The (_______) Library Symposium by MA Social Design
ABOUT THE EVENT
“One publishes to find comrades”
-Andre Breton
A librarian sits behind their desk, fingers moving, keys tapping, numbers of the Dewy Decimal System streaming through their brain. In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury writes “There is something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house: there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” There is power in books. There is power in the knowledge they contain and can spread. And they can help uncover the power in other things as well. Foucault says, “Power is everywhere and comes from everywhere.” There is power in playing cards, there is power in smelling fresh-baked bread from the oven, there is power in the stories of the scars on your skin, there is power in the gaze that eyes cast on things, there is power in consumption, in identity and infrastructure.
For The (_______) Library Symposium the Social Design Master Department examined documents as a lens to understand social structures. Each document served as an entry point into assemblages of power between human-to-human and more-than-human relations. Together they form a library of documents and their recontextualized interactions. A library where bookshelves operate as thresholds between different power relations. But also as sculptures, stages for performances, or interactive exhibitions.
The symposium is hosted by the MA Social Design 1 year to make public the outcome of the Design Research Course guided by Amal Alhaag and Anastasia Kubrak.
PROGRAMME
16:00 - Opening (drinks)
16:30 - About The (_______) Library, by “The Librarian”
17:00 - The traffic light as a destination, by Traffic Lights research group
17:30 - To obtain power, break the glass, by Playing Cards research group
17:50 - Deconstruction of the power of identity documents, by ID Cards research group
18:00 - Break (food + drinks)
18:30 - Invasion of smell in public space, by Bread Smell research group
19:15 - ( )gaze, by Underwear research group
19:30 - Break (food + drinks)
20:00 - Kitchen politics, by Nutrition Label research group
20:20 - Embodied library, by Scars research group
20:50 (until 22:00) - Closing (DJ + Bar)
