The gathering of collective memory. A pre-literate notion of memory, in a communal way, something commemorative rather than putting a memory in a container. What we thought it was going to be changed completely. We are in that way changing our memory of what it was supposed to be. What are you able to collect? Memories? Objects? People? A collection of texts and people, collecting and composing each other? Somehow it's not even important that we have all the knowledge, what's important is the living, generative sense of the collection.

trusting

Simon Browne

trusting

see also administrating, making public, keeping private

The library operates outside of legal boundaries that see knowledge as private property. As such, it requires protection from those that wish it to cease and desist. Invitations to join the library are made through personal correspondence and printed matter, in the form of A3-sized posters and A6-sized cards (such as the ones used for the original publication of this thesis). Handing a printed card with login details to an interested reader is an act of trust. The card, a pocket-sized object made with care and attention which is passed from hand to hand, engenders a certain kind of intimacy, as opposed to the brute act of spamming a mailing list.


Image: A6-sized card, obverse and reverse, announcing the first bootleg library sessions, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2019