Collectable

Are you a Joycean? 

Well, I read Joyce

‘O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia.’ All Joyceans know that this is how the wonderful chapter about Anna Livia Plurabelle starts, the only one in Finnegans Wake that has a title. Anna Livia is a woman, a mother, a river and many other things. It is also the chapter you can listen to in the MACBA galleries, with comments by the Zurich James Joyce Foundation reading club and recorded by the artist Dora García. Ten readers sitting around a table retrace the phonetic experimentation and endless semantic games of the Irish writer. They laugh, explain the historic meaning of the words, link them to other works of literature and celebrate the act of shared reading. Interested in Joyce, García showed up without an appointment at the home of Frits Senn, founder of this historic reading club that has met weekly since 1986. ‘The first thing he asked me was if I were a Joycean. “Well, I read Joyce,” I said.’ After chatting for a bit, he invited her to join a meeting of the reading group that same afternoon. After a few months attending their sessions, Garcia set about recording some. You can follow the video The Joycean Society at the MACBA Collection exhibition. 

videos

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Fons #07: Dora García | “Joycean society” & “Exhausted Books”
Fons #07: Dora García | “Joycean society” & “Exhausted Books”
Dora García draws inspiration from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, a complex and enigmatic work considered one of the best literary representations of the unconscious. The Zurich James Joyce Foundation, made up of amateur readers, has been meeting weekly since 1986 to read and discuss this novel, and it boasts one of the most complete Joyce libraries in Europe. García documents these gatherings in her project The Joycean Society, which highlights the importance of collective reading, literary interpretation, and the creation of meaning.
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[5251_001_pub / Imatge] Exhausted Books
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[1863_001_pub / Imatge] El Reino
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[6416_001_rgb / Imatge] 6416_001_rgb.tif
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[6704_004_rgb / Imatge] Frase d'or (Ella té molts noms)
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Exhibition

‘MACBA Collection: Prelude. Poetic Intention’. A group exhibition that aims to reverse the dramaturgy of the museum by putting the artwork at the centre so we can address its will, its energy and its poetic intention.

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