vulnerable. “Inclination is also being on the cusp, over to wound someone”. The ability to respond, therefore, asks for each of us to be also aware of the power relations in place and the possible effects of our actions, even when moved by noble/good intentions.

Judith Butler

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and formerly the Maxine Elliot Chair in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They received their Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984.

They are the author of several books which were translated to more than 27 languages – to name a few:  Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993).

Bio Angela Serino

Angela Serino is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam who has worked with artists’ residencies in various roles – as curator of temporary residency projects (RedLight Art Amsterdam, 2008-2009), as part of the artistic committee of Kunsthuis SYB (2010-2015), and as curator in residency of several international programmes. She curated ‘Residencies as Learning Environments’, the international meeting for Artists-in-Residencies initiated by FARE (2015), and wrote on time and residencies for Kunstlicht’s ‘Unpacking Residencies’ issue (2018) and DutchCulture | TransArtists’ magazine ‘Station to Station’ (2022). She is the co-founder of ARRC, a collective that studies art residencies, with fellow researchers Pau Catà (Barcelona), Morag Iles (Newcastle), Miriam La Rosa (Melbourne) and Patricia Healy Mcmeans (Minneapolis). 

She is interested in individual and collective moments of research, self-reflection and learning around residencies programs. She is currently working on her archive as a way to retrace and discuss ideas of care, time and artistic production.

Angela Serino website

Bio Maja Bekan

Maja Bekan (Ex-YU/NL) is a performance and visual artist. Bekan’s work explores and questions the mediation and delegation of artwork production. The protagonists of Bekan’s work are often women: artists, activists, students, retirees, and people seeking a place for themselves in difficult circumstances. She is interested in a collaborative and social approach to explore personal histories, truths, economies, and social relations. Bekan works on long-term research-based projects that involve different levels of collaboration, presented to the public in the form of performances, site-specific environments, and video/audio/text-based installations. She was an artist in residence at ISCP New York, Delfina Foundation London, AIR Laboratory (U-jazdowski) Warsaw, IFP Beijing China, and AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz. She has exhibited work at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Tent, Rotterdam, ISCP New York, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Kunsthaus, Graz; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Melly (former Witte de With) Rotterdam, Casco Art Institute among others.

Maja Bekan website

The programme of reading sessions:

30.05.2024 reading with Tom Viaene, Arnout and Michiel De Cleene
28.03.2024 reading with Curated Suitcase
in fold #10 on Responsibility

22.02.2024 reading with Lotta Petronella
25.01.2024 reading with Eva van Ooijen
30.11.2023 reading with Danae Theodoridou ft. Fontys Akademy of the Arts
in fold #09 on Empowerment

26.10.2023 reading with Barbora Trnková ft. Vašulka Kitchen
28.09.2023 reading with Pam Virada
in fold #08 on Spirit

22.06.2023 reading with Golnar Abbasi
25.05.2023 reading with Charlotte Jarvis
in fold #07 on Solidarity

30.03.2023 reading with Doris Hardeman
23.02.2023 reading with Risk Hazekamp
26.01.2023 reading with Gladys Zeevaarders
in fold #06 on Reimagining

27.10.2022 reading with Anna Zvyagintseva
05.10.2022 reading with Jun Zhang
25.08.2022 reading with Christopher van Ginhoven Rey
in fold #05 on Awakening

02.12.2021 reading with Laura Castro
18.11.2021 reading with Sophia Holst
16.09.2021 reading with Amy Franceschini
in fold #02 on Commons

08.07.2021 reading with Sheng-Wen Lo
17.06.2021 reading with Katarina Jazbec
20.05.2021 reading with Mari Kesi-Korsu
in fold #01 on Empathy