All that is lost and all that is not: Collective Reading and Writing

What are the instances of loss all too often overlooked?

What is believed to be lost and yet it remains?

What can be brought back differently after its loss and what cannot?

We will be collectively reading, writing, musing, speaking, and feeling our ways through questions such as these. This event is loosely inspired by the book there are gingko leaves on the window and will play with elements from the book to warm the space. If you are reminded of an object, book, tea, food or quote by this event description, feel free to bring it along to lovingly crowd the space.

Please bring pen and paper and all your intuitions on what is lost and what is not.

This workshop arises from my (Cara’s) experience of bringing a small book into the world: the book contains letters and poems written with my grandmother shortly after her passing. Throughout the publishing process this writing endeavor has often been read as an engagement with grief, with loss, with sadness. This intrigued me for two reasons: First, to me personally this writing has never been about losing my grandmother, but rather about being in relation with her differently. Second, I have felt an intense sense of loss and grief in other areas in my life that have rarely been regarded as instances of loss by others.

This has made me curious to explore together what is lost and what remains, what might re-appear after having been lost, what might not, how we bring back the lost or how we do not.

Cara-Julie Kather is a feminist theorist and writer who is originally from Germany and currently a guest in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her writing includes academic as well as nonacademic modes and all the inbetweens and beyonds to these categories. Some of her writing can be found with Fuente Fountain Books, transcript, Text Power Telling or the Journal of Ecohumanism.

Host or Publisher Feminist Media Studio