The film Reading Group zooms into and interweaves three independent bookshops in Berlin and Honolulu – Hopscotch, Khan Aljanub, Native Books – each of which offers the nourishment for mind and spirit as well as a pu’uhonua (sanctuary, refuge or safe space) via a reading group and other forms of gathering for those whose practices move towards alternatives to the current colonial state structure of governance. Posing a question of ways in which revolution can take place and other ways of governing beyond statehood, the film also brings together activists and researchers from Palestine and Hawai’i, the places of different yet shared histories of colonial violence and oppression, for a potentially revolutionary reading group of transnational solidarity in the interchanging space of pō (darkness) and ao (light).
Biography
Wendelien van Oldenborgh develops works, whereby the cinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce the script. With these works, always shown in specially developed architectural settings, she shows widely in the art and museum context. Recent solo presentations include: Dance Floor as study Room 2024/25 at YCAM, Yamaguchi; unset on-set at Museum of Contemporary art Tokyo (MOT) 2022/23, tono lengua boca at CA2M Madrid 2019-20; Cinema Olanda, at the Dutch Pavilion in the 57th Venice Biennial 2017. Her work was recently included in Delinking and Relinking, collection presentation van Abbemuseum 2021-2026; Sonsbeek 20->24,, Arnhem 2021; of bread, wine, cars, security and peace… at Kunsthalle Wien, 2020; Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, Singapore Biennial 2019. Her films Two Stones (2019), Hier. (2021), of girls (2023) and A Prelude (2025) premiered in the International Competition of FID Marseille.
Van Oldenborgh is a member of the (Dutch) Society for Arts and a recipient of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art (2014).
