During the Covid-19 Lockdown, the gallery space has been closed. In the meantime, we want the gallery to continue to be a place of emotional and intellectual exchange for whatever community it reaches – always but especially now, we need artists to give language and shape to complex realities and experiences. Each week we will be featuring different films, texts and online events by our artists here.

Donate to Partners in Health who help provide health care to some of the most vulnerable populations here or to the UK Trussell Trust foodbank.

Weekly Broadcast: Reading Group

18 March 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 18 March, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week we are returning to the topic of the first reading group meeting: how we experience trauma within our bodies, and how it might be treated with a fuller understanding of the connectivity between brain and body.

Please listen to the following two podcast episodes:

On Being with Krista Tippett - Bessel van der Kolk — How Trauma Lodges in the Bod‪y‬ (here)

Body Trauma: A Storytelling Podcast - #008 How our Bodies are Affected by Racism, OCD, and Childhood Trauma with Carolina Guíza‪r (here)

4 March 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 4 March, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

"The definition of time is the indefinite continuation of existence, just wow. Time is a concept that seems as matter a fact as a room, or an object, it is something that unrelenting should at least be consistent. But on further inspection I begin to be unsure if it even exists, or if one time exists. Instead as I grow older, I'm beginning to suspect there are a plurality of times, a plurality of clocks, each with its own effects on your condition. Which makes me think of this quote from the film Faraway, So Close! By Wim Wenders

'Let me explain a couple of things. Time is short. That's the first thing. For the weasel, Time is a weasel. For the hero, Time is heroic. For the whore, Time is just another trick. If you're gentle, your Time is gentle. If you're in a hurry, Time flies. Time is a servant, if you are its master. Time is your god, if you are its dog. We are the creators of Time, the victims of Time, and the killers of Time. Time is timeless. That's the second thing. You are the clock, Cassiel.'

So anyway, I'm not sure where that leaves us, but this week at reading group we’ll be talking about time, its effects, the sensation of it and how that has all changed as we move through or along it."

Please watch this lecture "The Nature of Time" by Carlo Rovelli (via YouTube).

18 February 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 18 February, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week, we will look at Afrofuturism. Please read these two texts (also available as audio, via the below links to YouTube):

The Parable of the Sower, 1993, Octavia E. Butler (p.85–113)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (this is the full audio, so as much as you’re able to get through for the week)

We will also be reading the chapters "Zimmer Land" and "Friday Black" From Friday Black, 2018, by Nana Kwame Adeji-Brenyah.

11 February 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 11 February, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

We’ve been busy and haven’t worked through reading materials, so we thought this week we could discuss a documentary: Best Worst Thing That Could Ever Have Happened. We haven’t watched it ourselves yet, but it seems interesting in relation to ideas of hopes and setbacks.

28 January 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 28 January, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week we will be looking at excerpts from Adam Phillips' 1996 book On Flirtation.

"Flirtation can feel like an in-between space, a bridge that might take you to some other place. I see a person or thing online, I ask myself is this the one, I look at the profile and imagine a life with the image ­­– its surface is oddly comforting, it resembles the past but is clearly better. It’s everything I had been searching for all in one place .

So flirtation exists for me in this fantasy realm, without the hardness of reality. It’s all soft potential, able to shaped into whatever vision you wish. And that’s how I would perhaps classify a number of encounters in app... they are a chance for me to generate and suspend a fantasy in a like, a comment, or dm...

I don’t know if this is because I have a fear of being hurt or a fear that the fantasy won’t match its reality. But fear is in there. Maybe it just comes down to a fear of time and moving forward, of committing to a path, any path with its own distinct direction, its own distinct burdens and own distinct end, whatever that might be."

On Flirtation: Phillips, Adam: 9780674634404: Amazon.com: Books

21 January 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 21 January, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week we’ll be thinking about vulnerability as resilience, reading from Fanny Howe’s Night Philosophy (2020).

Night Philosophy is collected around the figure of the child not just as a little person under the tutelage of adults, but also the submerged one, who knows, who is without power, who doesn’t matter. The book proposes a minor politics that disperses all concentrations of power. Fanny Howe chronicles the weak and persistent, those who never assimilate at the cost of having another group to dominate. She explores the dynamics of the child as victim in a desensitised era, when transgression is the zeitgeist and the victim-perpetrator model controls citizens."

Night Philosophy is available to purchase directly from Divided Publishing. Please read "A Useful Man" (p. 6–12), "1922" (p. 88–91), and "Tense and Raving" (p. 92–96).

14 January 2021

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 14 January, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives. This week we will be thinking about love.

"We’ve come back to the subject of love, it seems an escapable, pulling us back in. Since a break up three years ago I’ve had the space to rethink my relationship with love, not just in terms of a romantic partner but also in relation to my family, friends and myself. The last of which is perhaps the most important, that without leaves you incapable to perform it elsewhere. In any case, we’ll be continuing the conversation on Love this week, talking through the text Conditions of Love by John Armstrong."

Please read chapters 5 & 8 of John Armstrong's Conditions of Love.

10 December 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
The next session will take place on Thursday 10 December, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

The Soul

"I feel very comfortable accepting that my concept of self is highly constructed — impacted by my environment, my traumas, my biology; fed by my predilections and my fears. My experience of the world is and only ever can be subjective. This is the state of my ego: wrapped up, armoured. I’m told that these barriers to understanding the true self can be overcome, through therapy, meditation, through psychadelics, through the practice of selfless love in all actions … But then what? Is what I would find down there my soul?

I am not sure when precisely, but at some stage in my development from childhood I stopped wondering exactly what happens after I die, or how I even got here in the first place. Something has always felt terribly trite, trying to define the soul. But I do have faith in some sense of essential being, even without having been raised on a religion, or with a clear understanding of a God, communal spirituality — but I’m not sure what that is."

This week we will be be discussing our understandings of the soul.

Please listen to:
- Alan Watt’s 1965 lecture “Myth of Myself” (41 min), here
- This 2019 BBC report, on a phonebooth in Japan, where the living can call the dead (26 min), here

19 November 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 19 November, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

Transference

"As if caught in a loop I would find myself in that situation, an obsessive director who decides to reenact that one scene again and again, each time with a different set of actors, seeing how it might play itself out different each time.

Transference is the idea we bring something from our past into our present, using it as a template for a relationship or dynamic not because it is necessarily the best thing to do, but because it’s familiar, because we’ve internalised it for whatever reason.

It has taken going to therapy to get a little perspective, to register these patterns, to see things happening in my own life not as isolated events but as part of a recurrent theme, an elaborate enactment which although might give me some pleasure has the potential to ultimately trap me."

We wil be looking at:

The general definition of transferrence, from The Handbook of Psychodynamic Approaches to Psychopathology (2015)

This short YouTube video, an excerpted lecutre by Professor Aleksandar Dimitrijevic for Berlin Psychoanalytic 2019: "What is transference in psychoanalysis?"

– Chapter 1 from Robert Waska's The Total Transference and the Complete Counter-Transference (2012)

12 November 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 12 November, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

Silence

"I think of my own silence and inability to vocalise a thought or feelings as arising because I did not have the words, or because I had chosen to hush and bury them. But the thing you bury has a habit of becoming a seed, something that will break you eventually. Or perhaps worse, you sustain the silence and you remain unconnected to that thing, your energy so focused on containment you become a half.

There is this constant frantic energy I find myself in possession of, it drives me to compulsion, I feel compelled to fill the gaps with anything, with flashing images, with noise, with people, with words. To sit in silence can feel at first like reaching into this well of anxieties, but if passed through becomes something soothing, like touching your core, like sustenance, like being whole."

We will be watching the 2019 documentary Tell Me Who I Am, which can be found on Netflix.

And we will be looking at two texts:
– Exceprts from Silence in the Age of Noise, by Erling Kagge (2017)
– Audre Lorde's The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action (1978)

8 October 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 8 October, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

Anxiety and how emotions are made

'A swarm of rats is eating my soul'

This week we’ll be looking at how emotional states are read by our body and more specifically at anxiety, that nervous energy that so easily has the capacity to overwrite our thoughts, feelings and actions. It's an energy that is universal, that can often feel largely out of our control and which we have all found our own ways of coping with.

Anxiety can be an incredibly destructive force, clouding out thoughts, leading to bad decisions and compulsive and addictive behaviour. This week we’ll be talking about our personal experiences of anxiety, how it has effected us and how we might rethink it and change our experience of that well of nervous energy.

Circle Group: This week we’ll be trying a new configuration, spending more time focusing on participants' experiences of anxiety allowing the group to hear and respond to each person in turn."

Please read:
The Anxiety Epidemic, by Graham Davey (2018), Chapter 1
How Emotions Are Made, by Lisa Feldman (2017), Chapter 8, and (optional) Chapter 9

10 September 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 10th September, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This is the second time we have covered addiction in the reading group, this time we are focusing on compulsive behaviors: things we probably did originally to cope with and relieve anxiety, but which seemingly take on their own momentum, dominating and shaping our thoughts and actions. I myself feel my life is often defined by phases in which I can fall into a compulsive mindset; in these moments I feel unable to think out of these behaviours, knowing they are not doing me any good. I persist nonetheless. Film, TV, porn, social media, video games are just a few things that I have used to ease my anxiety: blockers to whatever external or internal pressures which might be the root of my unease."

This week we will be joined by Tim Steer.

We will be reading these texts:
- The Use of Media Entertainment and emotional Gratification, by Anne Bartsch, Reinhold Viehoff, Section 2, "Research Overview"
- The Craving Mind by Judson Brewer, Chapter 4, "Addicted to Distraction"
- Quotes and extracts from the essay Mapping Addicted Subjection: Toward a cartography of the addiction epidemic by Gordon Coonfield, and David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest

We will also discuss this short video of Gabor Mate speaking on childhood anxiety (or, a longer version is here , if you have time).

Weekly Broadcast

21 August 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 27th August, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week Ed Fornieles and Vanessa Carlos will co-host the reading group.

Throughout my life I experienced many deaths of those close to me, and somehow, irrationally, the one I always felt would break me was the death of my dog. When I put her down, I spent a lot of time thinking about what that connection was, why it felt profound and what it might represent. This week we will be discussing our relationship to pets."

We will be reading pages 22-27, and 81-87 of Eileen Myles' Afterglow (a dog memoir) (2018) and pages 69-70 of Olivia Laing's The Lonely City (2016). We will also watch the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), which is available for rental online (but let us know if you have any trouble finding it). And, if you have time, we also suggest watching this BBC documentary The Secret Life of the Dog (2009-2010).

17 August 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 20th August, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

I consider myself a generally happy and enthusiastic person. Some people have even used the term chipper to describe me and yet there have been times over the years I have become aware that my optimism is on one level an act of denial. As a person I love close to me dies, I continue; a relationship ends and I keep moving on without reflection; I don't know how I will pay rent but somehow put that to the back of my mind. Then, as if out of the blue, I find myself under water; it becomes hard to move; things that previously felt easy and could be done without thought become impossible. I have come to know that getting myself out of this swamp is not easy: it is a slow process in which time feels like its folding in on itself and small gains feel hard won but so important."

This week we will be reading Chapter 1 of Julia Kristeva's Black Sun (1987); Chapters 2 and 3 of Johann Hari's Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and how to Find Hope (2018); and "The Depressed Person" from David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), first published in Harper's Magazine.

10 August 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 13th August, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

I am close to my father now, (before the pandemic) we hug when we see each other and will communicate our love. It's taken a long time to reach this point; a softening occured when his business failed, which allowed the performance of control to ease a little, a performance which has further eased with the vulnerability of age and which I am extremely thankful for.

The role of father is changing; the idea of patriarch and provider is no longer a viable economic reality, nor good enough for the emotional and spiritual growth of a family. But how do we feel out a new system, promote alternative patterns of behaviour while celebrating the fathers we have and the roles they have played in our lives."

We will be reading Daddy Issues by Katherine Angel (2019).

We will also be watching the film Father to Son by Visa Koiso-Kanttila (2004) which can be viewed on YouTube here.

3 August 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 6th August, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week Ed Fornieles and Vanessa Carlos will co-host the reading group.

I've never had a consistent and good relationship with my mother and I've often derided what I've called my "mommy issues." Recently, I've started putting a concerted effort into understanding the wider role of 'Mother' in every person's life, and understanding the persistent impact this has had on my own. It feels like such an ancient neurological pathway in my mind which nearly all of my emotional states travel through, that sometimes I wonder if those tracks can ever be completely re-laid. This week we will be talking about what 'Mother' is, and how emotional neglect from a mother or having a narcissistic mother can impact our most fundamental internal structures for experiencing intimacy."

We will be reading Chapters 1, 3, 6-10 of Jasmin Lee Cori's The Emotionally Absent Mother (2010), as well as Chapters 1 and 4 of Karyl McBride's Will I ever be good enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcisstic Mothers (2009).

27 July 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 9th July, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


“The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

It was a break up that derailed me, I had been doing fine going from one relationship to another for too many years when it seemed I finally was able to continue. The break up that ensued was painful; I felt paralysed, in its first stages, I was unable to work or eat and in the later it seemed I had to commit to a program of total reconstruction just so I might begin to move on. As a shake up I now look back on it thankfully, it was time to reflect on myself and my behaviours both in the relationship and in the present, it was a chance to question a habitual way of being that was invisible to me until that point.

So in any case, breakups are hard, they can be intense but often are a time when we are forced to confront ourselves and hopefully grow a little."

We will be reading chapters 2 and 3 of Guy Winch's How to Fix a Broken Heart (2018).

Our heart might be broken, but we do not have to break with it. Winch reveals that recovering from heartbreak always starts with a decision, a determination to move on when our mind is fighting to keep us stuck. We can take control of our lives and our minds and put ourselves on the path to healing. Winch offers a toolkit on how to handle and cope with a broken heart and how to, eventually, move on.

We will also be listening to the audiobook of Cathy Rentzenbrink's A Manual for Heartache: How to Feel Better (2017).

When Cathy Rentzenbrink was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart by an unthinkable tragedy. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world again. She explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and how we can emerge from suffering forever changed, but filled with hope.

This is a moving, warm and uplifting book that offers solidarity and comfort to anyone going through a painful time, whatever it might be. It's a book that will help to soothe an aching heart and assure its readers that they're not alone.

6 July 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 9th July, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


“The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

I am 37, I have to repeat that to myself sometimes, each year when the number changes it takes me a short while to get used to it. I have to move it around and get used to what it might mean, am I living up to this number, do I meet its expectations. A check list presents itself, a career, a partner, a family, a stable income, all of which reads like a 1950s aspirational suburban novel which I have truly failed to live up to. But at the heart I know I dont like that novel, it's unrealistic, with two dimensional characters that in truth I want nothing to do with.

This week we'll be joined by Hamish MacPherson (aged 45) to discuss ageing, about how our minds and bodies change, about the expectations that sit around it and what possible alternative narratives might guide us through this process.”

We will be reading chapter 2 of Paul Simpson's Middle-Aged Gay Men, Ageing and Ageism: Over the Rainbow? (2015).

Is midlife for gay men the start of a slide towards the rejection, exclusion and misery associated with the spectre of the lonely old queen? Whilst exclusion is possible as gay men age, this book offers a more nuanced view of gay ageing, using sociological tools to advance understanding beyond stereotypes.

We will also be looking at Lauren McKeon's 2018 article "How to Build a Life Without Kids" about the increasing trend of living without children, which can be found here.

30 June 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 2nd July, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week will be a lighter chat, sorry for the lateness.

I suppose in my work I have been interested in exploring the idea of a critical empathy. We may not agree with someone's views or actions, but it is likely we can see how they got there, how their grievances manifested, and how the pressures in their as in our lives have shaped them.

Gabor mate said 'if I were you, I'd be you' – a self evident statement that gets to the core of empathy, and which, if we internalise, can't help but lead us to rehabilitation over punishment, understanding over condemnation."

This week we'll be looking at Chapters 1 and 2 of Zero Degrees of Empathy by Simon Baron-Cohen (2012), a book which defines evil as en erosion of empathy, exploring the cause for this erosion and how it is harder for some to empathise and why.

We will also listen to this episode of NPR's Invisibilia podcast, 'The End of Empathy,' looking at the same story told through two different perspectives, which touches on the limits of empathy.

22 June 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 25th June, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

In this week's reading group we will be looking at both euthanasia and suicide. These are such hard subjects to talk about; when someone takes their own life it is confusing and so often shrouded in silence, preventing those in need from reaching out, which makes the process of mourning so much harder.

While euthanasia perhaps points to a radically different experience of death, it too sadly remains illegal in the UK and taboo, which often has the effect of keeping those wishing to end their own lives trapped in a state of suffering with no recourse to end it.

This subject, while so huge and which effects so many of us, often remains unspoken about. Hopefully in having a discussion we can share our experiences and open up a subject that at times can feel so hopelessly closed."

We will be reading Chapter 5 of Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves by Jesse Bering (2018). Bering takes his personal struggle with suicidal feelings as the starting point for a timely examination of the complex problem of self-harm, looking at both the biological stresses of self harm, and the social ones.

We will also be watching the 2016 BBC documentary Simon's Choice: How to Die, about a man facing the decision of whether to end his life at a suicide clinic after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

15 June 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 18th June, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

It is easy to take norms as if they are some kind of natural state, a set of unmovable protocol that tells us who we are and how we should behave. The Will to Change and the documentary The Work both effectively point to ideas, behaviours and attitudes that have underwritten male identity for centuries, drawing out how this patriarchal mode is damaging not just to those who come into contact with it, but also to those who perform it.

This is not the first group Vanessa and I have done around these works; which have become important to me personally, helping me to identify how these structures have effected my own life, as well as the men around me. It is clear that as long as an emotional language is not fostered in boys and men – as long as vulnerability is seen as a weakness and not a strength – a culture of violence is guaranteed to perpetuate and sustain itself."

bell hooks has been called one of America's leading public intellectuals. Created in response to her in-depth discussions with men The Will to Change, 2004, challenges men to reclaim the sensitivity and love that today's embattled masculinity has forsaken. With her trademark candour and fierce intelligence, Hooks answers the most common concerns of men – from fears of intimacy to the loss of their patriarchal place in society. The result is a book that can help men to feel, to need and to desire openly – qualities that will allow them to thrive as they never have before. We will be reading chapters 1, 2, and 10.

The Work, 2017, by Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous is set inside a single room in Folsom Prison, where three men from the outside participate in a four-day group-therapy retreat with a group of incarcerated men for a real look at the challenges of rehabilitation.

8 June 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 11th June, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week is desire. I've recently been looking at Lacanian Ideas not least because that is what my therapist practises. Although often seen as hard to penetrate theory, its core ideas of desire and jouissance are useful tools for understanding what drives us. Hopefully we will be able to use them as a starting point to begin talking about our own desires, the patterns of behaviour they have created in our own lives and how they might relate to our earliest experiences.

A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Bruce Fink is a book written from the perspective of the practitioner faced with the pressing questions of diagnosis, what therapeutic stance to adopt, how to involve the patient, and how to bring about change. Fink provides a comprehensive overview of Lacanian analysis, explaining the analyst's aims and interventions at each point in the treatment.

Looking Awry by Slavoj Zizek reviews the fundamental Lacanian categories the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject – at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films."

We will be reading pages 50–71 of A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis & pages 1–3 of Looking Awry.

1 June 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 4th June, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

Shame begins with someone making you aware that you have crossed a line, infringed on the limits of what it is to be normal. It's a voice that also quickly moves from outside to in, becoming a means by which we police ourselves or that we are policed by, internalising that we are or have done something wrong. This week we will be looking at shame, thinking about how this feeling has affected our own lives and think about how we might address and relieve the sensation. It's a big topic that touches on some of the things we have discussed in the group so far relating to trauma and love." For this week:

Please watch:
- minutes 1:08:14 – 1:14:07 of 'Black Voices: Who is Listening - A Public Dialogue between Melissa Harris-Perry and bell hooks', available here. (It's a great talk and you should watch it all, but that is the segment relating to shame)
- 'Listening to Shame', TED Talk by Brené Brown, available here.

And please read chapters 40, 41, 69, 70, 71 from Roxane Gay's Hunger.

23 May 2020

Richard Sides
Invisible World, 2016
Stereo mix of 6 channel audio, HD video, 22:52 min

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 28th May, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week we will be reading a few chapters on desire, infatuation and projection from Anne Boyer's A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, and listening to a podcast where Chris Kraus is interviewed about her book I Love Dick, an account of her one-sided extramarital infatuation.

There is always another who occupies my mind – until recently I think I've always had someone in my life, either a person I was in relationship with, or a crush, a flirtation, someone to DM late at night. My interaction with them, I have always realised later, on one level has had more to do with me than them: an attempt to negotiate some needs via a cycle of desire, projection, repulsion, love. This week I think it would be interesting to have a discussion about how we use relationships, what our expectations are and how we cope when reality comes into conflict with them."

The sections we will be reading from Anne Boyer's A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, are:

Erotology p.81–85
Erotology II: The Long Night p. 87–89
Erotology III: Categories of Desires for Faces p.90–97
Crush Index p.98–99

The Podcast can be found here.

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

18 May 2020

Ed Fornieles
TDER GEIST: FLESH FEAST, 2016
08:02 min video

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 21st May, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week is co-hosted with writer/researcher Tamara Hart, who shares two texts exploring the queering of desire. The first is Luce Irigaray's 'When Our Lips Speak Together' (1985), an imagined dialogue between two female lovers that deconstructs the idea of 'speaking female' through linguistic play. Irigaray's mixing of pronouns of I / you plays with language structures, opening up a space for each of us to understand how we dominate others/are dominated ourselves in the pursuit of pleasure.

The second text is an excerpt from Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015), a memoir about Nelson's relationship with Harry Dodge, a fluidly gendered artist. While Nelson's body is transformed through pregnancy, so is her her partner's as he takes testosterone and undergoes top surgery. Gracefully fumbling her way through pronouns, S&M, and marriage, Nelson provides a poetic testament to queer motherhood and family making. Reading this book years ago, it still feels like an old friend, one who maps out a path for care, tenderness and love. It makes us think how our own language structures our desires, particularly within the bounds of hetero- and homo-normativity.

Our discussion weaves together these texts along with Audrey Lorde's essay on the erotic and our readings on attachment theory, which help us think through how we might queer expressions of love and power that are exerted in our interactions with lovers, partners, and language."

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

11 May 2020

Steve Bishop
The Caretaker, 2018
24:00 min video


Produced in 2018 for his exhibition Deliquescing at KW Berlin, this film focuses on a deserted town in northern Canada that was built in 1981 to house the workers of a nearby mine and then abandoned in 1983. Its remarkably intact state is due to the constant struggle to prevent the surrounding forest from reclaiming the town and is a testament to the live-in caretaker, who ensures that the lawns are mowed and the buildings are heated.

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 14th May, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register

"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week we'll be looking at The Apology by Eve Ensler, a book that is written from the perspective of the authors dead father, confronting and making sense of the sexual and physical abuse he perpetrated over the years of her childhood. Through the apology Ensler takes control, processing these events in a transformative way, with a spirit that is both unflinching and compassionate.

So I haven't read this book yet but I've listened to Eve Ensler being interviewed about it and the idea behind the book strikes me as particularly powerful: by assuming her father's voice she asserts her agency, reframing and making sense of his actions on her terms. In past sessions we have read about how trauma is often trapped, fragmented memories constantly being replayed; I feel this book is an attempt to confront this by externalising her thoughts, pushing through the trauma in the act of writing itself. I look forward to the conversation.

The book is quite short, but since it is written as one long letter just read as much as you can in time for the reading group."

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

3 May 2020

Sable Elyse Smith
END-LESSsestina, 2019
04:08 min video

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 7th May, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

This week, we will supplement a text from Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity with two podcast episodes: Perel's 'Where Should We Begin? Lockdown New York' and Jessamyn Stanley's 'Dear Jessamyn: Polyamory Is Not For Everybody'. Perel's book explores desire and intimacy in long-term relationships and Stanley's podcast is a more casual broadening of that conversation. The discussion this week also loosely relates back to our past reading sessions on broadening the possibilities and definitions of love and the erotic, and also attachment theory.

When going through a break up, a close friend suggested I listen to Esther Perel, a couples therapist who has made a podcast recording her sessions. In it she creates an environment where couples are able to reflect on their past, their dynamic and behaviour; but perhaps more importantly than this she begins to reveal the stories that underpin all these things, and the narratives each person tells themselves as well as the one they project to the other person.

Perel then moves to offer alternative interpretations, alternative stories which might make better sense of needs to both parties and cut through some of destructive patterns that had been allowed to manifest. In being allowed to hear these stories it definitely helped me make sense of my own past relationship dynamics and pointed to the danger of not communicating in not just romantic but all relationships."

We will be looking at chapters 3 and 4 from Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel.
For Esther Perel's podcast, click here.
For Jessamyn Stanley's podcast, click here.

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

24 April 2020

Richard Sides
Midnight in a Perfect World, 2019
1:09:37 min, 2-channel HD video

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 30th April, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

Love is a hazy word, often defined by a silence, a trust in some unspecified sense or impulse rather than a clear shared idea. All About Love by bell hooks (2000) and Audre Lorde's essay Uses of the the Erotic (1978) force us to define and honour the word, and explore the idea of love as a lived ethic. The ideas in both texts remain radical decades after being written. They have helped me to re-define romantic love after a breakup, but also to re-define a way of trying to exist in the world."

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

17 April 2020

Stuart Middleton
I am just going outside, I may be some time, 2016
6:22 min single channel stop motion animation with sound

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 23rd April, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

For our fourth meeting, we will be looking at two texts. Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll is a look at the slot machine industry and how it has been constructed to generate addictive loops in its users, designed to keep them trapped in a flow state and cycle of behaviour with gambling at its core.

In In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Maté speaks about addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to a weak-willed few but as a continuum that runs through (and even underpins) our society – not as a medical 'condition' but rather the result of a complex interplay of personal history, emotional development and brain chemistry.

Hopefully we can use these two texts to talk about addiction both as structural phenomena baked into our environments as well as the by-product of a personal yearning, often connected to our past."

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

10 April 2020

Live Talk - Oscar Murillo
in casual conversation with Vanessa Carlos
Entropy and 10 years of travel as research
Wednesday 15th April 18:00 GMT on Zoom.

Pilvi Takala
Players, 2010
07:52 min video

Players portrays a community of 6 poker professionals who live amongst a larger poker community in Bangkok. Playing poker is more a job than a compulsion for them, but the rules that govern their community follow the logic of the game. They use probability theory, the fundamental theory of poker, to ensure that they treat each other justly and that everyone contributes equally. The systematic and analytical way these poker players look at everyday life may seem absurd, and their lifestyle is easy to judge, but this shock may be due more to them ignoring their original society than related to the way they have built their own.

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 16th April, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

The third book we'll look at is Against Death: 35 Essays on Living (2019) edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner. "This collection is a primer on loss, grief, and the grit it takes to have a wide-awake encounter with death. It is a highly individualized, charged, and often lyrical training manual on the subject. The authors (several now gone) have each brought their best writerly powers, a laser-like observation, an unsparing eye to the task at hand." (Sally Campbell)

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

3 April 2020

Korakrit Arunanondchai
with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4, 2017
23:32 min videond

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 9th April, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

The second book we'll look at is Attached by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller (2010). The book takes Attachment Theory – an established psychological concept for how our affectional bonds in childhood are developed – and looks at how this informs the intimacy needs and dynamics within all our adult relationships. This is not exclusive to romantic relationships, but this particular book does focus on those.

If you are able to put aside its heteronormative and conventional ideas of what form romantic and familial relationships, this book can provide interesting insights into relationship dynamics. This book has helped me identify more fully what my intimacy needs are and those of people around me, and to improve relationship dynamics.

We recommend you take this online quiz to find your attachment style. (We have found it useful to take the quiz twice: once bearing a romantic relationship in mind, and once bearing a platonic relationship in mind, as the results for both are often very different.)"

These are the page numbers to read for the group discussion:
p.11–23: Decoding Relationship Behaviour
p.77–137: The Three Attachment Styles in Everyday Life *take the online quiz at this point if you haven't already*
p.153–158: (Common Thoughts, Emotions and Reactions)
p.192–208: Effective Communication
p.234–237: Epilogue

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

26 March 2020

The Bunker Reading Group, Led by Ed Fornieles
Thursday 2nd April, 7pm (GMT) meeting on Zoom – email gallery@carlosishikawa.com to register


"The bunker reading group will meet weekly on Zoom during our time in quarantine to discuss a series of books which will cover a wide range of subjects that are of interest to its members. The emphasis in the group will be to interpret whatever text we are reading from a personal perspective, trying to make sense of how even abstract ideas or global events might relate to our pasts and day to day lives.

The first book we'll look at is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (2014). A book which looks at how we experience trauma and how it might be treated with a fuller understanding of the connectivity between mind, brain and body. Trauma is something we all experience and encounter and when we do it can't help but leave a mark. This book has helped me understand more fully how that occurs and how those experiences might be confronted and begin to be processed, not from a cerebral point of view but from acknowledging the whole body."

Chapters to read for the reading group discussion are:
1. Lessons From Vietnam Veterans
2. Revolutions In Understanding Mind And Brain
3. Looking Into The Brain: The Neuroscience Revolution
13. Healing From Trauma: Owning Your Self
14. Language: Miracle And Tyranny

Evelyn Taocheng Wang
(left) Three Versions of Change, 2018, 13:50 min animated video &
(right) Hospital Conversations, 2018, 14:05 min video

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org

20 March 2020

Steve Bishop
Standard Ballad, 2015
5:10 min HD video

Issy Wood
From the artist's blog
www.QueenBaby.org