Meeting You In The Margins, a reading table at the library of the Kunshaus NRW in Kornelimünster

In order to reimagine possibilities amidst ecological ruins, the reading room brings in a collection of books, photos and archival material that identify extraction not solely as a material process, but also a mode of perception, a world view that structures how we act in the world. In the words of Ben Ehrenreich:  “Only once we imagined the world as dead could we dedicate ourselves to making it so.” 

By bringing in stories that imagine a way of relating to the world that is in defiance of the logic of extraction, by exposing its roots and recognizing past struggles and resistance, the collection reflects on the production of History as a process of narrativization. It recognizes that how we collectively remember or envision the past can both limit as well as expand our capacity to imagine other ways of thinking and seeing. As such, the collection attempts to highlight to its readers the role of image-making in art within global extractive capitalism.

The public is invite to approach the margins of the books as a site for engagement with other readers. Take up a pen and feel free to add your thoughts, comments and questions in the books.

The reading room at Greylight Projects is a semi-public reading room that offers a collection of references, such as books, archival material, photographs, postcards, sounds and conversations around histories of mining connected to, but not exclusive to, the former coal mining region of Heerlen and its surroundings. Through public encounters, the project aims to address and call into question how societies remember, by emphasizing the multidimensionality of histories, and fostering expanded or disruptive literacies.

Booklist:

• The Great Derangement – Amitav Ghosh
• Aleida Assmann – Forms and Functions of Memory
• Erinnerungsräume – Aleida Assmann
• Take ‘Em Down: Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting by Simon van Saarloos
• Camera Geologica – Siobhan Angus
• Undermining – Lucy R. Lippard
• The Country and the City – Raymond Williams
• The Death of Nature – Carolyn Merchant
• Der Tod der Natur: Ökologie, Frauen und neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft – Carolyn Merchant
• Notes on the Underground – Rosalind Williams
• Black Diamond Dust –  edited by Jesse Birch
• The Underground Sea – John Berger
• How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Walter Rodney
• Wie Europa Afrika unterentwickelte: Mit Beiträgen von Bafta Sarbo, Peluola Adewale und René Arnsburg – Walter Rodney
• Running Out of Time – Lucas Bessire
  
• Silencing the Past – Michel Rolph Trouillot
• Diving Into The Wreck – Adrienne Rich
• The Visual Memory of Protest – Ann Rigney
• The Afterlives of Walter Scott – Ann Rigney
• The Word for World is Forest – Ursula K. Le Guin
• Das Wort für Welt ist Wald – Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Desert Notebooks – Ben Ehrenreich
• Der Pilz am Ende der Welt – Anna Tsing Lowenhaupt
• The Mushroom at the End of the World – Anna Tsing Lowenhaupt
• Miners, Managers and The State : A Socio-Political History of the Ombilin Coal Mines, West Sumatra 1892-1996 by Erwiza Erman
• Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology – T.J. Demos
• Against The Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today – T.J. Demos
• The Disposition of Nature – Jennifer Wenzel
• Lithium States of Exhaustion – Edited by Francisco Diaz, Anastasia Kubrak, Marina Otero Verzier
• Fossil Capital:The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming – Andreas Malm