Reading Room companion

I Love You Too is a project from a visual artist focused on the writing of letters, shifting the focus from how a community uses a library to how it creates one – a library, in this case, of love. The stories in this book were told during the COVID-19 pandemic by more than 100 people from across Manchester. Through in-person and online interviews with 11 writers, their testimonies were transformed into this collection of love letters. To ensure all those involved felt safe and supported while sharing their deeply personal stories, well-being managers were on hand at every stage of the process. By way of thanks, each participant was gifted a portrait created at the time of their interview. Thank you to the people of Manchester for sharing these beautiful and personal stories with us.

South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere spent MIF19 in residence in Manchester’s network of libraries – and two years on, published I Love You Too, a beautiful book inspired by the time he spent in the city.

At the start of 2021, Wa Lehulere invited more than 100 people from across Manchester to share with us their love stories: to people, to places, even to possessions. Through a series of online and in-person meetings, a group of 11 Manchester writers put their words on to the page. The result is I Love You Too, a personal, powerful and inspiring 232-page hardback book of love letters rooted in our city – and the first in an international series.

This book is a sampler of Quarantine’s work since we started in November 1998. Every word and image is from our archive. Some of the material originated with us, the rest was written or spoken with us, the rest was written or spoken by others. The pages may seem disparate, contradictory even; they are fragments of over 20 years, more projects, many voices.

We’ve realised over the years that our work is a form of portraiture. This sampler is a kind of self-portrait of Quarantine.

Documentation of the event which featured a screening of Theatre Visionary, a documentary about Abdoh, as well as a discussion with film’s director Adam Soch and director and academic Alyson Campbell.

Explores fat activist language.

Exhibition publication: Misbehaving Bodies, Wellcome Collection, 29 May 2019 – 26 January 2020.

Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).

Draws on Wojnarowicz’s work to explore the role of abandoned landscape in this explosion of queer culture in NYC.
Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).

Draws strength from conversations with the performance artist Ron Athey and readings from Illness as Metaphor, by Susan Sontag.

Please note that Queen Mary University of London holds the entire archive of the late artist.

Using interdisciplinary cultural studies to examine the gothicism in queer art, literature, and thought the author argues that during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a queer culture has emerged that challenges and responds to traumatic marginalization by creating a distinctly gothic aesthetic.

Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).

Follows two nurses, both named Jackie, who create biographical slideshows for patients as a tool for reflection on posthumous digital legacies, withdrawal, friendships, cultural and social loss, and memory as identity.

Part of LADA Screens 11. The film was available online 16-29 May 2016 on the LADA Screens Channel. Includes a  compilation of episodes 1 – 7, split into two files.

Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).

Reaffirms the central position of the body in various artistic practices through in-depth conversations with choreographers, composers, visual artists, hip hop artists, dramaturges, a light designer and a puppeteer.

An intimate portrait of the world and work of Abdoh and his company.

A journey through the history of disability – a history lesson with a difference.

Part of The Library of Performing Rights (P3041).