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‘The Breaks’: Reading of a new book by Julietta Singh + conversation

with Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca & Venuri Perera

In collaboration with DAS Graduate School/DAS Research, Veem House is excited to (digitally) welcome Julietta Singh to share a reading from her upcoming book, The Breaks. Julietta Singh is a writer-academic whose work engages decolonial thought, ecological humanities, and queer studies. She is the author of three books: No Archive Will Restore You (Punctum, 2018), Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements, and The Breaks, which will be released with Coffee House Press and Daunt Books Originals in September 2021. Following the reading, Julietta will enter into dialogue with new lector and Head of Das Graduate School Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and artist Venuri Perera. 

“In The Breaks, Singh writes a letter to her six-year old daughter with the impossible desire to prepare her for political and ecological catastrophe. Working in the tradition of James Baldwin, Maggie Nelson and Saidiya Hartman, Singh addresses subjects as wide and interconnected as race and legacies of colonialism, climate change and extractive capitalism, queer family-making, protest and the criminal justice system. Through this intimate form, Singh presents a remarkable vision of present collapse and future possibility.”

The conversation between Julietta, Laura and Venuri will delve deeper into the themes and experiences laid out in the book, infused with their perspectives as artists, thinkers and educators. 

8 March 2021

20:00

Due to current COVID-19 regulations, this event will take place online.

About Julietta Singh

Julietta Singh is a writer-academic whose work engages decolonial thought, ecological humanities, and queer studies. She is the author of three books: No Archive Will Restore You (Punctum, 2018), Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements, and The Breaks, which will be released with Coffee House Press and Daunt Books Originals in September 2021. She is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Richmond. Her academic work has been published in South Atlantic Quarterly, Women & Performance, Social Text, Cultural Critique, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, among others. She is the recent recipient of a 2019-2020 ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship, which she held at Columbia University’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality. 

About Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is Lector, Head of DAS Graduate School and Head of Research at the Academy of Theatre and DanceAmsterdam University of the Arts in the Netherlands.

Her current research project is the AHRC-funded Leadership Fellowship, Performance Philosophy & Animals: Towards a Radical Equality (2019-2022). Her books include: The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy (Routledge, 2020) and Encounters in Performance Philosophy (Palgrave, 2014), both co-edited with Alice Lagaay; Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance (Palgrave, 2012); Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (Intellect, 2013), co-edited with Will Daddario; and Deleuze and Performance (Edinburgh, 2009).

She is a founding core convener of the international research network, Performance Philosophy, joint series editor of the Performance Philosophy book series with Rowman & Littlefield, and an editor of the open access Performance Philosophy journal. Laura originally trained as an artist at the Slade School of Art in London and presented performances internationally including Tanzquartier Wien (2015); ICA London (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2008, with the artists’ collective, SpRoUt); and TATE Britain (2003).

She currently collaborates with a range of artists and companies including Fevered SleepRajni Shah and Every house has a door.