Reading Room #38 – Activist sci-fi writing with Tommy Ventevogel

Page Not Found and The Reading Room invite you to our first post-lockdown session! The Reading Room is a series of reading sessions revolving around short texts provided by invited guests — contemporary researchers, cultural theorists, philosophers and artists — who join the session to provide insight and context to the topics at hand. The Reading Room is curated by Sissel Marie Tonn, Jonathan Reus and Flora Reznik.

For the 38th session of the Reading Room, we will delve with Tommy Ventevogel into sci-fi writing with an activist twist. We will discuss a scene from “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and zoom into utopian anarchism as presented in this soft sci-fi novel with social engagement, but also as a political ideology. We will complement this read with a short and beautiful essay by the same author called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, to ask ourselves what storytelling in general can be.

Tommy Ventevogel is a playwright and theatre-maker based in Rotterdam. Tommy also teaches sci-fi writing, text and image-techniques and has developed a course in activist writing.

There are a limited number of spaces available for this event. As this is a discussion, you are expected to have read the provided texts before attending. We will provide you with a copy of the texts once you have RSVP’d. Due to the current pandemic situation, we ask you to wear a mask and to observe physical distance during the session.