“Somewhere to begin, with the most available of formats, the book. At times merely polemical or critical, using such availability as comment on itself — an intimate object in public space.” — Simon Cutts, forward to Some Forms of Availability
“Museums are asking the same questions bookstores are…I mean, why go to a museum if you can just look at pictures online in high resolution? It’s about the experience.” says Lawrence Rinder, the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
So when Ramsay Bell Breslin, an editor at Kelsey Street Press, conveyed her dilemma of having to either throw away the overstock of the press or incur an expense to store them the seeds of an exhibit were sown.
Curated by Breslin the exhibit features poetry and experimental fiction from local publishers like Kelsey Street Press, Atelos Books, and Tuumba Press. There is also an extensive reading and performance series to accompany the exhibit.
The installation itself emanates some book qualities. “You can read it from left to right…On the first shelf, the books face forward, on the next shelf, the same books are facing backwards. Some books appear multiple times, while others are organized by size or by color. Overhead, through speakers, the quiet voices of poets reading” says Breslin.
Visitors are also encouraged to take a book home from the exhibit and replace it with a book from their own collection thereby keeping the exhibit in a constant state of flux.
I’m reminded of the great exhibit Shelf Life that was held at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle this past summer where they invited “a diverse group of bookmakers (and book-lovers) to the Henry to share their relationship to books and independent publishing.” The exhibit was also saturated with local and regional publishers, poets, musicians, artists, and printers.
As the book world continues its descent into a digital heavy existence and bookstores continue disappearing at an alarming rate museums will continue to become much more book friendly. In fact, quite possibly, in the not to distant future, bookstores themselves might become more like museums.
The Reading Room runs through June 17th
UPDATE: The Reading Room exhibit has been extended thru December 9, 2012
Press release for the exhibit
Piece in the East Bay Express ‘The Reading Room’ Displays Books as Artifacts