The Sphinx’s Riddle at Manifold Books, Amsterdam
Collective Reading Session #4: to remember for with Philipp Gufler and the Paul Hoecker Research Group
5 October 2024
Some reflections by Staci Bu Shea

“We are learning to live with death, with the dead, we are learning with the life of our death in us, to live with cats, with mother, with envelopes, with secrets, to live each instant, we are learning to live, we are learning but we don’t know.” - Hélène Cixous

The fourth collective reading session took place on Saturday, 5 October within the exhibition Remembering Paul by the Paul Hoecker Research Group, with works by Paul Hoecker and Philipp Gufler.

The direction of this session was to focus on the grief that’s laden in desire and longing, and to think about ancestors and memorialization, beginning with Paul Hoecker and the research group and then branching out in an associative, heart-led way. Still, we kept coming back to Hoecker and the affinity group built around him in his legacy. The process of initiating and searching for the life of the largely forgotten queer artist is reparative, and the research group gives new perspectives on what a collective, intergenerational biographical practice can be and look like for artists, historians, archivists, and enthusiasts. It’s inspiring. We read two documents related to Hoecker: his opaque but respectful resignation letter which bears no detail of the cause of his resignation (the scandal of his alleged male sex worker model for his “Madonna”). We read a personal letter to Hoecker by research group member Christina Spachtholz that details the substance of her allurement to him and his work, which contrasts a more scholarly approach but is all the while always the hidden heart behind anyone devoting their energy in researching a figure! The research group contributes such rich material that gives body to the exhibition that in a way oscillates between these two very different documents.

We kept coming back to what is kept and hidden, especially with the support of Hélène Cixous’ text, which we all generally felt a lot of pleasure in reading, doing so quietly as a group, each one invited to read out a line if it resonated for them. It was refreshing, like a spa of the brain, to sense unapologetically that love and joy is evident in grief and sorrow. Cixous’ poetic, painterly-like writing on love, identification and belonging expressed through the impulse to collect and cherish objects gave a lot of space for the power of intuition over cognition. “Everything you touch is you,” “The mixture of sacred and non sacred paper of all kinds happens naturally,” and “The essential thing to living is that the secret be (1) well-balanced and well-managed (2) well-kept.” A moment of respite and hope in a world that is not making much sense. To be with simple truths, and to acknowledge that what we orient towards is an expression of what matters to us, and what matters to us can change our orientation if we really listen.

Lastly, in considering intergenerational, collective grief and the persistence of queer life, we read Manifest by Trish Salah, an important figure in trans studies, whose poems layer personal grief with current political violences to explore the paradox of a love that prevails amidst brutality. As well as Pulse by John Keene, a loving remembrance poem in honor of those murdered in the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Our salt bowl (and saucer), serving as our personal and collective grief collector, remains encased in salt. As always, we wrapped up the session with vegan soup, this time borscht with yogurt and dill, to get back into and warm the body. Thanks to all who attended in both mind and heart.