Holding Space

I along with the other members of the Queer Constituency run the Eindhoven Queer Book Club – a monthly space for discussion that has been going since October 2017. About a week before the meeting we send out an article or book excerpt which people can read to prepare for the meeting. Then, on the third Saturday of every month we meet, drink coffee, discuss what we have read, link it to bigger ideas and, more often than not, we create something based on the work. We are hosted by the Van Abbe Museum and linked to the Queer Constituency within the museum. The idea for the book club was born from a woeful absence of queer space when I arrived to Eindhoven. A situation that has thankfully begun to remedy itself with the advent of a number of authentic queer driven initiatives. Upon determining that we were somewhat unqualified and wildly enthusiastic we spread the word that we would be hosting a new club. The Van Abbe is technically a public space, but the sort of public space that could seem too imposing or intimidating for the more apprehensive members of our community. Would the museum scare people away? Putting would-be members off with it’s bulky, grey polyhedron, looming over the Dommel like a billboard for modern art? Not so far.Can an art insittituiton ever be a public space? Does transferring it into a reading space make it a more public space? Maybe it transfers into into a sphere of semi public accessibility where queer people are a little more welcome into the space and perhaps if we dominate this space a portion of the ownership and agency passes into queer hands. How do semi-qualified individuals pass into qualification for facilitating community building in a public space? Your desire for building knowledge together comes into conflict with your lack of experience and the vastness of the space. How do you activate your communal knowledge and set it free in the space, how to you pair the community with the space? We ask questions about the space, critically evaluate the use of the space, the stuctures that govern entrance to the space and how the space reflects the values of those who govern it. So, what do you do once you have set the basis for community within a public space? You have the space, you have the people, how do you use the space? My initial thoughts for how we would run the book-club were that we would pick a book, read the book and discuss a set of questions about said book. The only difference between this book club and a regular book-club would be the queer nature of the content.

Five minutes into the first meeting, it was clear that the group was hungry for something different. The first brainstorming session gave rise to a number of ideas that went far beyond the initial idea. Questions were posed such as, why do we have to buy a book every month? Does that not limit the group to those who can afford the cost? – good point. Why can’t we be creative about this? How about writing our own queer fan fiction? How about we build a womb out of books? (I love this idea) There didn’t seem to be any limits on where this group would go with the concept and what we could create together. What we have since built is more of a reflection on how it is to live queerly in the world, whatever that means. How it is to wander through the world and question everything. The book club has been the catalyst for a number of interventions within the museum space. For instance, when we considered the work of Noam Youngrak Son and sat outside the toilets, contemplating the structures and social norms around which we build our plumbing. Interesting side note: Although the toilets in the Van Abbe are genderless, due to being located next to each other, many of the groups that approach the bathroom sort themselves by gender and go into separate sides, which was a noteworthy part of our discussion. We also initiated a book club session around the work of M on queering the genitals: creating “ideal” or non-societally dictated/independently designed genitals out of home-made clay, there was a surprising amount of glitter involved. The way the museum space is organised does impact the way we facilitate discussions, we languished one Saturday in the giant tent errected on the top floor to discuss the concept of camp, that felt safe and fun and we We sit mostly in the “Werksalon” – a large graphical space constructed with the intent purpose of facilitating dicussion, but we move around as the interventions call on it. The space has both helped and hindered the discussions we have thus far facilitated. There seems to be an endless amount of wide empty space within the museum, the words you expound bouncing off into long white corridors. But there are limiting and confronting elements to the space. The public nature of the museum means that people often wander in as we are mid discussion. This can be fun and we show them our home made genitals or this can be disturbing, the conversation stuttering as we struggle to maintain our flow

When we dominate the space this goes back to my earlier point about accessibility. The book club is fun and messy and whimsical but there are difficulties too. There are moments when too few people show up and the facilitator is left alone and awkward with two or three disappointed community members. These moments are challenging and represent an obstacle to any type of community building we engage in. Our community continues to show up however and for every month that I think we don’t have enough members there are others when we don’t have enough chairs.

If you are reading this and thinking why not start your own book club, I would strongly encourage you to do so, immediately. Or how about a queer zine making group? Or queer knitting? The possibilities are endless.