The first reading in fold #12 on Memory will be led by artists Lilian Ptáček and Johannes Hugo Stoll. Their proposal is to dive into ideas regarding material memory by drawing links between Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction and Plastic: accumulation without metabolism by Heather Davis.

In this text Le Guin retells the origin by challenging traditional heroic narratives of domination and instead uses the metaphor of a carrier bag to construct a new narrative. Plastic in Heather Davis’s essay can be understood as an example of a byproduct of these traditional heroic narratives. Davis argues that because plastic is a material that can’t be metabolized, it permeates our century and beyond; a carrier that exceeds its own creator.

“We regard materials not merely as a resource to make with, but as a carrier of accumulated meanings and narratives. We see our practices as resonating deeply with the theme of memory through our understanding of how the narratives contained within materials have the potential to shape the how, what or why we remember. By situating our practices in context with our proposed texts, we see this reading group as an opportunity to open up conversations questioning how memory can be a tool to imagine alternative narratives to what has been remembered and forgotten.”(Lilian Ptáček and Johannes Hugo Stoll, 2024)

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction and science fiction.

Heather Davis

Heather Davis is an assistant professor of Culture and Media at The New School in New York whose work draws on feminist and queer theory to examine ecology, materiality, and contemporary art in the context of settler colonialism. 

Johannes Hugo Stoll

Johannes Hugo Stoll graduated in 2024 from the Piet Zwart Institute and continues to work for and under the name of Future Grandpa’s Secret Recipe, a project that engages with digestion issues to stress the temporal and material aspects of existence. Most recently, the installation shown at the graduation speaks about the digestion of art as a metaphor for digesting the cultures we are practicing. The space unfolds in a kitchen-like setup in which leftover studio materials are reused to make, for example, a paper-plastic mix ground material. The on-site activity merges the question of what is exhibited art and what is practiced in daily culture: a portrayal of the human condition disconnecting from nature. 

Johannes Hugo Stoll website

Lilian Ptáček

Lilian Ptáček works across printmaking, sculpture and sound to explore ideas of inward and outward, of public and private in relation to the human body and urban environments. She graduated from the MFA programme at Piet Zwart Institute in 2024. Her practice combines industrial and quotidian materials with highly crafted forms, creating works that consider the relationship between hard and soft, comedic and serious.

Her recent exhibition ‘Pavement Hiccups’ reflects on personal encounters navigating the absurdities of city life. The installation comprises interconnected forms and characters informed by urban oddities: an inappropriately located water feature persistently leaks onto a station platform; underachieving structures struggle to perform their designated task; a collection of ties intermittently sneeze. These elements address the interplay between the systematic, reductive logic of cities and the embodied experience of inhabiting the world as a body motivated by desires and needs.

Lilian Ptáček website

The programme of reading sessions:

30.01.2025 reading with Roberto Uribe Castro
27.02.2025 reading with Fransisca Angela
in fold #12 on Memory

31.10.2024 reading with Janneke van der Putten
26.09.2024 reading with Adele Dipasquale
in fold #11 on Voice

30.05.2024 reading with Tom Viaene, Arnout and Michiel De Cleene
26.04.2024 reading with Angela Serino and Maja Bekan
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