14:30
Architectural Association School of Architecture
December 2
AA Lecture Hall, 36 Bedford Square
Taking its cue from Ursula K Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction – which reimagines narrative not as a linear arc of conquest but a container to gather and ‘hold things that bear meanings and enable relationships’ – this event proposes an evening of readings. If writing, by ceaselessly shattering common usage and perceptions of language, brings forth a ‘new language’ and the yet ‘un-thought’, so too does reading – here understood as a relational and collective act. Reading becomes a process of inhabiting, translating, and transforming the text.
The gathering functions as a kind of ‘carrier bag’ – a vessel for holding voices, fragments, and temporalities. The event unfolds through a series of short readings that resist closure and invite collective engagement. Voice becomes continuous with what it reads, while also altering it – construing a space of communication, resonance, and shared knowledge. Through conversational exchange and the labour of reading, the event explores acts of being with others through words.
Jorella Andrews is Professor Emeritus in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Having trained as a fine artist, worked in media, and re-trained as an art theorist, her research, writing, and workshops explore intersections between phenomenological inquiry, the image-world, and art practice in terms of their impact on lived experience, mindset, and the environment. Jorella is also a Veriditas certified labyrinth facilitator and runs arts-based community projects and events. Since 2019, she has been Chair of Albion Millennium Green Trust, which cares for a public green space in London.
Will Harris is a London-based writer and the author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), and the essay Mixed-Race Superman (2018). He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is the recipient of a Burgess Fellowship from the University of Manchester and was a Fellow at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination in Paris from 2024-25. He writes about politics, form, social violence, and in-betweenness, and he is currently working on a project about the care sector.
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental vocalist, free improviser and composer and a Reader in Fine Art and Relational Practices and director of bookRoom at UCA Farnham. Her practice and research explore the materiality and musicality of language and evolve across multiple interconnected work zones – conceptual writing, performance, new musical composition, artist-publishing, curating: manifesting as literary, poetic, and sonic compositions, occasions for their activation (installation, performance, workshop) and resulting image, drawing, text, or sound works. Ultimately devising situations to play (with) our interior or exterior landscape and each other, through or beyond words. Her music and scores are distributed by Wandelweiser editions. Her book works are held in collections including V&A, The Tate, the Poetry Library at Southbank Centre, The Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, Centre Des Livres d’Artistes, Saint-Yrieix-La-Perche.
Image: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin, AA Gallery, October 2025. Photograph by Elena Andreea Teleaga.
Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these. If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely please email publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk