You’re invited!
An afternoon with book presentations, an artist talk and conversations:
– Bookspace by Inland Editions
MARIA INÊS CRUZ AND LOZANA ROSSENOVA
– Moving Thinking
The foundation of one’s thought is the thought of another
MARIANA LANARI
– Fantasies of the Library by K. Verlag with HKW
ANNA-SOPHIE SPRINGER
Read the notes on this afternoon at the Inland Editions blog here!
Library Tales is the inaugural event of the research project Infinite Library, a joint initiative of Sara Giannini and Karin de Jong (PrintRoom).
The project arises from the urgency of articulating and debating the transitional status of libraries today. At the verge of extinction for many, libraries and books certainly find themselves in a juncture point in which their meaning, function and symbolism are being de-structured and restructured.
Without indulging in nostalgic observations Infinite Library wishes to explore and intervene in the current reconfiguration: Are libraries and books the archeology of the future? What is their present potential? What narratives are embedded in library collections? Are these narratives still readable? What can artists, writers and curators do with them?
The research will attempt to raise these questions emerging as a series of discursive events and artistic interventions at various locations and libraries across the Netherlands starting with Library Tales.
Library Tales wishes to disclose a landscape of possibilities through three different approaches to the library as a living organism. The afternoon will include presentations by Mariana Lanari (artist, Amsterdam), Maria Inês Cruz and Lozana Rossenova (Inland Editions, London), and Anna-Sophie Springer (curator, editor, writer, Berlin/London).
After years of working as an editor, Brazilian artist Mariana Lanari intersects in her practice speech, language and dynamics of cultural translations. Mariana will introduce Moving Thinking. The foundation of one’s thought is the thought of another, a five-month performance at the Stedelijk Museum Library, in which she follows the movement of thoughts that links a book to the other through their content. Over the next few months, Mariana Lanari will transform the current classification of the books in the reading room – which are usually ranked alphabetically, by artist – by changing the order of the books, and replacing some with publications from the storage depot. Lanari begins by exploring the branching of the influential book Writing as Sculpture by Louwrien Wijers (1996). Moving Thinking is a growing, associative project that, as it undulates and meanders, highlights the relationships and cross-currents between books.
Maria Inês Cruz and Lozana Rossenova of Inland Editions will discuss Bookspace: Collected Essays on Libraries. Inland’s new book focuses on the current development of library spaces as public institutions through the perspective of architects, writers, librarians, and readers. Bookspace addresses the architecture of modern public spaces, and the development of library collections in the age of digital information, in order to discuss the larger social context of libraries as institutions. It provides an insight into their management and how their functions are changing.
Anna-Sophie Springer is a writer, editor, curator, and co-director (with Charles Stankievech) of K. Verlag, an independent Berlin-based publishing project exploring the book as a site for exhibition making. Her practice merges curatorial, editorial, and artistic interests by stimulating fluid relations among images, artifacts, and texts in order to produce new geographical, physical, and cognitive proximities, often in relation to historical archives. She will introduce Ex Libris, a curatorial project exploring various libraries as curatorial spaces, and her recent editorial project Fantasies of the Library, the inaugural volume in the Intercalations: paginated exhibition book series co-published by K. Verlag in the framework of the HKW’s Anthropocene Project.
Sara Giannini is an independent curator and researcher from Italy currently based in Amsterdam. In collaboration with 98weeks Research Project (Beirut), she initiated and curated the long-term research project VOLUME, investigating the role and potential of public libraries through performances, workshops, and conferences (2013-2014) . Her most recent curatorial project is a web-library of folders in motion generated by seven guest curators entitled Unfold.
PrintRoom started in 2003 as a travelling and growing collection of artists’ books. From the beginning PrintRoom runs a discursive program around artist books, collections and archives, working with artists, graphic designers, curators and librarians. To mention some of our collaborators: Arnaud Desjardin (The Book on Books on Artists’ Books), Charlotte Cheetham (Slide Shows), David Senior (bibliographer MoMA) Jason Simon (Festschrift For an Archive), Eva Weinmayr (The Piracy Collection).