Artist Statement

INSTALLATION

The central role of the library as a central cultural system is transforming into a still undefined new type of cultural body influenced by the spontaneous creation of different types of DIY libraries interconnecting at some point (or not) to the centralised library system. Libraries should evolve from their historical and “monumental” role, which delivers socially relevant services, into an extended, networked and shared infrastructure of knowledge, rivalling the online type of “instant” knowledge in facilitating social and cultural exchange. Two of the possible approaches to start this kind of process, which would be meant to open and socialise even more the library system, is to create “temporary libraries”, in order to fill specific knowledge needs during cultural events becoming then permanent, and “distributed libraries”, in order to integrate relevant collections of specialised knowledge accumulated elsewhere in the traditional library system without structurally intervene in it.

• Alessandro Ludovico (Bari, Italy), Associate Professor, Winchester School of Art, UK. Alessandro Ludovico is a researcher, artist and chief editor of Neural magazine since 1993. He received his Ph.D. degree in English and Media from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge (UK). He is Associate Professor at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and Lecturer at Parsons Paris – The New School. He has published and edited several books, and has lectured worldwide. He also served as an advisor for the Documenta 12’s Magazine Project. He is one of the authors of the award-winning Hacking Monopolism trilogy of artworks (Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir, Face to Facebook). southampton.ac.uk/wsa/about/staff/al2u16.page
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