Room for Reading / Hannan Jones and Samir Kennedy

Monday 1 September 2025 18:00
Tuesday 30 September 2025 19:00

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Our Room for Reading offers further reading and recommendations directly from the artists included in our September events programme. Visit our library at Florence Street to browse their selections.

Hannan Jones

‘Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity and the Work of Reorientation’(2020)by Brandon LaBelle

‘Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity and the Work of Reorientation’ by Brandon LaBelle

“Recently, since I have been travelling, it has been somewhat light magazines, and zines but also moving slowly through this book, I really have enjoyed having these with me. A recent read, with my favourite chapters being Poetic Ecologises: Resonance, Imagination, Repair and Skin-Work: Queer Acoustics, Borderspaces, Economies of Desire."

Listen to Brandon LaBelle on Acoustic Justice here.

The Funambulist Magazine

“A magazine of Politics of Space and Bodies is an essential publication, it is compelling and full of multiple voices. This source I return to constantly, as part of specific research interests that map cultural and social migration but simultaneously because it is relevant, consistently challenging and expanding assumptions by drawing lines between complex power structures and humanities in a live, and responsive format.

The magazine hopes to 'provide a useful platform where activist/academic/practitioner voices can meet and build solidarities across geographical scales. Through articles, interviews, artworks, and design projects, we are assembling an ongoing archive for anticolonial, antiracist, queer, and feminist struggles', ”

Listen to The Funambulist’s podcast here.

“It's 6:18 In the morning, I got woken up by the Adhan a few minutes ago” (2024) by Nesrine Salem and "Un Scorpion Dans L'Épicerie" (2025) by Lydia Amarouche

"Ṣabr does not mean surrendering to life as it is, but accepting our realities while confronting them in a way that is possible on our scale, with the conviction that positive things will result. Ṣabr is an indispensable principle of activism in the current state of the world, a capitalist and white imperialist world."

“I chose these specific titles because they hold intimacy and depth, they are free flowing and feel as if you are entering a diary or a fragmented conversation collapsing in time. Nesrine Salem meditates on the textures of everyday tasks, prayer, family, thoughts, her relationship with Algeria and moments that are timely in her thoughts, the relation to geography, colonialism, especially in Gaza and Algeria. It traces moments with a specific pace and tempo of thoughts I can relate too, somewhat drifting between constellating inner worlds and outer realities.

I met with Nesrine, at a book fair in Marseille whilst on residency. She explained how she began this series of SABR Collection by inviting artists, practitioners to express themselves through creative writing. In Lydia Amarouche's writing she is mapping multiple moments interweaving the Scorpion as a driving force between territories, time and places. Beautiful!”

Samir Kennedy

‘Out of the Shadows: The Psychology of Gay Men’s Lives’ (2019) by Walt Odets

Kennedy’s first recommendation is ‘Out of the Shadows: The Psychology of Gay Men’s Lives’ by Walt Odets. Drawing on a lifetime's work as a clinical psychologist, Walt Odets uses the stories of his patients as well as the stories of his own deep relationships with other gay men to illuminate the difficulties gay men face and how they may be overcome.

Listen to Odets speak about his book here.

‘The Weird and the Eerie’ (2016) by Mark Fisher

In this book of essays, noted cultural critic Mark Fisher argues that a proper understanding of the human condition requires examination of transitory concepts such as the Weird and the Eerie. Using examples drawn from a wide range of literature, film, and music references—from H.P. Lovecraft and Daphne Du Maurier to Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan, Fisher invites us to think beyond the realm of Horror in our understanding of these concepts.

Read a pdf of ‘The Weird and the Eerie’ here.

Details

In conjunction with our projects, exhibitions and events, Room for Reading offers artists we work with an opportunity to contribute to The Common Guild library and share the books and resources that have influenced their artistic practice.

Every artist’s selection is added to The Common Guild’s expansive reference library of artist books, catalogues, and cultural and critical theory.