The Library of Unread Books

12/10/2017

While there have been many projects by artists calling for the donation of books around particular subjects and issues, we now call for your “unread” books – that is, books that perhaps linger on your to-read pile or are no longer of interest to you. Your donation will go towards The Library of Unread Books, to be exhibited at Casco, 26 November 2017 – 25 February 2018, and opening Saturday 25 November 2017, 12:00–15:00 with lunch!

The Library of Unread Books is a project initiated by Heman Chong and Renée Staal and will be installed at Casco alongside the Army of Love exhibition with Dora García and Ingo Niermann. Both exhibition projects deal with access, excess and the politics of redistribution.

With over 500 titles, The Library of Unread Books is a living reference library that traces the perimeters of excess knowledge. Every single book you find in the collection was once private property and has been donated by an individual who did not read it when it was in their possession. Contributors to the growing mobile library receive a personalized library card and a lifetime membership. The Library of Unread Books brings to light these once-hidden-away titles to emphasize shared knowledge. The books, which are accessible to anyone who can visit the library sites, work to create a commons.

Reminding us that a (private) library is both a means to an end and a research tool rather than an accessory, Umberto Eco famously called for an “antilibrary” made up of unread books. The novelist and scholar argued that read books are far less valuable than the unread ones and that a library should contain as much of what one does not know as finance might allow. “You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly.” In the case of this library of unread books, access to knowledge is not contingent on finance, and so the books are reverted back to a common resource pool.
We encourage and gladly receive books prior to the period that the Library is installed at Casco. Feel free to post your book to Casco (Lange Nieuwstraat 7) or drop by during opening hours (10:00–18:00) to deliver it in person. Your library card will be mailed to you during the exhibition period. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with questions.

Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory
Lange Nieuwstraat 7,
3512 PA Utrecht,
The Netherlands
+31 (0)30 231 9995
www.cascoprojects.org / www.casco.art
[email protected]

Office opening hours
Mon–Fri, 10:00–18:00 hrs

http://mailchi.mp/cascoprojects/3ndxnuzteq-805685

24/09/2017

Happy first Anniversary! We opened 23 September 2017! The Library of Unread Books is now one year old!

18/06/2017

Heman Chong and Renée Staal, MCAD, Manila, 29 June – 26 August

Many of those tropes are also to be found in the work of Singaporean Heman Chong, a regular guest on these pages. The Library of Unread Books, a project run with chief librarian Renée Staal, consists of a collection of books, donated by owners who haven’t bothered to read them (for one reason or another, but those reasons are something that it’s nice to speculate about). On having donated a book, the owners of the unread material are granted lifetime membership of the library. It’s perverse: a club that guarantees you access to exactly what you rejected in order to join it – books. But more than that, it’s a marker of the wider role that books play in Chong’s life and work (in terms of the latter, a curated selection of secondhand books were available in the bookstores of recent solo shows at the South London Gallery and Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum; he has been painting book covers since 2010; and earlier this year he published Writing Cabin Fever, a project he orchestrated in which he and four other artists generated short stories after a 24-hour workshop; there’s more, but you’ve probably had enough by now).

Hiwa K, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, through 13 August; Mercedes-Benz Art Scope 2015–17, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, through 27 August; 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, through 10 September; Departures: Intersecting Vietnamese…

02/06/2017

The ​second​​​ iteration of a ten-year-long project, ​The Library of Unread Books​ develops from the artist’s deep-seated longing for books. ​Open to the public, the reference library ​is ​made up of donated books that are unread by their previous owners. By receiving and revealing that which people choose not to read, the Library is the result of a collective gesture ​that traces the perimeters of unwanted knowledge.

29 June – 26 August 2017 Tuesdays to Saturdays 5th Floor, First United Bldg, 413 Escolta St, Binondo, Manila 1006 Philippines The ​second​​​ iteration of a ten-year-long project, ​The Library of Unread Books​ develops from the artist’s deep-seated longing for books. ​Open to the public, the referenc...

02/06/2017

The first iteration of a ten-year-long project, Heman Chong‘s The Library of Unread Books develops from the artist’s deep-seated longing for books. It is a members-only reference library made up of donated books that are unread by their previous owners. The cost of a lifetime membership to the library is the donation of one unread book. By receiving and revealing that which people choose not to read, the Library is the result of a collective gesture and traces the perimeters of unwanted knowledge. Managed in collaboration with chief librarian Renée Staal, the library is open every Friday from 12.00pm to 12.00am until the end of February.