Where Do We Go From Here: Reflections on the After Hope Reading Group
Published in Art, Hope, Action
Edited by Padma Dorje Maitland
Archive Books, 2024
We are proud to share our contribution as Collective Çukurcuma to the anthology Art, Hope, Action, published by Archive Books and edited by Padma Dorje Maitland. Our text, “Where Do We Go From Here: Reflections on the After Hope Reading Group,” reflects on a transnational, eight-week gathering of artists, curators, and researchers held in early 2021—across Istanbul, San Francisco, London, and beyond.
As part of After Hope: Videos of Resistance at the Asian Art Museum, the reading group offered a space for collective mourning and speculative worldbuilding at a time marked by the global pandemic, political unrest, and widespread uncertainty. Together, we read and reflected on texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ursula K. Le Guin, Etel Adnan, Octavia E. Butler, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and others.
Our essay also includes a manual for starting your own reading group, an offering grounded in practices of care, collaboration, and shared inquiry.
The publication features contributions from artists, writers, and collectives engaging with themes of resistance, imagination, and the transformative role of art in crisis.
Learn more / order the book:
https://www.archivebooks.org/art-hope-action/
