1525 No Reading Reading Club: 'Whose History?' by Lis Rhodes

Free
Open to all 15-25 year olds
Wheelchair Accessible

"Cut the line and chronology falls in a crumpled heap. I prefer a crumpled heap, history at my feet, not stretched above my head."
- Lis Rhodes, ‘Whose History?’, 1978

No Reading Reading Club is a free series for young people, in which a selected text is read aloud and discussed. Texts will be handed out in the session. No pre-reading or research is required. The absence of knowledge is embraced to experiment with friendly and collective ways to interpret a reading.

'Whose History?' is an influential essay written by Lis Rhodes in 1978. It was written in response to what she argued as the marginalisation of women artists in the history of experimental film presented at the Film as Film exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1979. It has often been accounted for as the catalyst for the formation of Circles, a women only distribution collective for artists, brought together by a shared desire to both advocate, and examine, past figures marginalised in male dominated histories of cinema.

Together, we will explore the concept of 'history' and how it is defined by whom?