BLETCHER HOUR | VIRTUAL

Thursdays | 6 - 7 PM
April 8
FREE | LINK TO ACCESS THE VIRTUAL READING GROUP

FRED MOTEN | A Poetics of the Undercommons

This essay was mentioned in a previous Bletcher Hour gathering, so it feels fitting to explore it in its entirety together. Our reading group previously explored the text semblance by Fred Moten, as part of the Otolith Group exhibition XENOGENESIS (2020).

Fred Moten first delivered this remarkable lecture at Threewalls in Chicago, prompted by Harold Mendez’s show “but I sound better since you cut my throat.” Sputnik & Fizzle’s annotated and expanded transcription of A Poetics of the Undercommons includes an original preface by Stefano Harney and a reprint of Moten’s reflections on Mendez’s exhibition. Moten deftly explores various avenues of thought, explaining how he and Harney first developed a notion of the “undercommons” in their influential book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Autonomedia, 2013). His is a lively and fascinating discussion of the disparate connections between Object-Oriented Ontology, Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology, Franz Fanon, and Frank Wilderson, as well as the Buddhist philosophy of Nishida Kitarō—and how all these various intellectual threads shaped his ideas about blackness, sociality, and the “undercommons.”

Here is an excerpt from A Poetics of the Undercommons:

“Part of a rough outline of the trajectory I want to trace starts with a little exegetical commentary on the poem that Abby just read [Rock the Party, Fuck the Smackdown], and in particular to think about things—why I was concerned with things—and to see if I can figure out a way to move from concern about things to concern with nothing, or with nothingness; and, moreover, to see what nothingness and thingliness have to do with what Stefano and I have been calling the undercommons; and then to think about how nothingness, which is to say no-thingness manifests itself as a kind of practice, a practice that Denise Ferreira da Silva might describe as differentiation without separation, which is necessarily social and aesthetic, and which one can begin thinking about as a kind of poetics.”

The SAAG’s Critical Reading Group, named after our first librarian Hazel Bletcher, gathers online for open discussion on Thursday evenings. Readings explore key themes of the exhibitions and connect with current events, with the intent to deepen our understanding of the artworks and their context within our community. 

A limited run of the Bletcher Hour Reader is published for each exhibition block, that is printed and bound in our Publication Studio, and launched at the opening. Readings are announced in advance and can be emailed by contacting Courtney Faulkner, Public Engagement & Event Coordinator | cfaulkner@saag.ca.