Part of the L is for the Way You Look at Me Reading Group

‘Strange sounds, bad smells, unexpected movements, uncanny textures’, as scholar Kyla Wazana Tompkins denotes in her 2024 book Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot (New York: NYU Press), are material as well as affective categories that confuse the senses. As she describes: ‘They poison, confuse, and inebriate; they jiggle and slither; they multiply and decay; they give birth out of death…They unsettle the hygienic, disciplinary ordering of the world.’ Led by artist Alanna Lynch, Sticky, Stinky, Slimy brings the rotting, the somatic, and the visceral into the act of reading and being-together. Moving between the materialities and political symbolisms of, among others, organic materials such as compost and watermelon, Lynch explores disgust and decay as methods of intimacy-making and ways of life, while unfolding readings and discussions within a floor installation.

Following Anna Tsing’s notion of contamination as collaboration, the workshop develops an experimental methodology that is interdisciplinary, associative, speculative, and intoxicated, refusing a coherent, singular form. It incorporates readers into the lively process of decomposition while thinking critically, collaboratively, and confusingly about abjection and love.