Participating artists:A project by Lam Funke, Leonard Siegwardt and Marion Rothmund with Prof Markus Dreßen, Albrecht Gäbel and Dr Sabine Schmid together with many others
opening hours:Fair: 12-20 hrs | Symposium: 13-18 hrs
Venue:Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig
Partner:An event organised by the open book society e.V. in cooperation with the HGB Leipzig
Co-financed by tax revenue on the basis of the budget approved by the members of the Saxon state parliament.
Fair: 12-8pm | Symposium: 1-6pm
In libraries, books and people are closely connected. Architecture, design, and equipment are important because they welcome, support, and accommodate people and books alike. This allows us to examine the forms and formats of libraries as well as the structures that shape their agency and the social spaces they create – in terms of the history of ideas, as constellations, and as spaces for thinking.
Above all, libraries are also places for collecting and archiving, organizing, and sharing. Here, individual publications and their contents together form a larger network of knowledge. Their polyphony gives rise to new relationships and connections. Today, libraries are increasingly being reimagined as dynamic spaces of knowledge transfer. Libraries are never just architectural and physical spaces; they are always also cultural constructs that – historically speaking – are closely linked to hegemonic structures. From both academic and artistic perspectives, this is being critically questioned and challenged in many initiatives and projects.
These developments are closely tied to the challenges of the digital age. Digital libraries, the monopolization of knowledge, and alternative anarchic models that often operate in the shadows remain much-discussed topics. What can be said is that the book, which was declared dead, has survived its own demise as often as it has been proclaimed.
