On my way home | A+E Collective

May 28, 2019 12:32 pm

Market Gallery invites you to join us for the second episode of our reading group ‘On my way home’. The facilitators and guest selectors for this session are A+E Collective. No prior reading necessary — all resources will be provided on the day.

In Bluets, Maggie Nelson writes of spending one drizzly May taking ‘long walks in my yellow poncho, looking for blue, for any blue thing’. The search for a colour might be a search for home, the sensory allure that prompts belonging. The word ‘ecology’ comes from the Greek ‘oikos’ meaning ‘household’, ‘home’ or ‘place to live’. While green is often associated with ecology, Nelson shuns the colour green in favour of blue; her love of blue becomes a queer diversion of familiar intimacies, comfort and desire. What is it to situate one’s home in such abstractions of sense? A+E will host a discussion on what belonging means in the anthropocene: a period in which humankind’s damage to the planet has at once made our species geologic actors while marking our increasing dislocation from Earth systems and more-than-human lifeforms on an everyday basis. Taking our title from the ecstasies of Eiffel 65’s disorientating Europop classic, ‘Blue Da Ba De’, we consider how nostalgia, identity and (be)longing might be reconfigured in times of climate crisis. Presenting texts (including short films, fiction, critical works and poetry by Margaret Atwood, Derek Jarman and Jaakko Pallasvuo to name a few) which probe questions of homesickness, precarity and myth-making, we will explore alternative approaches to thinking through what ‘home’ signifies in the anthropocene, and what kinds of journeys we might take to get there.

Bursaries for travel and childcare costs are available for those in need, please e-mail market@marketgallery.org for more information.

Sunday 2nd June 3 – 6pm


‘On my way home’ is an expanded reading group that explores belonging through the intersections of personal identity, privilege and oppression. Together we will move through realms of belonging to communities and bodies including local, city-wide, national, global and intergalactic realms. As an exercise in collaborative programming, the reading group will build towards a weekend-long festival in October.


A+E Collective are Finn Arschavir, Marie Leguedois, Ane Lopez, Maria Sledmere and Lucy Watkins. Exploring the relevant debates around on bio-conscience, queer ecology and multi species solidarity, A+E Collective create reading platforms that aim to galvanize ecological thought. Recent events include the workshop and reading group series Biosystems, including a workshop on Cli-Fi: The New Weird for Unfix festival.