Reading Room #44: Agency & Law & Magic

Jubilee’s 2025 cycle of Reading Rooms focuses on the book collection of artist Kobe Matthys (1970-2023). For this sixth reading session Jubilee invites Erika Sprey, researcher, curator, soon-to-be bookshop keeper and long-time friend of Kobe Matthys. Erika guides us through fragments from Art & Magic, a collection compiled by Christine A. Corcos that explores ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. At Agency’s Praticauthèque, Brussels
10/10/2025, 18-21h

Libraries are research tools of a specialised and subjective nature, but also eminently sustainable and social. Forms and practices of knowledge transfer are always central to Jubilee’s practices. The diverse book collections that exist among and around Jubilee’s members can provide entry points for collective study and exchange. In 2024, we had a Reading Room programme that drew on Fred Dewey’s library. In 2025, we are unlocking the library of the late Kobe Matthys. Kobe was an internationally renowned artist (Agency / Agence / Agentschap), but also an activist, active in permaculture, working member of SOTA and a beloved teacher and mentor of art students at the École de recherche graphique (ERG, Brussels).

A small group of enthusiasts have been keeping the archive and his library alive since Kobe’s passing. With this archive, Kobe created a unique source of knowledge surrounding the history of (intellectual) property rights and, more precisely, the vague and contestable boundaries of authorship, which to this day define the legal context of the arts. But property law also determined the way ‘modern man’ has come to experience, understand, categorise and value the world over the past 300 years and is the basis for modern capitalism, whose catastrophic social, economic and environmental consequences we are increasingly experiencing.

In 2025, Jubilee opens up Kobe’s thematically vast library (with an estimated 4000 books, magazines and other titles) for its Reading Rooms. The monthly selection will be a source of relevant conversations, discoveries, and encounters with participants Jubilee did not yet know.

In October we invite Erika Sprey who selects fragments from Art & Magic, a collection compiled by Christine A. Corcos that explores ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. Erika writes:

Is there an affinity between law and magic? Whenever I visited Kobe Matthys and browsed through Agency’s library, I was always mysteriously drawn to the anthology Law and Magic—a rather rare collection of essays edited by Christine A. Corcos that brings together two realms of practice which, at first glance, seem worlds apart. Or perhaps not? I had the sense that this volume might hold an important key—one among many—for understanding what the boundary objects of Agency’s practiotheque are attempting to do. After all, both law and magic can be seen as tools for altering, disguising, or interpreting reality. Both involve ritual and speech acts for the good, the bad, and the ugly. In this reading room, we will explore passages from the anthology to uncover the surprising relations and resonances between these practices.

 

Calendar of Agency Reading Rooms 2025

20/01/2025: Reading Room #38: Agency (introductory session)

17/03/2025: Reading Room #39: Agency and the Undercommons (Els Silvrants-Barclay)

14/04/2025: Reading Room #40: Agence & Notre condition (David Aubin)

19/05/2025: Reading Room #41: Agency & NICC (Ariadna Estalella Alba)

16/06/2025: Reading Room #42: Archipelago of Artistic Practices (Raphaël Pirenne)

19/09/2025: Reading Room #43: Agency & Res Nullius (Wim Cuyvers)

10/10/2025: Reading Room #44: Agency & Law & Magic (Erika Sprey)

12/12/2025: Reading Room #45: Agency & Another Science (Jan Masschelein)

 

Practical

Location Reading Room #44:
Agency’s Praticauthèque
Rue Theodore Verhaegenstraat 18
1060 Brussels

Each reading room takes place from 18-21h. Bites are provided

The Praticauthèque is located on the top floor of the building. There is an elevator. As there is no intercom, there is someone at the door – until 18h. Please be present before that time.