About

The Feminist Duration Reading Group (FDRG) focuses on under-represented feminist texts, movements and struggles from outside the Anglo-American canon. The group has developed a practice of reading out loud, together, one paragraph at a time, with the aim of creating a sense of connection and intimacy during meetings.

The group was established in March 2015 by Helena Reckitt, at Goldsmiths, University of London, to explore texts from the Italian feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Later in 2015 it relocated to SPACE in Hackney, East London where it was hosted by Persilia Caton until April 2019. From June 2019 to February 2020 the group was in residence at the South London Gallery, where it focused on intersectional feminisms in the UK context (a planned year-long programme that was moved online due to COVID-19).

In 2023 we were one of several groups selected for the eighteen month Residents programme at Goldsmiths CCA, London.

From 2023-2024 FDRG partnered with Cell Project Space developing CEED (Central East European and Diaspora) Feminisms, funded by the British Art Network, with Cell Project Space.

FDRG sessions have been organised with Emilia-Amalia at Art Metropole in Toronto; Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof and HFBK Hamburg, Germany; in London with the Advocacy Academy, Artangel, Barbican Art Gallery, Cell Project Space, Chelsea Space, Chisenhale Gallery, the Drawing Room, Flat Time House, Goldsmiths CCA, Mimosa House, Mosaic Rooms, The Showroom, South Kiosk, Studio Voltaire, Tate Modern, in collaboration with AntiUniversity and the Department of Feminist Conversations, and as part of The Table at the Swiss Church. Elsewhere in the UK we have been hosted by Grand Union and Eastside Projects, Birmingham, esea, Manchester, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, and Hypatia Trust, Penzance.  A sister group, NW FDRG, was set up in Liverpool by Kezia Davies in 2019.        

Six members of the FDRG - Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, and Amy Tobin - organised the two-week long events programme, ‘Now Can Go,’ focused on legacies of Italian feminism, across the ICA, The Showroom, SPACE, and Raven Row, in December 2015.  

The group usually meets once a month, in art spaces and community venues as well as non-institutional venues such as private homes or gardens.

The FDRG aims to create an inclusive trans-positive space. We welcome feminists of all genders and generations to explore the legacy and resonance of art, thinking and collective practice from earlier periods of feminism, in dialogue with contemporary practices and movements.

Working Group

FDRG sessions are initiated by a Working Group. Current members are Beth Bramich, Sabrina Fuller, Taey Iohe, Helena Reckitt, and Dot Zhihan.

Support Group

FDRG activities are supported by a Support Group comprising former Working Group members Lina Džuverović, Mariana Lemos, Katrin Lock, and Ehryn Torrell.

Other former Working Group members are Giulia Antonioli, Angelica Bollettinari, Lily Evans-Hill, Félicie Kertudo, Ceren Özpinar, Sara Paiola, Justin Seng, and Fiona Townend.

Working with the FDRG: A Note for Institutions

The FDRG is run by members of the voluntary Working and Support Groups. We regularly partner with community and arts organizations to offer free events to the public.

The reading group is our collective practice that we enjoy and like sharing with others. Facilitating sessions does of course involve considerable time and effort. We also have running costs for web hosting and communication, invited speaker fees etc.

We understand financial constraints within the cultural sector, but appreciate any contributions that support our efforts.

The FDRG operates an ‘Honesty Box,’ and asks funded organisations to pay what they can.

For organisations who can access funding, we suggest a fee of £300 - £600 per session, depending on the scope of work entailed.  This roughly follows the a-n artist payment guidelines for 1-1.5 days for an artist with seven years professional experience (the FDRG was set up in 2015).

Collaborators and Partners

FDRG sessions have been led by Adomas Narkevicius, Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Giulia Antonioli, Diana Baker Smith, Fari Bradley, Beth Bramich, Giulia Casalini, Laura Castagnini, Catherine Cho, Leah Clements, Morgane Conti, Lauren Craig, Cinzia Cremona, Galit Criden, Giulia Damiani, Oana Damir, Kezia Davies, Department of Feminist Conversations, Flora Dunster, Lina Džuverović, Lily Evans-Hall, Lucia Farinati, Lynne Friedli, Sabrina Fuller, Diana Georgiou, Rose Gibbs, Valeria Graziano, Laura Guy, Haley Ha, Nora Heidorn, Minna Henriksson, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Yurika Imaseki, Taey Iohe, Félicie Kertudo, Alexandra Kokoli, Jessie Krish, Mariana Lemos, Mai Ling, Jet Moon, Gabby Moser, Roisin O’Sullivan, Ceren Özpinar, Frances Painter Fleming, Grace Eunhye Park, Sara Paiola, Raju Rage, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, Lidia Salvatori, Elif Sarican, Justin Seng, Something Other, Cecilia Sosa, Amy Tobin, Ehryn Torrell, and Dot Zhihan.

Artists, Writers & Collectives

Sessions have been dedicated to texts and artworks including those by Naadje Al-Aali, Joan Anim-Addo, Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Jenn Ashworth, Margot Badran, Khairani Barokka, Chiai Bonfiglioli, Anne Boyer, Brixton Black Women’s Group, adrienne maree brown, Wilmette Brown, Octavia Butler, Sakine Cansiz, Hazel V Carby, Adriana Cavarero, Teresa Hak Kyung Cha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Catherine Cho, Barbara Christian, Lia Cigarini, Eli Clare, Leah Clements, Lauren Craig, Galit Criden, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, Maria Puig De La Bellacasa, Leah Clements, Silvia Federici, Leta Hong Fincher, Shulamith Firestone, Lauren Fournier, Ruth Frankenberg, Olivia Guaraldo, Johanna Hedva, bell hooks, Sanja Iveković, Juliet Jacques, Marie Elizabeth Johnson, Jane Jin Kaisen, Jasleen Kaur, AE Kings, Larissa Lai, Teresa de Lauretis, Clarice Lispector, Carla Lonzi, Fereil Ben Mahoud, Alex Martinis Roe, Lea Melandri, Fatema Mernissi, Milan Women’s Bookshop Collective, Trinh T Minh-ha, Adriana Monti, Jet Moon, Antonella Nappi, Astrida Neimanis, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen, Abdullah Ocalan, Lola Olufemi, Sue O’Sullivan, Tanja Ostojić, Cecilia Palmeiro, Queer Beograd, Darija Radaković, Raju Rage, Claudia Rankine, Tabita Rezaire, Rivolta Femminile, Lucia Egana Rojas, Sasha Roseneil, Gail Rubin, Suzanne Santoro, Selma Selman, Christina Sharpe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rhea Storr, Latif Tas, Miriam Ticktin, Tiqqun, Iris Uurto, Nafu Wang, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Katri Vala, Vron Ware, Wages Due Lesbians, Wages for Housework, Linda Zerilli.

Contact us

If you would like to join the reading group mailing list or propose a focus for a session, or invite us to lead a meeting, please contact: feministduration@gmail.com 

Website Design by Angelica Bollettinari

Stone Soup: a broth, a shipwreck, and all the fugitive seeds

Stone Soup: a broth, a shipwreck, and all the fugitive seeds

Feminist Duration
2023

Wednesday 25 October, 11am-2:30pm

Flat Time House 

This autumn, we hold a special gathering for making and eating stone soup. Taey Iohe's ongoing ‘Leak’ research is the starting point for this event, which explores the socio-botanical entanglement of excavated land and our wounded bodies through slow metabolic practice. Taey invites a medical herbalist, Rasheeqa Ahmad, and artist, Rachel Pimm, who, together, have broadened the invitation to create a circle of growers, cooks, thinkers and artists involved in daily practices at the critical intersections of land and food to make a stone soup. 

A circle of guests is invited to offer an ingredient to make a recipe for stone soup, which is itself a metaphor and action for the generosity of a communal meal made from many small contributions. Over the course of a lunch prepared and eaten together, a base stock will be enriched and blessed by the group. Each story of spice, herb, or vegetable will map migration and connection to the place and its politics.

In addition to sharing their own ritual knowledge, excerpts of connected texts will be read aloud together. Readings include selections from Anita Mannur’s book Intimate Eating, Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures (Duke University Press, 2022). Tracing how people of colour, queer people, and other marginalized subjects sustain belonging, Mannur reconfigures how we think about networks of intimacy beyond the family, heteronormativity, and borders.

This gathering is an opportunity to come together and create something new, to share our stories, and to build community. It is a space for us to explore the intersections of land, food, race, gender, and sexuality, and to generate new ways of being in the world.

Expressions of Interest

We have limited number of places due to the size of the kitchen. To reserve a place, please send a brief Expression of Interest (c.100-200 words) to feministduration@gmail.com with your story about the chosen ingredient you would like to contribute to the group, by 15 September. We are happy to receive Expressions via video or voice memo (up to five mins) as well as email.

We will let you know if you have received a place, and send you further information about the event including a link to the reading, by 1 October.

Bios

Rasheeqa Ahmad

Rasheeqa (Hedge Herbs) is a herbalist in her community in Walthamstow, North East London. She has been practising since 2012, offering treatment with herbal medicine and teaching about its many aspects, alongside a wider mix of work whose aim is connecting us as communities with the potential of this knowledge and craft as a way to develop healthier living systems and relationships. She has contributed writing to artist publications around these themes and has presented talks around the histories and politics of plant medicine and healthcare. Rasheeqa is inspired by her early involvement with the Radical Herbalism Gathering in exploring how to make plant medicine accessible and restore balance to its practice in the contexts of systemic inequalities and oppressions that are part of our shared histories. @HedgeHerbs

Taey Iohe 

Taey is an artist and writer whose work spans across diverse media, including text, moving images, social practice and assemblage through an Asian crip/queer feminist lens. Their practice fuses research-based works with personal narratives that challenge socio-botanical entanglements in social medicine and climate justice. Taey is a co-founder of the Decolonising Botany Working Group and has presented the performance A Refusing Oasis at Documenta 15 (2022). Taey holds a PhD in the programme of Gender, Identity and Culture at the School of English and Film, University College Dublin, funded by Writing On Borders. A member of the Feminist Duration Reading Group’s Working Group, currently Taey is a resident at Somerset House supported by an exchange bursary programme. (@taey.iohe)

Taey acknowledges the support of the Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England

Rachel Pimm 

Rachel (they/ them/ theirs) is a research-based artist searching for the origin of things, telling material stories, finding the political - the feminist, queer, sick, and postcolonial - in the animal, vegetable, and mineral. Their work is often collaborative and has been presented at the Serpentine Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, and Royal Academy in London, and art centres in the US and around Europe. Rachel is Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College, UAL. @rachelpimm

Flat Time House 

Flat Time House (FTHo) was the studio home of John Latham (1921-2006), recognised as one of the most significant and influential British post-war artists. In 2003, Latham declared the house a living sculpture, naming it FTHo after his theory of time, ‘Flat Time’. Until his death, Latham opened his door to anyone interested in thinking about art. It is in this spirit that Flat Time House opened in 2008 as a gallery with a programme of exhibitions and events exploring the artist's practice, his theoretical ideas and their continued relevance. It also provides a centre for alternative learning, which includes the John Latham archive, and an artist's residency space.

Access
Accessibility to all spaces in Flat Time House is limited by its prior function as a small private home and the restriction to architectural alterations that can be made to the space.

The front gallery is accessible via a portable ramp from the street which we provide. The garden can be accessed via a side entrance from the street and from there the studio, research space, and rear gallery can be accessed via ramp. The rear gallery is entered via a 77cm (30 1/4'') doorway. The kitchen area can be accessed via ramp from the street but accessibility is limited by a 68cm (26 3/4'') interior doorway.

Please phone in advance of your visit.

For more detailed information on accessibility please call Flat Time House on +44 (0)207 207 4845 or email info@flattimeho.org.uk;  http://flattimeho.org.uk/about/

Feminist Duration

This gathering is part of the Feminist Duration series which explores under-known texts, ideas, and movements associated with earlier periods of feminist activity in the UK. Initiated as part of a year-long residency at the South London Gallery in 2019, and moved online during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the programme juxtaposes earlier moments of feminist with current urgencies and struggles.

By restoring material texture to overlooked political and cultural movements, it seeks to resist versions of the past that reduce feminist struggle to one-dimensional stereotypes. Looking to the past to activate its nascent potential, the programme aims to identify tools that can inspire and enrich further collective action, promoting the intergenerational exchange of knowledge and experience. While honouring earlier feminisms, the series also highlights how collaboration, difference, and dissent have characterised previous feminist movements, and how feminists have both negotiated, and failed to significantly attend to, differences between themselves.

Feminist Duration is generously supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.

Image credit: Taey Iohe 2023 

Adania Shibli: Minor Detail, Reading 2

Adania Shibli: Minor Detail, Reading 2
Just Listening: Towards an Oliverosian Feminism

Just Listening: Towards an Oliverosian Feminism