People’s Library is an ongoing collaborative project that incorporates interactive sculpture, community created ethnographies, and social practice methods.
The project features libraries designed, built and authored by community members. Utilizing donated books from individuals, public libraries, and thrift stores, the project transforms and re-purposes unwanted or otherwise discarded books into blank canvasses for oral histories, self-representation, and intimate reflection.
With a focus on permanence, sustainability, collective creation, and community engagement, People’s Library critiques, redefines and re-imagines the form and function of public space, public art, and participation within society.
By creating a space that features hundreds of personal histories—regardless of age, race, class or identity—the project simultaneously becomes a monument, memorial, and a forum for a critical discourse on local communities and society at large.
Begining in Spring, 2013, workshops will be held and the project will be built, managed and included in the permanent collections at the MLK Memorial Library in Washington, DC as well as the Main Branch of the Richmond Public Library in Richmond, VA.
If interested in donating books, participating, or incorporating the project in your local library please contact;
markaloysious@gmail.com
People’s Library is an ongoing collaborative project that incorporates interactive sculpture, community created ethnographies, and social practice methods.
The project features libraries designed, built and authored by community members. Utilizing donated books from individuals, public libraries, and thrift stores, the project transforms and re-purposes unwanted or otherwise discarded books into blank canvasses for oral histories, self-representation, and intimate reflection.
With a focus on permanence, sustainability, collective creation, and community engagement, People’s Library critiques, redefines and re-imagines the form and function of public space, public art, and participation within society.
By creating a space that features hundreds of personal histories—regardless of age, race, class or identity—the project simultaneously becomes a monument, memorial, and a forum for a critical discourse on local communities and society at large.
Begining in Spring, 2013, workshops will be held and the project will be built, managed and included in the permanent collections at the MLK Memorial Library in Washington, DC as well as the Main Branch of the Richmond Public Library in Richmond, VA.
If interested in donating books, participating, or incorporating the project in your local library please contact;
markaloysious@gmail.com
