Sketchbook Library
Libraries are places
where I spend most of my waking
life, or it seems that way most of the time. You’d assume libraries are
normally in place to lend books out
to the public or a place to go and read
books, if you’re not going to take them out. At the National Library of
Scotland, for example, there is not a book there that they don’t have, that you
can access, but on the condition that you read it there. You are not able to
take books out at the National Library, they are too precious, and need to be
available to the public at all times. I love going to the National Library of
Scotland because of these strict rules. Others include, that you can only go
into the reading room with paper, pencil and computer. No water, no ink,
no phones- it is a strictly silent working area. And, boy, do you get work
done. Then there’s also the main university library which I
have spent so much time in now that I only go when I really need to, and
there’s no other option, which normally means that I have to go there when there
is a book there but no where else or if it’s very late at night and I need to work. All the university libraries are
shut. I have spent many nights in the main library working until about 2am in
the morning. It’s a great place to work late at night, compared to the day time
when it feels like a shopping mall- lots
of girls window shopping for boys and boys window
shopping for girls. Few purchases are made- I do know of a few friends who have
been asked out in the library, some have been laid. How fun! Not very serious. It’s meant to be serious, isn’t
it? The Library? Work? It’s somewhere where enrich our minds, not our bodies, of intellect
not our handicrafts. Why is that the
case? Is it impossible to enrich our minds and handicrafts in the library? I am
an art student, how do I use the
library for my art studies? Well, I read a lot of theory books, I translate the words and sentences, process the in
my brain and either use them to strengthen my essays or they will feed into creative mode of production, occasions
flick on a switch in my head at which point it whirls into action and I start
seeing lots of objects and people, and hearing voices and imagining situations. Pictures in books can do
this for me, but written concepts can too. Like at exhibitions, one can feel creatively inspired, it’s like that but
with books and their pictures. I went to the Wide Open School last summer at
the Southbank Centre- it was a month-long event that transformed the Southbank
Centre’s Hayward Gallery into a school where the public could enrol in classes
according to subject, teacher or date. I could only make it down for a few days
as I had work commitments up in Edinburgh. On 7th July I attended Haegue Yang’s Vita Activa- a Korean artist who uses a lot of basic
manual skills to produce her work with. There is something about returning to
the roots and basics of our functioning in this very developed and complex
world that we all live in. Everything we encounter was built from foundations.
So what are those foundations? Those basic
structures? Are they dried out or can we continue to generate something new and
enriching from them? Yang Hague was an extremely humble figure and she created
an extremely democratic space in her class room. There are tables laid out in a
circular formation and she had employed outside specialists to come in and
teach their skills to the class. In such a large class, we ended up helping our
neighbours and talking amongst ourselves for hours, once the basic skill had
been learned. In the morning we leanrned some origami technqiues and in the
afternoon we learned some knitting
techniques. At the end of the morning, when we had made the origami, all of the
finished pieces were placed on a table
in the centre of the room and in the afternoon, all of the knitted pieces were sewed together. For some reason, I
ended up naturally filling the role of sewer as I sat with Yang Hague and she
and the rest of the table I was at talked amongst ourselves. The following day
I attended a discussion held by the Californian collective The Public School who had invited theorist Mark Fisher, as part of their new External Programme, to talk about
his book Capitalist Realism which
links depression to the current neo-liberalist state of the world and
the pressures it places upon us. Then there was Susan Philipz sound workshop, and the Public Faculty’s discussions,
inspired by Joseph Beuy’s Untitled
Sun State from 1974. Black boards as
drawings that unite the cosmic and terrestrial, and idea state in which the
social order is conceived as a living organism. It appeared that in these institutional spaces of contemporary
art, knowledge was being produced in new and alternative ways to the common,
dominating structures. Or existing structures were being used in different
ways. Rather the education being supplementary to the exhibition, it was the
exhibition. This is so interesting because I believe that a lot of the social
problems we have in the country boil down to bad parenting and
mis-education. Art and its
institutions can provide a space for experimentation and microtopias as places
for social exchange theorized by Nicholas Bourriaud’s
in his Relational Aesthetic. However, with education and learning as the
premise, it has the potential to be more than conviviality between art elites
(which is what always bothered me about this theory), but modes of knowledge
production between the public. As
simultaneously a soft and implicit critique on dominating structures but ultimately
a space for exploration and enrichment of the self and others within a civil
society. So there was also the Marther Rosler
Library at the Stills Gallery back in 2008 in which was the artist Marther
Rosler’s entire book collection presented to the public as a library archive.
The public was invited the to browse freely as a well as being able to
participate in a variety of classes that were held in conjunction with the
event. Then there’s was my tutor Zoe Walker’s
Art Lending Library, a part of the Glasgow International art festival last year
which I took part in. This was a mobile library which housed over 60 works of
art for the public to browse, engage with and then loan out and take back home
for a few days. This took the notion of the library to another conceptual
level, where, in the place of books were works of art and instead of reading
them, the public could interact with them in other ways. This year we all
graduate from the Intermedia
department and was thinking about the institution within which we all study
together- ECA and how this art institution of learning transforms itself
institutionally for a week into a gallery- commercial
or non-profit- that’s up for debate. How successful is this transformation? What needs to be
altered for this transformation to take place? What needs to be added? What
needs to be taken away? What needs to be extenuated? What needs to be concealed?
Our messy studio spaces indeed need to be concealed or even taken away, and in
place white clean walls are set in place. The foyer, rather being a place for art supply deliveries needs to be transform into a reception
to welcome visitors and to provide assistance. It is this transformation that I
am interested in. And what is
needed for this transformation to be as effective and interesting as possible.
It is for this reason, that, among many other interventions, I wish to set up a
sketch-book library. Where I would like to ask to borrow any sketchbooks available (regardless of
how old they are) of this year group. Catalogue and house them in my make-shift
and ever-expanding library. I hope that this library, in its diversity and
collectivity will be a reflection of the Intermedia department. I think good
relations are important, so I hope that through this project, I will be able to
get to know you all a lot better. In a way to do so, with this library I would
like to hold daily classes of a few hours of paper skills. Such as calligraphy classes, embroidery classes and book-binding classes, where the photocopied
pages of the archived sketchbooks find a new lease of life in these new
collectively made paper creations. Here are some photographs of my first experiment with this sketchbook library
taken over two days of workshops. We ended up creating new books from the
sketchbooks. The time we spent together creating and exchanging skills was also important. We learned and enjoyed ourselves
together. We talked about the project but we also talked about each other, and
other daily chit chat. This was a really enjoyable experience that I hope that
we could share together, but also with the public when they come to view our
final efforts in our show in June.
From these open ended situation, like Yang Hague’s origami sessions at
the Wide Open School, it is unknown what the specific outcome is. However, I am
interested in the process being the focus, not the pre-determined outcome. I
believe that much can be gained from examining and placing precedence on the
process- the outcome will come later. The epicentre of this activity will
physically manifest itself from within my 3-dimensional frame which I like to
use in my practice to constantly remind myself of what I am framing, what I am
questioning, what exists within the frame in relation to outside the frame. Can
these spaces be switched? Can they exist in both? As we explore and develop the
once-marked preliminary and research processes in our sketchbooks, the frame is
placed on this activity itself, another process. A perpetual process I hope
with innumerable outcomes.
This will be pre-recorded and played over images that will be projected behind me while I make a performance
This will be pre-recorded and played over images that will be projected behind me while I make a performance
