Doggerland invites

As Deleuze said, “There’s no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons”... And yet. We might not need these drives, fear & hope, but there they are.

East Bristol Contemporary invited Doggerland to organise show #17, opening Friday 1 December.

We used this opportunity to invite writers from previous issues of Doggerland, and in turn, commission a new set of texts in response to some of the interlinking ideas and feelings that have emerged since their publication and further conversation.

Performances and readings by:
Phil Owen
Hannah Regel
+ A/V conversation by Hannah Gregory with Jesse Darling

Text works by:
Caspar Heinemann
Lewis den Hertog
Sophie Hoyle

A special performance by Dylar
+ readings from Doggerland.

HG x JD (audio redux), Hannah Gregory and Jesse Darling (09:53).

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Keeping abreast of the openings, moves and closures of artist-run activity is maybe futile, as local insight proves frequently more in-depth than a remote, occasional visiting project like Doggerland. It’s taken a while to understand that this in fact is not the primary drive of our interests of the project, nor a pace we wish to try keep up with. Working with a small group of artists and writers, for periods of time that potentially test their patience, of which we’re thankful, and discussing their ideas in their writing has been the most meaningful form of exchange in the project over the past couple years. Distributing small publications to the artist-run spaces around the UK has been our own small means of production, agency and contribution, which we hope to continue to push and use to question - Doggerland

When sounding out the intention of holding a reading group in my home, a friend insinuated that they found it strange. Why not approach an institution? Isn’t the home too claustrophobic? What if it descends into chaos? What if everyone starts to dissolve? Well precisely. In a city like London, consumed by a crisis of housing, the idea of home wears thin. Home, here, is at once where you happen to be, and also where you are never present, fully. My imagination has holes. My mind drifts. My contract is rolling. I cannot picture where I will be after six months because there is little point in trying. Perhaps it will be here, where I sit writing this, perhaps it will not. The relationship I have to my surroundings feels so far from my control that I cannot dwell on or in them; ‘we do not dwell in our environments. Our thoughts dwell also elsewhere. Our environments always allude to something else.’

To write inside an institution, would be to actively try and align your surround with your thoughts. I much prefer them roaming. I am never here only. Or, to put it differently, writing ‘is precisely there where you are not – this is the beginning of writing.’