In 2005 a visiting artist-in-residence at UC Berkeley named Diaz de Rábago created an art installation inside the Doe Library. The materials for his sculpture? Wire cables and approximately 300 books!The books had been withdrawn from the university's library due to their "unsalvageable" condition, and while it makes me twitch a little to hear any book deemed so, I have to admit, this is a pretty cool afterlife for a worn and tired library book.
Obviously I still have the Brakebills library from Lev Grossman's The Magicians on my mind. The library really doesn't play that much of a role in the book, but it was one of the most striking and memorable images of the novel for me (though since I'm an LS student, maybe that doesn't mean much...) But it does create a pretty fantastic image doesn't it? Rábago calls this work Babel Library IX. He's apparently very interested in this concept of gravity-defying artifacts, especially those related to books and paper. Check out his other creations on his website. (Look for the hanging chairs in Madrid, 2004.)
And one more shot of the books:
No comments:
Post a Comment