A session convened by me under the title 'Speculative Libraries' at the 43rd annual AAH Conference, hosted by Loughborough University.
The symbolic status of 'the library' – be it in the image of the great libraries of antiquity, the monastic libraries of the Middle Ages or the public libraries of Victorian Britain – has served as both a metaphor and allegory for knowledge, wealth, devotion and permanence. Yet all contemporary libraries are having their rationales, architecture, labour practices and holdings radically changed by the growth of networked computing and information science. What are the many and changing relationships between art practice, art's discourses and libraries? And where, from the first proto-libraries of Sumer to counter-cultural archives of grey or illegal material, do we see the logic of the library reaching beyond the confines of libraries-as-such?
This session brings together historians, critics, artists and activists who will use case-studies to think through specific modern and contemporary responses to these questions, from the fields of art and non-art. More broadly, thinking across a spectrum of examples that stretch from Martha Rosler Library (2005-6) to the open-access file-sharing on aaaaarg.fail, a trend will be traced for making libraries as or within contemporary art projects. As such, through this session's broad discussion, we will also foster a sub-focus on the history, theory and techniques of speculative library-making, considered as the practice of constructing real or imaginary libraries as an artistic act.
Featuring papers by Nicola Dale (Independent artist), Karen Di Franco (Tate Britain/University of Reading), Lara Eggleton (Independent Historian and Art Writer), Clare Nadal (University of Huddersfield) and Nick Thurston (University of Leeds).
