Reading as Sculpture: A new layer for the library in ruins

Abstract

This text is an artist’s contribution situated in the intersection of performance art and information technology.[1] It is a sequel to my project Moving Thinking — The origin of one’s thought is the thought of another, in which I implemented a visual presentation of information pathways and a model for the circulation of books between the stacks in the storage and the reading room of the Stedelijk Museum Library in 2015/16. It was a nine-month performance that aimed to reveal how the content of books is interlinked by transforming the current classification system in the reading room and replacing all the books on display with publications from the storage depot. I began by exploring the branching of the influential book Writing as Sculpture by Louwrien Wijers (1996). The book contains interviews between Wijers and important artists and scientists of the day, including Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, and Robert Filliou. Taking this title as a starting point, I composed several lengthy sequences of publications, distributed in relation to the floor plan of the museum and its current program. The permutations were recorded by photos and videos viewable on the website of the Stedelijk. This text tells what I learned from this research and how it informed Archival Consciousness, a collaboration with graphic designer Remco van Bladel that aims at interfering in the infrastructure of libraries in museums and cultural institutions by adding a layer of interaction on top of the existing database.