The Sphinx’s Riddle #2 at Manifold Books, Amsterdam
Collective Reading Session #2: to dedicate to with Katja Mater
9 March 2024
Some reflections by Staci Bu Shea

The second collective reading session took place on Saturday, 9 March within the installation of Katja Mater’s two-channel 16mm film When Things Fall Apart. To start, we experienced the film and its oscillating projectors, in case any participants hadn’t yet. This way we could begin on the same page and find clarity in our conversation through Katja’s work.

The water from our salt water bowl inaugurated from the first reading session had evaporated, so we filled it back up. This bowl, filled with saltiness like that of tears or the ocean (the beginning of all life), is a tool for us to gather any grief that can’t be held by any one person or even the group. Any conversation of one grief brings up another grief, so with acknowledgement of this in the beginning, we practiced what it can mean to strengthen our ecology of the unseen by inviting folks to bring their dead into the room. Everyone's varied grief was welcome. We huddled around the bowl.

Katja began by reading from the book she made for the exhibition titled “Book of Dedications,” a collection of handwritten reproductions of dedication pages cut from the books in her mother’s library. Carla had an enormous book collection, and redistributing this library was one of the many projects undergone by Katja and her sister in the wake of Carla’s death. Cleaning out a loved one’s house is filled with numerous secondary losses, and Katja gave structure and time to being with Carla’s objects as a practice of holding on and letting go in the ripples of grief. Through the dedications she read, many more lives entered the room.

Katja shared about the inspiration for and process of making the film, the sorting through material layers of collage and sensing presence in the stacking of time that is also evident in the film's results. We spoke about the death and grief care I provided her during that time between the deaths of her father and mother, and Katja gave nuance to the different experiences of navigating sudden and gradual loss, how the latter provides an invaluable opportunity in presence and attention, and how inevitably both kinds present lessons to learn from that influence the process of grieving.

To consider the depth of our relationships, I read aloud the scene from Ocean Vuong’s novel of his grandma’s death, and we reflected on the use of color as a way to time travel in the present – the intensity of his grandmother's purple feet and the thrilling memory of grabbing purple flowers with her next to a highway. Senses and perception through materials demonstrate how memories live in the present.

With Anastasia’s consent, I braided a segment of her hair to model the neurological entanglement of time, space and attachment that we have to others in our life. When they die (or are separated from us), that braid unravels and the quality of that unraveling has to do with the quality of connection. We learn slowly to rebraid the connection again in time and relation to reality to nourish our continuous bond.

We explored more memories, associations and reflections through the work of Etel Adnan. We passed around the last book she wrote, Shifting the Silence, my most favorite reflection on aging and death. Adnan’s thoughts and feelings were read aloud by the participants, as we passed around the book and flipped to any random page to read/listen to a segment. A play with nonlinearity.

To close, Maartje read a short paragraph from the thesis of Moosje Moti Goosen, a note on the aliveness of writing and reading through recognition of the cycle of breath taken while writing and reading it. Then we gathered in silent procession with Jellichje Reijnders, outside to an open grassy area surrounded by large trees and nestled between buildings. Jellichje led us through a series of qigong movements to help us integrate our conversation in the body, with focus on our aliveness through "being-breath.”

We gathered over potato-leek soup (thanks for your help Matevž!), inspired by a recipe from Carla’s recipe book given to Katja and her sister, and for a twist I made a dill gremolata. Katja brought old goat cheese and candied orange peels (made by her friend Matilda) so we could time travel to her taste buds while she was in the immediate throes of grief.

Many thanks to the participants who came. Jellichje told me later that when she entered the room, it looked like we were all connected as one breathing body. <3 This photo shows the salt water bowl in its current state. The evaporation process in the last months caused a capillary action of the salt to continuously extend itself along the support of the bowl and saucer, kind of like how the wick of a candle pulls up the flame. Filling the bowl up again with water is like lighting a candle that had burnt out, a gesture related to our continuation.