THE READING ROOM BERLIN

By Rachel Lois Clapham

My score for writing performance, originally devised live and in public at the Laing Gallery 2009, has been selected to be in the Reading Room Berlin as part of David Berridge's Essaying Essays: An Assembling.

For the Reading Room Berlin project I turned the original score into a physical book object of twenty (fourscore) square elements. The elements are all treated equally within the book, published in no particular order, and can be moved, shuffled or placed around the Reading Room according to the reader’s whim. The mobility of the score, and of the reader encountering it, is sympathetic to the original live performance context from which the score was written. The square format also indicates the book, and the individual elements, can be read from any direction. The binding is also moveable, consisting of two elastic bands.

Each element contains a prompt for writing performance. During printing, one or two graphics were mistakenly repeated on the reverse of certain elements. These errors are retained in the final publication, making both copies of the book unique, and indicating a potential reverse side of the score.

Publication details
Title: A Score for Writing Performance
Format: Book Antiqua on white card 21.2 mm x 21.2 mm 210 gsm

Binding: Red elastic bands
Inserted (in no particular order) : A table of elements and a title page
Number of copies: Two

Details of the original score devised live at the Laing Gallery are here.

You can see ESSAYING ESSAYS: AN ASSEMBLING in its original PDF form here.

About the READING ROOM BERLIN

The Reading Room is based on former institutional “Reading Rooms” (such as the one of the British Museum in London), and functions as such: it will be open for public viewing, with those wanting to use it being required to make an appointment and also register beforehand their particular interested in the publications or project. The Reading Room takes its initial presentation location from the idea of the “Salon”, gathering its printed matters under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host. The visitors and readers of the Reading Room will ring the bell of a private apartment, climb up the stairs to it, and then be able to sit in a study room. Refreshments will be served.

The organisers of The Reading Room will maintain a curated monthly selection of approximately 25 publications that can be seen at one time. Those will be chosen based on changing criteria, such as topics, size, colour, content, and links to each other. A monthly index will be published online. By special agreement, the remaining publications of the archive can of course be read and viewed, next to the monthly selection.

The Reading Room is a project conceived and organised by Dominique Hurth and Ciarán Walsh

All images 'A Score for Writing Performance' courtesy Rachel Lois Clapham, 2010