Reading Room #34: Fred Dewey and the cooperative
The seventh in a series of Reading Rooms around the library of the American thinker and organiser Fred Dewey, a collective reading and discussion proposed by Vermeir & Heiremans
16/09/2024, 18-20:30h
“People are more willing to talk … when they’re sharing something deeply meaningful with each other. That’s why poetry becomes the foundation of a new kind of dialogue.” (Fred Dewey)
Dewey had a fierce commitment to creating public spaces for intellectual and political engagement. His home base was Los Angeles, but the last years of his life he spent in Brussels. In 2022 Dewey died unexpectedly. To ensure the continuation of his legacy, the Fred Dewey Legacy Project was initiated, aiming to set up initiatives that extend Dewey’s work, as well as preserve his considerable library.
Summer 2023 artists Filip van Dingenen and Hélène Meyer re-installed part of Dewey’s extensive library. They are opening up his collection of books to artists and researchers from their studio home. One way to activate this library is Jubilee’s 2024 Reading Room program. This program performs a collective knowledge transfer – using the library as a situated research tool from which each Jubilee artist can select a title and propose it for a collective reading and discussion session.
Industrialisation & Culture 1830-1914, published by the Open University, is an extensive series of texts that frame the industrial revolution in England from a cultural perspective. Vermeir & Heiremans chose a selection of fragments that will further build on the Jubilee 2024 Summer School program Commons to Coop. The fragments will give an insight in an economic model that operates on the basis of collective ownership: the cooperative.
The second wave of the cooperative movement took off in Manchester. Not long after and in response to the social urgencies that were caused by the industrialization of Belgium, the first industrialised nation on the continent, a number of successful cooperatives were initiated in Ghent and Brussels. Within the cultural field William Morris, a poet, painter and novelist revived the arts and crafts from the Middle Ages, through which he hoped to create more meaningful labor. As the 19th century progressed Morris became more political, and realized that reviving the methods of arts and crafts could not end exploitation and oppression for the mass of people, so he took a giant step across the ‘river of fire’ and became a revolutionary socialist.
This reading room is proposed by Vermeir & Heiremans
Calendar of Fred Dewey Reading Rooms
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Each reading room takes place from 18-20:30h. Soup and bites are provided
Location Reading Room #34
Rue Montenegro 127
1190 Forest