If I Can’t Dance’s Reading Group started in 2006 and has been taking place monthly ever since. The Reading Group is a gathering of artists, critical thinkers, writers and various other readers from in- and outside the field of contemporary art, who come together at our office on Westerdok, to discuss new topics and directions in performative art practice and their relation to social and political issues.

The Reading Group’s monthly reading material is currently selected from the field of research of affect.

Alongside and parallel to the Reading Group in Amsterdam, If I Can’t Dance at present has two Satellite Reading Groups. Jacob Korczynski is leading a Reading Group at Art Metropole in Toronto, and Emma Cocker is leading one at Site Gallery in Sheffield. Both branches also concentrate on discussions of affect in theory and in contemporary artistic practice, and are set up as experiments in engaging with an audience from afar.