16 July 2018
London
7pm
For the third reading group session + discussion lead by Jo Harrison at Almanac, the central focus will be inspired by the current Jasmine Johnson exhibition, 'More than two', and consider the idea of intimacy.
This session will focus on the introduction to 'Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds' by Zygmunt Bauman (2003), and two poems by New Zealand poet Hera Lindsey Bird (2016), and invite reflections on how we experience intimacy within contemporary relationships today. Also asking how might mediated communication amplify or dissolve our pure and intimate connections with one another, and thus inflame our ambivalences towards relationships altogether?
Bauman extends his concept of liquid modernity – where he argues that we have become increasingly individualised, freeing ourselves from traditional networks of support in order to become more flexible and transient creatures that move fluidly between various socio-economic identities and milieux – and applies it to how we experience human relationships today. If we live as individuals in a liquid society, is it possible to simultaneously be 'free' as well as inter-connected (AKA 'tied-down') to one particular person or relationship? He argues that, "in a liquid modern setting of life, relationships are perhaps the most common, acute, deeply felt and troublesome incarnations of ambivalence." If this is true, is genuine intimacy still attainable? Can it even still exist?
Hera Lindsey Bird might argue that it does. Using the language of her romantic heroes, but the vocabulary of a millennial, Bird untangles, and then re-tangles, all the complications and ambiguities we experience in contemporary love and relationships, from the epic to the banal. Her poetry has a universal truth to it; we all know love and loss, but has how we experience those emotions changed? And are we struggling to adapt?
Here you can download Bauman's text.
The same evening at 9pm Queerdirect will screen Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 2001, directed by John Cameron Mitchell as part of their monthly queer films series at Almanac.
Vegan food and booze will be served. Donations welcome.
The event is supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts
