Happy Friends Reading Club met at HomeShop in Xiaojingchang Hutong at 8pm on December 14th. A convertible stretcher and canvas installation by architect Claude Tao provided a setting for dialogue, which from outside on the street resembled a shallow-depth stage for a chamber drama. A small round table loaded with bottles of beer held the center; the fluorescent tubes above flattened the off-white cube: TV space.

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For the next meeting of Happy Friends Reading Club we will be reading an excerpt of David Harvey's "The Condition of Postmodernity" from 1990.

The meeting will take place in Beijing on December 15th.

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The Happy Friends Reading Club held a special meeting on the 4th of October in a studio in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A bottle of wine held the floor in a crescent of seats arranged with space heaters. This meeting was organized in conjunction with the Frankfurt Free Class, a group that had begun as a reading club within the context of an art school.

The text that was discussed was "On (Surplus) Value in Art" by Diedrich Diedrichsen.

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ON (SURPLUS) VALUE IN ART By Diedrich Diedrichsen

On Sunday, the 4th of October there will be a special meeting in frankfurt, Germany of Happy Friends Reading Club in cooperation with the Free Class Frankfurt to discuss the article "On Surplus Value" by Diedrich Diedrichsen. If you happen to be in Frankfurt and would like to join, please write: eddy@vitamincreativespace.com or call +49(0)15126947583

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The Happy Friends had a special meeting on September 5th to discuss "Disco as Operating System" by Tan Lin; the idea of the meeting was to hold it in a disco. ...

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Reminder that we will be discussing "Disco as Operating System" from 5pm tomorrow at the shop, and later that night conducting research at a disco. Please check the comments section tomorrow (Saturday) for confirmation of disco location, or call: (0086)10-59004374

For more on the text: Disco as Operating System

Next meeting: Friday, September 5th at 5pm at the Shop.

Disco as operating system (2008)

The next reading proposed for Happy Friends Reading Club is "Disco as Operating System" by Tan Lin.

"And this is what disco is: technologies of sound mixing and reproduction in an era when the idea of medium-specificity and discrete mediums such as painting, photography, music, literature, and video are being supplanted by the idea of a more general operating system or generic culture of software whose purpose is to continually redistribute a range of materials across a single platform." – Tan Lin

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The Happy Friends Reading Club watched "Mister Lonely" by Harmony Korine together in the shop on July 14th...

The next reading and meeting will be announced soon...

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To inaugurate another season of the Happy Friends Reading Club, we will be screening "Mister Lonely" by Harmony Korine (2007) on Tuesday, July 14th at 7pm at the shop, followed by discussion. The film's language is English.

"In Paris, a young American who works as a Michael Jackson lookalike meets Marilyn Monroe, who invites him to her commune in Scotland, where she lives with Charlie Chaplin and her daughter, Shirley Temple."

" 一个年轻的美国人孤独地生活在巴黎，他的职业很特别，就是在街头表演迈克尔·杰克逊模仿秀，一天，在退休人之家，他邂逅了一个美丽的同行，模仿玛丽莲·梦 露的艺人，并对她一见倾心。迈克尔于是跟着梦露来到苏格兰高地上的一个海滨城堡，这里是名人模仿者的大本营，亚伯拉罕·林肯、小红帽、三个臭皮匠、英国女 王、甚至还有教皇和麦当娜，梦露的女儿秀兰·邓波和她占有欲很强的丈夫卓别林。”

在这期“快乐朋友读书会”的初始，本店将在7月14日（周二）晚7点放映由哈默林-科林执导的《寂寞先生》（2007），并有相关讨论会。该电影为英语原声……

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The Happy Friends Reading Club met on the 3rd of April. The text was from Paolo Virno's book "Multitude", or however much one cared to read from the book. Because of some scheduling conflicts, only 4 members present. Cool oolong tea and grapes.

E.M., the only one to have read the whole book (and recommending it to the others as "a good read"), summarized that it had been about jokes, although reading the book inspired not a single occasion of laughter.

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The Happy Friends met inside the shop just after 1pm on a crisp Sunday, March 22nd. Rocky start due to scheduling issue. Oranges and chocolate cookies served. No water left in the jug, so no tea or coffee. Z.Y. began the summary: "This reading was a brief examination of magic not as the traditional beliefs or resistant practices of the colony, but magic as it entered the popular imagination of a modern(izing) public of the early 20th century." (...)

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At the next meeting we will be discussing the article "Magic and Modernity in China" by Laikwan Pang. (...) Read more...

各位对于跨学科（艺术，政治，哲学，文学）阅读和讨论感兴趣的朋友们，我们诚邀您加入在“这个店”举行的“快乐朋友读书俱乐部”，成员们将一起来决定议题及相关文章，所有的活动都是免费参与，我们唯一要求您做的就是阅读相关的文本，并和大家分享你的想法。读书会的语言主要是英语，但翻译的问题有时候会给我们带来惊喜~

Those interested in participating in cross-disciplinary readings and discussions of texts on art, politics, philosophy, and literature are invited to come to meetings of Happy Friends Reading Club. Members will decide the topics and articles. All activities of the reading club are free. Meetings will take place in The Shop. (...) Read more...