FORTNIGHTS - Rhizome's communal learning series is untaught and unled. Our discussion/action groups are an opportunity for people to learn about a topic by reading, discussing, and then experimenting with the ideas that grow out of our discussions.

During the 2016-17 season Rhizome DC’s Fortnights held a reading and discussion group on Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guatari and Guy Debord’s Situationist International. The 2018/19 sessions will employ an even more participatory format, which will encourage everyone to present an author or reading of her/his choice in the area of social justice. Readings are available here: https://rhizomefortnightsdc.wordpress.com/

OCTOBER 29, 7:30 to 9:30pm. We will have two parts to the evenings discussion:

I.        Jim Ryan, musician, poet and concerned citizen, will present short audio works by William S. Burroughs and the Czec poet Vladimir Holan to inspire a spirited discussion of the relationship between art and social justice

II.     “We Must Remember in Order to Forget: Working Through the Difficult Histories of a PA Coal Mine Town on an Individual and Communal Level.

In this Fortnights session Mary Perry and Cade Levinson - locals from the coal mining region of Northeast Pennsylvania - will apply concepts developed in archaeologist Michael Roller’s book on a nineteenth century labor massacre and the subsequent post-Industrial history of the coal mining region, to their own personal and family histories (texts available here). Making use of Walter Benjamin’s notion of the Destructive Character and the psychoanalytic phenomenon of repetition compulsion or the death drive, they will open a group reflection on both the dialectical connections between the resolution of individual and communal trauma and how remembering and working through the lost traumas of dark histories can be the only hope of preventing those previous dystopias from repeating in a new form.

FORTNIGHTS - Rhizome's communal learning series is untaught and unled. Our discussion/action groups are an opportunity for people to learn about a topic by reading, discussing, and then experimenting with the ideas that grow out of our discussions.

DYSTOPIA AND POSSIBLE AVENUES OF HOPE IN THE AREA OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

During the 2016-17 season Rhizome DC’s Fortnights held a reading and discussion group on Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guatari and Guy Debord’s Situationist International. The 2018/19 sessions will employ an even more participatory format, which will encourage everyone to present an author or reading of her/his choice in the area of social justice. The first meetings will be organized by Michael P. Roller and Jim Ryan. Following these two evenings we will open the readings to participants. Readings will be made available here: https://rhizomefortnightsdc.wordpress.com/

OCTOBER 1, 7:30 to 9:30pm. Mike Roller will introduce the first chapter of his upcoming book: An Archaeology of Structural Violence: Life in a Twentieth Century Coal Town The book draws on material evidence from archaeology and ethnography conducted in a coal-mining town in Northeast Pennsylvania. This material evidence is placed in the dynamic context of the political economy of the United States over the course of the twentieth century. This community’s story illustrates the great ironies of this era, showing how modernist progress and plenty were inseparable from the destructive cycles of capitalism.

OCTOBER 29, 7:30 to 9:30pm. Jim Ryan, musician, poet and concerned citizen, will present short audio works by William S. Burroughs and the Czech poet Vladimir Holan to inspire a spirited discussion of the relationship between art and social justice.

Further organization and business will take place at the first meeting. A subsequent meeting is scheduled for November 19th. A list of suggested texts and authors for discussion will be provided for those who wish to avail themselves, but participants are also free to choose authors/texts of their own preference in the realm of dystopia and social justice.

Join us on July 18th as we conclude our Fortnights: Deleuze reading group with a discussion of Andrew Culp's Dark Deleuze.

Though Gilles Deleuze is known as a thinker of creation, joyous affirmation, and rhizomatic assemblages, in this short book, Andrew Culp argues that this once-radical canon of joy has lost its resistance to the present. Concepts created to defeat capitalism have been recycled into business mantras that joyously affirm “Power is vertical; potential is horizontal!”  Culp recovers Deleuze’s forgotten negativity. He unsettles the prevailing interpretation through an underground network of references to conspiracy, cruelty, the terror of the outside, and the shame of being human. Ultimately, he rekindles opposition to what is intolerable about this world.

This short book (90 pages) stands alone, so it is not necessary to have attended any previous sessions to enjoy this one.

FORTNIGHTS - Rhizome's communal learning series is untaught and unled. Our discussion/action groups are an opportunity for people to learn about a topic by reading, discussing, and then experimenting with the ideas that grow out of our discussions.

We propose "Reading Rhizome" in order to explore the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, who was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, and whose writings seem increasingly relevant today.

We'll begin with a short introductory session where we'll discuss Deleuze's overall philosophical project and some key concepts such as Multiplicity, Assemblages, the Body without Organs, Nomadic Space, etc. We will also view selections from 'Deleuze's Abecedaire', an interview-film produced near the end of his life.

In subsequent sessions we will read and discuss several short works such as The Rhizome (the introductory chapter of Deleuze & Guattari's 'A Thousand Plateaus'), Deleuze's 'Postscript on Societies of Control', and other works as chosen by the group. We will also discuss how Deleuze's affirmative philosophy of difference & emphasis on 'becoming other' may point the way to new modes of interacting outside existing social structures & organizations.

Ever since there has been spectacle there have been those critical of it, who believe that it turns audiences into passive consumers who are unable to think for themselves. Plato famously illustrated this position in his Allegory of the Cave. Many artists and movements have sought to explode the spectacle in an attempt to rouse the audience from their somnambulistic trance, transforming them into more active participants in the world. We will look at several examples from art history, spanning from Heironymous Bosch's 1502 painting, The Conjurer, to contemporary art, investigating how as spectacle and media evolve over time, so does the critique and resistance. We'll also critique the critique; analyzing the ideology, tactics, and effectiveness of different works and movements

What can we learn about the drum used by nomadic peoples tens of thousands of years ago? What does the drum have to teach us today?  Join us for a philosophical journey in search of the meaning of the shamanic drum. Along the way we will encounter Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, whose nomadic thought opened up new ways of thinking about the world around us. With their help, we may learn how the drum not only serves as a window into another culture but also acts as a mirror that reflects our own. Following the discussion will be a music performance with Larry Gomez on percussion accompanied by Ted Zook of the group Lost Civilizations.