Project spaces and institutions alike love readings because they don’t really cost anything to make happen. An emptyish space, a microphone, chairs for the audience (or not), travel expenses and small honorarium for the reader (or not). Readings as recession indicator.
An Ambivalent Defence / A Loving Critique
On the Rise of Reading Events in the Art World
Long Read by Bryony Dawson
11 Jan, 2026
Hanne Lippard at Istituto Svizzero, Milan. Photo by Giulio Boem.
Fiona Alison Duncan at CCA. Photo by Diana Pfammatter
Ed Atkins at Hartwig Proxy, Photo by Maarten Nauw
Jesper List Thomsen at Grazer Kunstverein. Photo by Sebastian Reiser.
By calling for more critical discourse around reading events, I’m not suggesting they should become slick, professionalised spaces for the presentation of slick, professionalised work, nor that criticism should seek to solidify the form into any particular shape.
Massiah at Adult Entertainment, Photo by Paolina Stadler
Camille Clair at Prosopopoeia, Photo by Dila Kaplan
Luzie Meyer at Mint, Photo by Johan Österholm.
Olga Hohmann at Krone Couronne, Photo by Michal Florence Schorro
This, I think, is a common attribute of successful readings: a structure that allows the mind to come and go without getting left behind or locked out.
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Liola’s story was a screenshotted Notes-app list of enviably hot takes on the reading event hype, to which this text is heavily indebted. I hope she publishes it somewhere.
Bryony Dawson is writer, curator, and sometimes-artist based between Berlin and Vienna. She runs the reading group Non-Productive Readers, as well as the reading series Tribute and screening/performance series Multiplex. Her creative and critical writing appeared in Frieze, émergent magazine, Motor Dance Journal, Common Pink, Corridor8, Sore, and on Montez Press Radio. She is currently undertaking a Masters in Critical Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.