LITTORAL LISTENING #7: INCONVENIENCE

Concrete riprap piled up beside a body of water in the background; part of a telephone pole in the foreground with a weird blue painting of a duck and a yellow sign that reads "Slow Duck X-ing"
Ducks, or rocks, or poles, might be inconvenient.

Littoral Listening #7: Incovenience

In a time of overlapping catastrophe and disaster, it seems somewhat trite to talk about “inconvenience” as something to seriously contend with. In this LL session, we will nonetheless attempt to do so. Might inconvenience provide an appropriate scale for considering relationships and structural impositions that fall off the radar, in their seeming triviality? Can thinking with inconvenience provide access to valuable modes and levels of action? How is inconvenience otherwise used – as scapegoat, alibi, gaslight, trojan horse – or other tactical operation, in the business of trying to understand and navigate difference?

WHEN: Friday 18 November, 15:00 to 16:30 

Where: Zoom DON”T USE THIS LINK!

NEW LINK!

Convened by: Astrida Neimanis 

READINGS (TO READ OUT LOUD AND LISTEN TO TOGETHER)

  1. Excerpt from Lauren Berlant, “Introduction: Intentions” pp 5-7 from The Inconvenience of Other People (Duke 2022) (*note the red text “START HERE” and “END HERE” in the linked pdf – we will read this selection out loud.)
  2. Rise: From One Island to Another (Kathy Jetnil Kijiner and Aka Niviana) (video poem that makes an oblique reference to Al Gore’s big screen debut “An Inconvenient Truth”)
  3. Erin Robinsong, “Pre-Heat” from Wet Dream (2022)

ADDITIONAL TEXTS (OPTIONAL):  

  1. Watch: Inconvenient Indian, NFB 2020 (1 hr 29 min). This documentary by Michelle Latimer is based on Thomas King’s 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. In addition to adding a layer to our understanding of “inconvenience” (to whom? why?), this documentary is inconveniently directed by Latimer, whose self-claimed Indigenous ancestry has been questioned. APTN’s decision to nonetheless broadcast the film this year is discussed here.
  2. “STAGE 7 – connectivities” by Inger Christensen translated by Susanna Nied, from the book It (New Directions, 2006)
  3. Read the full Introduction from Berlant’s The Inconvenience of Other People, linked above.
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