Tom McCarthy and Francesco Pedraglio at the National Portrait Gallery

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On Thursday 16 June Electra continues Dirty Literature - a series of spoken portraits by artists and writers exploring the moment when language threatens (or promises) to become illegible. Francesco Pedraglio's A few stories in the shape of abstract objects is a performative lecture and plotted treasure hunt mapping abstract objects, ideal language and the memories that accumulate around them. The performance will be followed by readings by Tom McCarthy from his recent novel C, reflecting on the breakdown of narrative coherence within modernity and the possibilities that might emerge from such a collapse.

Disobedient Words: A User's Manual, the reader accompanying the Dirty Literature series which brings together specifically commissioned contributions by Samuel Dowd, Tim Etchells, Will Holder, Karl Holmqvist, Tom McCarthy, Francesco Pedraglio, Sue Tompkins and Tony White will be available free of charge on the evening.