D-AiR facilitate a regular reading towards action group with the aim of nurturing a critically engaged arts community in Dundee.

Our first reading group was organised in collaboration with Kill Your Timid Notion, 2010, and ran for four sessions at the DCA. Texts were selected with direct bearing on the festival and the underpinning ethos of D-AiR.

Our second reading group began in March 2010 at the Hannah McClure Centre, University of Abertay Dundee. This ran in conjunction with D-AiR's HMC residency. Themes for this series were selected by the participants and included art and ecology, curator as artist, agonistic art practices, and situationist methodologies.

At this stage four of us decided to form a reading towards action splinter group - our third reading group. We don't have a name but we do have a project. It's called Feral Pathways and its at loose in the city.

Our fourth and fifth reading groups ran from September 2010 - June 2011 and took up residence in the Central Library. Here we performed live amidst the Library's collection of 'Scottish Interest' and 'Fiction'. Our focus for these sessions was on urbanism, community-based art projects, various mapping strategies, and the creative tension between global and local identities.

As part of this reading group we created a site-responsive exhibition in the Central Library. The exhibition was entitled 'Mappa Mundi' and took place as part of the Dundee Live Public Art and Performance Festival 2011.

Our sixth reading group is now up and running. It has an indepth focus is on art and ecosophy.

Where: Central Library, The Wellgate, Leisure Reading, Dundee, DD1 1DB.
When: 14th December, 11th January and then every fortnight until further notice, 6pm - 8pm.

If you'd like to join the next reading group please send D-AiR an email. EVERYONE is welcome.

Note: the texts we've read to date include:

Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg (eds.), 'In the Field', Alan Boldon, 'Climate Change - An Aesthetic Crisis?', Michel de Certeau, 'The Practice of Everyday Life', Jan Cohen-Cruz, 'Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response', Felix Guattari, 'The Three Ecologies', Hal Foster (ed.), 'The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture', Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', Suzi Gablik, 'The Reenchantment of Art', Ivan Illich, 'Tools for Conviviality', Grant Kester, 'Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art', Miwon Kwon, 'One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity', Lucy Lippard, 'Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society', David Lowenthal, 'Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology', Chantal Mouffe, 'Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces', and 'The Democractic Paradox', Sadie Plant, 'The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age', and Ultra Red, 'On a Soundbody'.

If learning to read and write is to constitute an act of knowing, the learners must assume from the beginning the role of creative subjects. It is not a matter of memorizing and repeating given syllables, words and phrases, but rather of reflecting critically on the process of reading and writing itself, and on the profound significance of language. Paulo Freire