In a session of the Reading Club, a few readers are invited to read a given text together. During a predefined period of time, ranging from a few minutes to several hours, these readers simultaneously write their comments, annotations, their own words, in this text itself; in a writing space (a, in real-time collaborative text editor – an adaption of Etherpad) with a previously fixed maximum number of characters.

The readers not only transform the “original” text, but also the reading of the other readers. So the readers are subjected to stress by the act of writing, implying deletion and addition. The Reading Club can be seen as an interpretive arena in which, by an intertextual game, each reader plays and foils the writing of the others; the author of the “original” text as well as her fellow readers in the session.

In between the game of go and a battle, the Reading Club traces the conditions of a simultaneous reading and writing together on the Internet. For this, the Reading Club has several methods of exploration. For example, it may anonymize or colorize the names of the readers. Anonymized, the readers are invited to compose collectively. Materialized by colors and thus identified in their uniqueness, each reader becomes a dynamic element at the service of a reading together.

Postinternet is net.art’s undefined bastard child ARPANET dialogues, 22nd October 2013

Partners
Zinc (Marseille) – Furtherfield (London) – Jeu de Paume (Paris) – Oudeis (Le Vigan) – Poptronics. Project supported by Dicréam.

Press
In the Reading Club, reading is not unthought
Interview with Annie Abrahams by Annick Rivoire for poptronics 20/10/2013 (in french) – Translated to English by Annie for Rhizome: rhizome.org/discuss/view/208336