¶ Study Object Room

9 July–24 September 2020

A comprehensive online resource documenting ¶ Study Object Room. ¶ Study Object Room was a two–month reading programme organised by Virgil B/G Taylor as part of Desperate Living C–19. With contributions from Tiffany Sia, Sam Richardson, Maya Binyam, Zainab Haidary, Sophia Hussain and Ashkan Sepahvand.

Each room resolved around a text, selected by Taylor’s invited study–friend. Following a reading–out–loud of the text, each text was opened up for examination by the wider group of readers.

The ¶ Study Object Room website contains a full archive of the project. For each room, an audio recording of the reading–out–loud, notes from the following conversation, and the chosen text itself is available.

See more here, on the ¶ Study Object Room website

Find out more about Desperate Living C-19

Tiffany Sia
Thursday 9 July 2020
Text: The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times by Lauren Berlant (2016)
Tiffany Sia is an artist, independent film producer and founder of Speculative Place.
Sam Richardson
Thursday 23 July 2020
Text: The Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde (1978)
Sam Richardson is an often tired, but always interested, queer living in LA.
Maya Binyam
Thursday 6 August 2020
Text: On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed (2012) Maya Binyam is a senior editor of Triple Canopy, an editor of the New Inquiry, and a lecturer in the New School’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program.
Zainab Haidary
Thursday 20 August 2020
Text: The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961)
Zainab Haidary is a mixed media artist, writer, and filmmaker.
Sophia Hussain
Thursday 3 September 2020
Text: Translation is a Mode=Translation is an Anti-neocolonial Mode by Don Mee Choi (2020) Sophia Hussain is a writer, cultural worker, and events programmer interested in digital publishing projects that challenge property relations.
Ashkan Sepahvand
Thursday 24 September 2020
Text: Tablet XII, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c.1800BC) translation by C. J. Gadd, 1933 Ashkan Sepahvand is an artistic researcher whose practice takes form as publications, performances, situations, and study.
Virgil B/G Taylor is an american faggot based in Beacon or London or Bremen or Berlin. He makes fag tips, an online speculative zine. He is one half of sssssssssSsss, a study-friendship with Ashkan Sepahvand and a member of What Would An HIV Doula Do?, a collective of artists, writers, caretakers, activists and more gathered in response to the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic. His work explores histories of care and crisis, magic and toxicity. In addition to his art practice, which has been exhibited and performed in the US and Europe, he is a member of the editorial collective of PINKO Magazine, a magazine of gay communism. He was a 2017-18 Queer|Art|Mentorship fellow in Fine Art during which he was mentored by Carrie Yamaoka, a member of Fierce Pussy. He has a masters degree in Public Histories from Birkbeck College, University of London and is a Meisterschüler under the supervision of Natascha Sadr Haghighian at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen.
Study Object Room notes taken by Gabe Gordon.
Study Object Room website coding by Fritz Weber.