Reading Residency

A project and practice of Best Praxis (Tal Beery & Eugenia Manwelyan)

We all seem to understand we are at the edge, at the precipice of something new, and in times like these, strengthening our capacity for being together, for sharing intimacies, is a matter of survival. The Reading Residency is an observational practice; an exercise in ways of knowing a stranger.

We ask that you invite us into your home to read 7 to 10 of the most important books you own, that somehow define your intellectual development. We will arrive in the morning and spend the day reading these books, and in the meantime, we will also shower in your shower, cook in your kitchen, lounge around, and nap wherever comfortable. In this process, the public and private will be quietly inverted, and we will become familiar with the intimate spaces you have shaped and that shape you daily.

What will result is a stronger network, new relationships, and photographic portrait we will produce of ourselves inhabiting your space – an image, possibly, of another as yourself. In exchange for hosting this, you will receive two archival inkjet prints documenting the experience that may, we hope, reveal something to you about you that you had never seen before.