Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch
the public library?
Shannon Mattern
June 2014
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[](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06
/mattern-library-infrastructure-1x.jpg)Left: Rijksmuseum Library, Amsterdam.
[Photo by[Ton Nolles](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonnolles/9428619486/)]
Right: Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. [Photo by Google/Connie
Zhou]
Melvil Dewey was a one-man Silicon Valley born a century before Steve Jobs. He
was the quintessential Industrial Age entrepreneur, but unlike the Carnegies
and Rockefellers, with their industries of heavy materiality and heavy labor,
Dewey sold ideas. His ambition revealed itself early: in 1876, shortly after
graduating from Amherst College, he copyrighted his library classification
scheme. That same year, he helped found the American Library Association,
served as founding editor of _Library_ _Journal_ , and launched the American
Metric Bureau, which campaigned for adoption of the metric system. He was 24
years old. He had already established the Library Bureau, a company that sold
(and helped standardize) library supplies, furniture, media display and
storage devices, and equipment for managing the circulation of collection
materials. Its catalog (which would later include another Dewey invention,
[the hanging vertical
file](http://books.google.com/books?id=_YuWb0uptwAC&pg=PA112&dq=vertical+file+%22library+bureau%22+date:1900-1900&lr=&as_brr=0#v=onepage&q=vertical%20file%20%22library%20bureau%22%20date%3A1900-1900&f=false))
represented the library as a “machine” of uplift and enlightenment that
enabled proto-Taylorist approaches to public education and the provision of
social services. As chief librarian at Columbia College, Dewey established the
first library school — called, notably, the School of Library _Economy_ —
whose first class was 85% female; then he brought the school to Albany, where
he directed the New York State Library. In his spare time, he founded the Lake
Placid Club and helped win the bid for the 1932 Winter Olympics.
Dewey was thus simultaneously in the furniture business, the office-supply
business, the consulting business, the publishing business, the education
business, the human resources business, and what we might today call the
“knowledge solutions” business. Not only did he recognize the potential for
monetizing and cross-promoting his work across these fields; he also saw that
each field would be the better for it. His career (which was not without its
[significant
controversies](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A06E0D7163DE733A25755C1A9649C946497D6CF))
embodied a belief that classification systems and labeling standards and
furniture designs and people work best when they work towards the same end —
in other words, that intellectual and material systems and labor practices are
mutually constructed and mutually reinforcing.
Today’s libraries, Apple-era versions of the Dewey/Carnegie institution,
continue to materialize, at multiple scales, their underlying bureaucratic and
epistemic structures — from the design of their web interfaces to the
architecture of their buildings to the networking of their technical
infrastructures. This has been true of knowledge institutions throughout
history, and it will be true of our future institutions, too. I propose that
thinking about the library as a network of integrated, mutually reinforcing,
evolving _infrastructures_ — in particular, architectural, technological,
social, epistemological and ethical infrastructures — can help us better
identify what roles we want our libraries to serve, and what we can reasonably
expect of them. What ideas, values and social responsibilities can we scaffold
within the library’s material systems — its walls and wires, shelves and
servers?
[](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-2x.jpg) Dictionary stands from the [Library Bureau’s 1890
catalog](http://books.google.com/books?id=rwdwAAAAIAAJ&dq=library+bureau+catalog+1890&source=gbs_navlinks_s).
## Library as Platform
For millennia libraries have acquired resources, organized them, preserved
them and made them accessible (or not) to patrons. But the [forms of those
resources](http://www.spl.org/prebuilt/cen_conceptbook/page16.htm) have
changed — from scrolls and codices; to LPs and LaserDiscs; to e-books,
electronic databases and open data sets. Libraries have had at least to
comprehend, if not become a key node within, evolving systems of media
production and distribution. Consider the medieval scriptoria where
manuscripts were produced; the evolution of the publishing industry and book
trade after Gutenberg; the rise of information technology and its webs of
wires, protocols and regulations. 1 At every stage, the contexts — spatial,
political, economic, cultural — in which libraries function have shifted; so
they are continuously [reinventing
themselves](http://www.spl.org/prebuilt/cen_conceptbook/page18.htm) and the
means by which they provide those vital information services.
Libraries have also assumed a host of ever-changing social and symbolic
functions. They have been expected to symbolize the eminence of a ruler or
state, to integrally link “knowledge” and “power” — and, more recently, to
serve as “community centers,” “public squares” or “think tanks.” Even those
seemingly modern metaphors have deep histories. The ancient Library of
Alexandria was a prototypical think tank, 2 and the early Carnegie buildings
of the 1880s were community centers with swimming pools and public baths,
bowling alleys, billiard rooms, even rifle ranges, as well as book stacks. 3
As the Carnegie funding program expanded internationally — to more than 2,500
libraries worldwide — secretary James Bertram standardized the design in his
1911 pamphlet “Notes on the Erection of Library Buildings,” which offered
grantees a choice of six models, believed to be the work of architect Edward
Tilton. Notably, they all included a lecture room.
In short, the library has always been a place where informational and social
infrastructures intersect within a physical infrastructure that (ideally)
supports that program.
Now we are seeing the rise of a new metaphor: the library as “platform” — a
buzzy word that refers to a base upon which developers create new
applications, technologies and processes. In an [influential 2012 article in
_Library Journal_](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries
/by-david-weinberger/), David Weinberger proposed that we think of libraries
as “open platforms” — not only for the creation of software, but also for the
development of knowledge and community. 4 Weinberger argued that libraries
should open up their entire collections, all their metadata, and any
technologies they’ve created, and allow anyone to build new products and
services on top of that foundation. The platform model, he wrote, “focuses our
attention away from the provisioning of resources to the foment” — the “messy,
rich networks of people and ideas” — that “those resources engender.” Thus the
ancient Library of Alexandria, part of a larger museum with botanical gardens,
laboratories, living quarters and dining halls, was a _platform_ not only for
the translation and copying of myriad texts and the compilation of a
magnificent collection, but also for the launch of works by Euclid,
Archimedes, Eratosthenes and their peers.
[![Domnique Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de France, literally elevated
on a platform. \[Photo by Jean-Pierre
Dalbera\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Domnique
Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de France, literally elevated on a
platform. \[Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-3x-
1020x679.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-3x.jpg) Domnique Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de
France, literally elevated on a platform. [Photo by [Jean-Pierre
Dalbera](https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/4944528385/)]
Yet the platform metaphor has limitations. For one thing, it smacks of Silicon
Valley entrepreneurial epistemology, which prioritizes “monetizable”
“knowledge solutions.” Further, its association with new media tends to
bracket out the similarly generative capacities of low-tech, and even _non_
-technical, library resources. One key misperception of those who proclaim the
library’s obsolescence is that its function as a knowledge institution can be
reduced to its technical services and information offerings. Knowledge is
never solely a product of technology and the information it delivers.
Another problem with the platform model is the image it evokes: a flat, two-
dimensional stage on which resources are laid out for users to _do stuff
with_. The platform doesn’t have any implied depth, so we’re not inclined to
look underneath or behind it, or to question its structure. Weinberger
encourages us to “think of the library not as a portal we go through on
occasion but as infrastructure that is as ubiquitous and persistent as the
streets and sidewalks of a town.” It’s like a “canopy,” he says — or like a
“cloud.” But these metaphors are more poetic than critical; they obfuscate all
the wires, pulleys, lights and scaffolding that you inevitably find underneath
and above that stage — and the casting, staging and direction that determine
what happens _on_ the stage, and that allow it to function _as_ a stage.
Libraries are infrastructures not only because they are ubiquitous and
persistent, but also, and primarily, because they are made of interconnected
networks that undergird all that foment, that create what Pierre Bourdieu
would call “[structuring
structures](http://books.google.com/books?id=WvhSEMrNWHAC&lpg=PA72&ots=puRmifuGmb&dq=bourdieu%20%22structuring%20structures%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage)”
that support Weinberger’s “messy, rich networks of people and ideas.”
It can be instructive for our libraries’ publics — and critical for our
libraries’ leaders — to assess those structuring structures. In this age of
e-books, smartphones, firewalls, proprietary media platforms and digital
rights management; of atrophying mega-bookstores and resurgent independent
bookshops and a metastasizing Amazon; of Google Books and Google Search and
Google Glass; of economic disparity and the continuing privatization of public
space and services — which is simultaneously an age of democratized media
production and vibrant DIY and activist cultures — libraries play a critical
role as mediators, at the hub of all the hubbub. Thus we need to understand
how our libraries function _as_ , and as _part of_ , infrastructural ecologies
— as sites where spatial, technological, intellectual and social
infrastructures shape and inform one another. And we must consider how those
infrastructures can embody the epistemological, political, economic and
cultural values that we _want_ to define our communities. 5
[![Hammond, Beeby and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public
Library. \[Photo by Robert Dawson, from Public Library: An American
Commons\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Hammond,
Beeby and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library.
\[Photo by Robert Dawson, from Public Library: An American
Commons\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-4x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-4x.jpg) Hammond, Beeby
and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library. [Photo by
Robert Dawson, from _[Public Library: An American
Commons](https://placesjournal.org/article/public-library-an-american-
commons/)_ ]
## Library as Social Infrastructure
Public libraries are often seen as “opportunity institutions,” opening doors
to, and for, the disenfranchised. 6 People turn to libraries to access the
internet, take a GED class, get help with a resumé or job search, and seek
referrals to other community resources. A [recent
report](http://nycfuture.org/research/publications/branches-of-opportunity) by
the Center for an Urban Future highlighted the benefits to immigrants,
seniors, individuals searching for work, public school students and aspiring
entrepreneurs: “No other institution, public or private, does a better job of
reaching people who have been left behind in today’s economy, have failed to
reach their potential in the city’s public school system or who simply need
help navigating an increasingly complex world.” 7
The new Department of Outreach Services at the Brooklyn Public Library, for
instance, partners with other organizations to bring library resources to
seniors, school children and prison populations. The Queens Public Library
employs case managers who help patrons identify public benefits for which
they’re eligible. “These are all things that someone could dub as social
services,” said Queens Library president Thomas Galante, “but they’re not. … A
public library today has information to improve people’s lives. We are an
enabler; we are a connector.” 8
Partly because of their skill in reaching populations that others miss,
libraries have recently reported record circulation and visitation, despite
severe budget cuts, decreased hours and the [threatened closure or
sale](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/civic-group-city-bail-cash-strapped-
brooklyn-public-library-system-mired-300-million-repair-article-1.1748855) of
“underperforming” branches. 9 Meanwhile the Pew Research Center has released a
[series of studies](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/) about the materials and
services Americans want their libraries to provide. [Among the
findings](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/12/11/libraries-in-
communities/): 90 percent of respondents say the closure of their local public
library would have an impact on their community, and 63 percent describe that
impact as “major.”
[![Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque. \[Photo by Forgemind
Archimedia\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Toyo
Ito, Sendai Mediatheque. \[Photo by Forgemind
Archimedia\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-5x-1020x757.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-5x.jpg)Toyo Ito, Sendai
Mediatheque. [Photo by [Forgemind
Archimedia](https://www.flickr.com/photos/eager/11996856324/)]
Libraries also bring communities together in times of calamity or disaster.
Toyo Ito, architect of the acclaimed [Sendai
Mediatheque](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendai_Mediatheque), recalled that
after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, local officials reopened the library
quickly even though it had sustained minor damage, “because it functions as a
kind of cultural refuge in the city.” He continued, “Most people who use the
building are not going there just to read a book or watch a film; many of them
probably do not have any definite purpose at all. They go just to be part of
the community in the building.” 10
We need to attend more closely to such “social infrastructures,” the
“facilities and conditions that allow connection between people,” says
sociologist Eric Klinenberg. In [a recent
interview](http://urbanomnibus.net/2013/10/toward-a-stronger-social-
infrastructure-a-conversation-with-eric-klinenberg/), he argued that urban
resilience can be measured not only by the condition of transit systems and
basic utilities and communication networks, but also by the condition of
parks, libraries and community organizations: “open, accessible, and welcoming
public places where residents can congregate and provide social support during
times of need but also every day.” 11 In his book _Heat Wave_ , Klinenberg
noted that a vital public culture in Chicago neighborhoods drew people out of
sweltering apartments during the 1995 heat wave, and into cooler public
spaces, thus saving lives.
The need for physical spaces that promote a vibrant social infrastructure
presents many design opportunities, and some libraries are devising innovative
solutions. Brooklyn and other cultural institutions have
[partnered](http://www.informationforfamilies.org/Theres_No_Place_Like_Home/Jobs_68.html)
with the [Uni](http://www.theuniproject.org/find-the-uni/), a modular,
portable library that [I wrote about earlier in this
journal](https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-
urban-margins/). And modular solutions — kits of parts — are under
consideration in a design study sponsored by the Center for an Urban Future
and the Architectural League of New York, which aims to [reimagine New York
City’s library branches](http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/06/request-for-
qualifications-re-envisioning-branch-libraries/) so that they can more
efficiently and effectively serve their communities. CUF also plans to
publish, at the end of June, an audit of, and a proposal for, New York’s three
library systems. 12 _New York Times_ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman,
reflecting on the roles played by New York libraries [during recent
hurricanes](http://www.npr.org/2013/08/12/210541233/for-disasters-pack-a
-first-aid-kit-bottled-water-and-a-library-card), goes so far as to
[suggest](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/arts/design/next-time-libraries-
could-be-our-shelters-from-the-storm.html) that the city’s branch libraries,
which have “become our de facto community centers,” “could be designed in the
future with electrical systems out of harm’s way and set up with backup
generators and solar panels, even kitchens and wireless mesh networks.” 13
[![Bobst Library, New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. \[Photos by
bettyx1138\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bobst
Library, New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. \[Photos by
bettyx1138\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-6x-1020x551.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-6x.jpg) Bobst Library,
New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. [Photos by
[bettyx1138](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bettyx1138/8151244029/)]
But is it too much to expect our libraries to serve as soup kitchens and
recovery centers when they have so many other responsibilities? The library’s
broad mandate means that it often picks up the slack when other institutions
fall short. “It never ceases to amaze me just what libraries are looked upon
to provide,” says Ruth Faklis, director of the Prairie Trail Public Library
District in suburban Chicago:
> This includes, but is not limited to, [serving as] keepers of the homeless …
while simultaneously offering latch-key children a safe and activity-filled
haven. We have been asked to be voter-registration sites, warming stations,
notaries, technology-terrorism watchdogs, senior social-gathering centers,
election sites, substitute sitters during teacher strikes, and the latest —
postmasters. These requests of society are ever evolving. Funding is not
generally attached to these magnanimous suggestions, and when it is, it does
not cover actual costs of the additional burden, thus stretching the library’s
budget even further. I know of no other government entity that is asked to
take on additional responsibilities not necessarily aligned with its mission.
13
In a Metafilter discussion about funding cuts in California, one librarian
offered this poignant lament:
> Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive. … Forget trying to
be the “people’s university” and create a body of well informed citizens.
Instead I helped people navigate through the degrading hoops of modern online
society, fighting for scraps from the plate, and then kicking back afterwards
by pretending to have a farm on Facebook.
[ Read the whole story](http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-
Dreamin#4183210). It’s quite a punch to the stomach. Given the effort
librarians expend in promoting basic literacies, how much more can this social
infrastructure support? Should we welcome the “design challenge” to engineer
technical and architectural infrastructures to accommodate an ever-
diversifying program — or should we consider that we might have stretched this
program to its limit, and that no physical infrastructure can effectively
scaffold such a motley collection of social services?
Again, we need to look to the infrastructural ecology — the larger network of
public services and knowledge institutions of which each library is a part.
How might towns, cities and regions assess what their various public (and
private) institutions are uniquely qualified and sufficiently resourced to do,
and then deploy those resources most effectively? Should we regard the library
as the territory of the civic _mind_ and ask other social services to attend
to the civic _body_? The assignment of social responsibility isn’t so black
and white — nor are the boundaries between mind and body, cognition and affect
— but libraries do need to collaborate with other institutions to determine
how they leverage the resources of the infrastructural ecology to serve their
publics, with each institution and organization contributing what it’s best
equipped to contribute — and each operating with a clear sense of its mission
and obligation.
Libraries have a natural affinity with cultural institutions. Just this
spring, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio [appointed Tom
Finkelpearl](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/arts/design/mayor-de-blasio-
names-tom-finkelpearl-of-the-queens-museum.html?_r=1) as the city’s new
Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. A former president of the Queens Museum,
Finkelpearl oversaw the first phase of a renovation by Grimshaw Architects,
which, in its next phase, will incorporate a Queens Public Library branch — an
effective pairing, given the commitment of both institutions to education and
local culture. Similarly, Lincoln Center houses the New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts. As commissioner, Finkelpearl could broaden support
for mixed-use development that strengthens infrastructural ecologies. The
[CUF/Architectural League project](http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/06/request-
for-qualifications-re-envisioning-branch-libraries/) is also considering how
collaborative partnerships can inform library program and design.
[![Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center,
Seattle. \[Photo by Jules
Antonio\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bohlin
Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center, Seattle.
\[Photo by Jules Antonio\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-7x-
1020x724.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-7x.jpg)Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and
Neighborhood Service Center, Seattle. [Photo by [Jules
Antonio](https://www.flickr.com/photos/julesantonio/8152446538/)]
I’ve recently returned from Seattle, where I revisited [OMA’s Central
Library](https://placesjournal.org/article/seattle-central-library-civic-
architecture-in-the-age-of-media/) on its 10th anniversary and toured several
new branch libraries. 15 Under the 1998 bond measure “Libraries for All,”
citizens voted to tax themselves to support construction of the Central
Library and four new branches, and to upgrade _every_ branch in the system.
The [vibrant, sweeping Ballard branch](http://www.archdaily.com/100821
/ballard-library-and-neighborhood-service-center-bohlin-cywinski-jackson/)
(2005), by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, includes a separate entrance for the
Ballard Neighborhood Service Center, a “[little city
hall](http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhood-service-centers)“ where residents
can find information about public services, get pet licenses, pay utility
bills, and apply for passports and city jobs. While the librarians undoubtedly
field questions about such services, they’re also able to refer patrons next
door, where city employees are better equipped to meet their needs — thus
affording the library staff more time to answer reference questions and host
writing groups and children’s story hours.
Seattle’s City Librarian, Marcellus Turner, is big on partnerships —with
cultural institutions, like local theaters, as well as commercial
collaborators, like the Seahawks football team. 16 After taking the helm in
2011, he identified [five service priorities](http://www.spl.org/about-the-
library/mission-statement) — youth and early learning, technology and access,
community engagement, Seattle culture and history, and re-imagined spaces —
and tasked working groups with developing proposals for how the library can
better address those needs. Each group must consider marketing, funding, staff
deployment and partnership opportunities that “leverage what we have with what
[the partners] have.” For instance, “Libraries that focus on early-childhood
education might employ educators, academicians, or teachers to help us with
research into early-childhood learning and teaching.” 17
The “design challenge” is to consider what physical infrastructures would be
needed to accommodate such partnerships. 18 Many libraries have continued
along a path laid by library innovators from Ptolemy to Carnegie, renovating
their buildings to incorporate public gathering, multi-use, and even
commercial spaces. In Seattle’s Ballard branch, a large meeting room hosts
regular author readings and a vibrant writing group that typically attracts 30
or more participants. In Salt Lake City, the [library
plaza](http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/shops) features an artist co-op, a radio
station, a community writing center, the Library Store, and a few cafes — all
private businesses whose ethos is consistent with the library’s. The New York
Public Library has [recently announced](http://www.nypl.org/press/press-
release/april-30-2014/new-york-public-library-opens-doors-coursera-students)
that some of its branches will serve as “learning hubs” for Coursera, the
provider of “massive open online courses.” And many libraries have classrooms
and labs where they offer regular technical training courses.
[![Moshe Safdie, Salt Lake City Public Library. \[Photo by Pedro
Szekely\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Moshe
Safdie, Salt Lake City Public Library. \[Photo by Pedro
Szekely\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-8x-1020x678.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-8x.jpg)Moshe Safdie,
Salt Lake City Public Library. [Photo by [Pedro
Szekely](https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosz/5139398125/)]
These entrepreneurial models reflect what seems to be an increasingly
widespread sentiment: that while libraries continue to serve a vital role as
“opportunity institutions” for the disenfranchised, this cannot be their
primary self-justification. They cannot duplicate the responsibilities of our
community centers and social service agencies. “Their narrative” — or what I’d
call an “epistemic framing,” by which I mean the way the library packages its
program as a knowledge institution, and the infrastructures that support it —
“must include everyone,” says the University of Michigan’s Kristin
Fontichiaro. 19 What programs and services are consistent with an institution
dedicated to lifelong learning? Should libraries be reconceived as hubs for
civic engagement, where communities can discuss local issues, create media,
and archive community history? 20 Should they incorporate media production
studios, maker-spaces and hacker labs, repositioning themselves in an evolving
ecology of information and educational infrastructures?
These new social functions — which may require new physical infrastructures to
support them — broaden the library’s narrative to include _everyone_ , not
only the “have-nots.” This is not to say that the library should abandon the
needy and focus on an elite patron group; rather, the library should
incorporate the “enfranchised” as a key public, both so that the institution
can reinforce its mission as a social infrastructure for an inclusive public,
_and_ so that privileged, educated users can bring their knowledge and talents
_to_ the library and offer them up as social-infrastructural resources.
Many among this well-resourced population — those who have jobs and home
internet access and can navigate the government bureaucracy with relative ease
— already see themselves as part of the library’s public. They regard the
library as a space of openness, egalitarianism and freedom (in multiple senses
of the term), within a proprietary, commercial, segregated and surveilled
landscape. They understand that no matter how well-connected they are, [they
actually _don’t_ have the world at their
fingertips](https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-
the-urban-margins/) — that “material protected by stringent copyright and held
in proprietary databases is often inaccessible outside libraries” and that,
“as digital rights management becomes ever more complicated, we … rely even
more on our libraries to help us navigate an increasingly fractured and
litigious digital terrain.” 21 And they recognize that they cannot depend on
Google to organize the world’s information. As the librarian noted in [that
discussion](http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210) on
Metafilter:
> The [American Library Association] has a proven history of commitment to
intellectual freedom. The public service that we’ve been replaced with has a
spotty history of “not being evil.” When we’re gone, you middle class, you
wealthy, you tech-savvy, who will fight for that with no profit motivation?
Even if you never step foot in our doors, and all of your media comes to a
brightly lit screen, we’re still working for you.
The library’s social infrastructure thus benefits even those who don’t have an
immediate need for its space or its services.
[![David Adjaye, Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C.
\[Photo by Edmund
Sumner\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![David
Adjaye, Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C. \[Photo by
Edmund Sumner\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-9x-1020x694.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-9x.jpg)David Adjaye,
Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C. [Photo by Edmund
Sumner]
Finally, we must acknowledge the library’s role as a civic landmark — a symbol
of what a community values highly enough to place on a prominent site, to
materialize in dignified architecture that communicates its openness to
everyone, and to support with sufficient public funding despite the fact that
it’ll never make a profit. A well-designed library — a contextually-designed
library — can reflect a community’s character back to itself, clarifying who
it is, in all its multiplicity, and what it stands for. 22 David Adjaye’s
[Bellevue](http://www.archdaily.com/258098/bellevue-library-adjaye-
associates/) and [Francis Gregory](http://www.archdaily.com/258109/francis-
gregory-library-adjaye-associates/) branch libraries, in historically
underserved neighborhoods of Washington D.C., have been lauded for performing
precisely this function. [As Sarah Williams Goldhagen
writes](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112443/revolution-your-community-
library):
> Adjaye is so attuned to the nuances of urban context that one might be hard
pressed to identify them as the work of one designer. Francis Gregory is steel
and glass, Bellevue is concrete and wood. Francis Gregory presents a single
monolithic volume, Bellevue an irregular accretion of concrete pavilions.
Context drives the aesthetic.
His designs “make of this humble municipal building an arena for social
interaction, …a distinctive civic icon that helps build a sense of common
identity.” This kind of social infrastructure serves a vital need for an
entire community.
[![Stacks at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library.
\[Published in a 1911 issue of Scientific
American\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Stacks
at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library. \[Published in
a 1911 issue of Scientific American\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
10x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-10x.jpg)Stacks at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building,
New York Public Library. [Published in a 1911 issue of _Scientific American_ ]
## Library as Technological-Intellectual Infrastructure
Of course, we must not forget the library collection itself. The old-fashioned
bookstack was [at the center of the recent
debate](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323751104578151653883688578)
over the proposed renovation of the New York Public Library’s Schwartzman
Building on 42nd Street, which was
[cancelled](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library-
abandons-plan-to-revamp-42nd-street-building.html) last month after more than
a year of lawsuits and protests. This storage infrastructure, and the delivery
system it accommodates, have tremendous significance even in a digital age.
For scholars, the stacks represent near-instant access to any materials within
the extensive collection. Architectural historians defended the historical
significance of the stacks, and engineers argued that they are critical to the
structural integrity of the building.
The way a library’s collection is stored and made accessible shapes the
intellectual infrastructure of the institution. The Seattle Public Library
uses [translucent acrylic
bookcases](http://blog.spacesaver.com/StoragesolvedwithSpacesaver/bid/33285
/You-re-not-going-crazy-Library-book-stacks-ARE-cool) made by Spacesaver — and
even here this seemingly mundane, utilitarian consideration cultivates a
character, an ambience, that reflects the library’s identity and its
intellectual values. It might sound corny, but the luminescent glow permeating
the stacks acts as a beacon, a welcoming gesture. There are still many
contemporary libraries that privilege — perhaps even fetishize — the book and
the bookstack: take MVRDV’s [Book
Mountain](http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/spijkenisse/) (2012), for a town in the
Netherlands; or TAX arquitectura’s [Biblioteca Jose
Vasconcelos](http://www.designboom.com/architecture/biblioteca-vasconcelos-by-
tax-arquitectura-alberto-kalach/) (2006) in Mexico City.
Stacks occupy a different, though also fetishized, space in Helmut Jahn’s
[Mansueto Library](http://www.archdaily.com/143532/joe-and-rika-mansueto-
library-murphy-jahn/) (2011) at the University of Chicago, which mixes diverse
infrastructures to accommodate media of varying materialities: a grand reading
room, a conservation department, a digitization department, and [a
subterranean warehouse of books retrieved by
robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESCxYchCaWI&feature=youtu.be). (It’s
worth noting that Boston and other libraries contained [book
railways](http://libraryhistorybuff.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-retrieval-
systems.html) and conveyer belt retrieval systems — proto-robots — a century
ago.) Snøhetta’s [James B. Hunt Jr.
Library](http://www.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/watch/) (2013) at North Carolina
State University also incorporates a robotic storage and retrieval system, so
that the library can store more books on site, as well as meet its goal of
providing seating for 20 percent of the student population. 23 Here the
patrons come before the collection.
[![Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. \[Photo
by
brewbooks\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Rem
Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. \[Photo by
brewbooks\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-11x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-11x.jpg)Rem
Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. [Photo by
[brewbooks](https://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/4472712525/)]
[![MVRDV, Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands. \[Photo via
MVRDV\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![MVRDV,
Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands. \[Photo via
MVRDV\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-12x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06
/mattern-library-infrastructure-12x.jpg)MVRDV, Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The
Netherlands. [Photo via MVRDV]
[![TAX, Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Mexico City. \[Photo by
Clinker\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![TAX,
Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Mexico City. \[Photo by
Clinker\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-13x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-13x.jpg)TAX, Biblioteca
Vasconcelos, Mexico City. [Photo by
[Clinker](https://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_clinker/295038829/)]
[![Helmut Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of Chicago, reading room above
underground stacks. \[Photo by Eric Allix
Rogers\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Helmut
Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of Chicago, reading room above underground
stacks. \[Photo by Eric Allix Rogers\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
14x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-14x.jpg)Helmut Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of
Chicago, reading room above underground stacks. [Photo by [Eric Allix
Rogers](https://www.flickr.com/photos/reallyboring/5766873063/)]
[![Mansueto Library stacks. \[Photo by Corey
Seeman\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Mansueto
Library stacks. \[Photo by Corey Seeman\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
15x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-15x.jpg)Mansueto Library stacks. [Photo by [Corey
Seeman](https://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/14148827344/)]
Back in the early aughts, when I spent a summer touring libraries, the
institutions on the leading edge were integrating media production facilities,
recognizing that media “consumption” and “creation” lie on a gradient of
knowledge production. Today there’s a lot of talk about — [and action
around](http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/16/results-of-makerspaces-in-
libraries-study-released/) — integrating hacker labs and maker-spaces. 24 As
Anne Balsamo explains, these sites offer opportunities — embodied, often
inter-generational learning experiences that are integral to the development
of a “technological imagination” — that are rarely offered in formal learning
institutions. 25
The Hunt Library has a maker-space, a GameLab, various other production labs
and studios, an immersion theater, and, rather eyebrow-raisingly, an Apple
Technology Showcase (named after library donors whose surname is Apple, with
an intentional pun on the electronics company). 26 One might think major
funding is needed for those kinds of programs, but the trend actually began in
2011 in tiny Fayetteville, New York (pop. 4,373), thought to be [the first
public library](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2011/11/15/first-public-
library-to-create-a-maker-space/) to have incorporated a maker-space. The
following year, the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh — which for years has
hosted film competitions, gaming tournaments, and media-making projects for
youth — [launched](http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/?p=6653), with
Google and Heinz Foundation support, [The
Labs](http://www.clpgh.org/teens/events/programs/thelabs/): weekly workshops
at three locations where teenagers can access equipment, software and mentors.
Around the same time, Chattanooga — a city blessed with a [super-high-speed
municipal fiber network](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/09/17/how-chattanooga-beat-google-fiber-by-half-a-decade/) —
opened its lauded [4th Floor](http://chattlibrary.org/4th-floor), a
12,000-square foot “public laboratory and educational facility” that “supports
the production, connection, and sharing of knowledge by offering access to
tools and instruction.” Those tools include 3D printers, laser cutters and
vinyl cutters, and the instruction includes everything from tech classes, to
incubator projects for female tech entrepreneurs, to [business pitch
competitions](http://www.nooga.com/158480/hundreds-attend-will-this-float-
business-pitch-event/).
Last year, the Brooklyn Public Library, just a couple blocks from where I
live, opened its [Levy Info
Commons](http://www.bklynlibrary.org/locations/central/infocommons), which
includes space for laptop users and lots of desktop machines featuring
creative software suites; seven reserveable teleconference-ready meeting
rooms, including one that doubles as a recording studio; and a training lab,
which offers an array of digital media workshops led by a local arts and
design organization and also invites patrons to lead their own courses. A
typical month on their robust event calendar includes resume editing
workshops, a Creative Business Tech prototyping workshop, individual meetings
with business counselors, Teen Tech tutorials, computer classes for seniors,
workshops on podcasting and oral history and “adaptive gaming” for people with
disabilities, and even an audio-recording and editing workshop targeted to
poets, to help them disseminate their work in new formats. Also last year, the
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., opened its
[Digital Commons](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07
/the-digital-age-is-forcing-libraries-to-change-heres-what-that-looks-like/),
where patrons can use a print-on-demand bookmaking machine, a 3D printer, and
a co-working space known as the “Dream Lab,” or try out a variety of e-book
readers. The Chicago Public Library partnered with the Museum of Science and
Industry to open [a pop-up maker lab](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07
/3d-printing-for-all-inside-chicago-librarys-new-pop-up-maker-lab/) featuring
open-source design software, laser cutters, a milling machine, and (of course)
3D printers — not one, but _three_.
[![Chattanooga Public Library, 4th Floor. \[Photo by Larry
Miller\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Chattanooga
Public Library, 4th Floor. \[Photo by Larry
Miller\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-17x-1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-17x.jpg) Chattanooga
Public Library, 4th Floor. [Photo by [Larry
Miller](https://www.flickr.com/photos/drmillerlg/9228431656/sizes/l)]
[![Snøhetta, James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North Carolina State University,
MakerBot in Apple Technology Showcase. \[Photo by Mal
Booth\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Snøhetta,
James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North Carolina State University, MakerBot in Apple
Technology Showcase. \[Photo by Mal Booth\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-16x-
1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-16x.jpg)Snøhetta, James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North
Carolina State University, MakerBot in Apple Technology Showcase. [Photo by
[Mal Booth](https://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/10401308096/sizes/l)]
[![Hunt Library, iPearl Immersion Theater. \[Photo by Payton
Chung\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Hunt
Library, iPearl Immersion Theater. \[Photo by Payton
Chung\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-18x-1020x573.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-18x.jpg)Hunt Library,
iPearl Immersion Theater. [Photo by [Payton
Chung](https://www.flickr.com/photos/paytonc/8758630775/sizes/l)]
Some have proposed that libraries — following in the tradition of Alexandria’s
“think tank,” and compelled by a desire to “democratize entrepreneurship” —
make for ideal [co-working or incubator
spaces](http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/02/why-libraries-should-be-next-
great-startup-incubators/4733/), where patrons with diverse skill sets can
organize themselves into start-ups-for-the-people. 27 Others recommend that
librarians entrepreneurialize _themselves_ , rebranding themselves as
professional consultants in a complex information economy. Librarians, in this
view, are uniquely qualified digital literacy tutors; experts in “copyright
compliance, licensing, privacy, information use, and ethics”; gurus of
“aligning … programs with collections, space, and resources”; skilled creators
of “custom ontologies, vocabularies, taxonomies” and structured data; adept
practitioners of data mining. 28 Others recommend that libraries get into the
content production business. In the face of increasing pressure to rent and
license proprietary digital content with stringent use policies, why don’t
libraries do more to promote the creation of independent media or develop
their own free, open-source technologies? Not many libraries have the time and
resources to undertake such endeavors, but [NYPL
Labs](http://www.nypl.org/collections/labs) and Harvard’s [Library Test
Kitchen](http://www.librarytestkitchen.org/), have demonstrated what’s
possible when even back-of-house library spaces become sites of technological
praxis. Unfortunately, those innovative projects are typically hidden behind
the interface (as with so much library labor). Why not bring those operations
to the front of the building, as part of the public program?
Of course, with all these new activities come new spatial requirements.
Library buildings must incorporate a wide variety of furniture arrangements,
lighting designs, acoustical conditions, etc., to accommodate multiple sensory
registers, modes of working, postures and more. Librarians and designers are
now acknowledging — and designing _for_ , rather than designing _out_ —
activities that make noise and can occasionally be a bit messy. I did a study
several years ago on the evolution of library sounds and found widespread
recognition that knowledge-making doesn’t readily happen when “shhh!” is the
prevailing rule. 29
These new physical infrastructures create space for an epistemology embracing
the integration of knowledge consumption and production, of thinking and
making. Yet sometimes I have to wonder, given all the hoopla over “making”:
_are_ tools of computational fabrication really the holy grail of the
knowledge economy? What _knowledge_ is produced when I churn out, say, a
keychain on a MakerBot? I worry that the boosterism surrounding such projects
— and the much-deserved acclaim they’ve received for “rebranding” the library
— glosses over the neoliberal values that these technologies sometimes embody.
Neoliberalism channels the pursuit of individual freedom through property
rights and free markets 30 — and what better way to express yourself than by
3D-printing a bust of your own head at the library, or using the library’s CNC
router to launch your customizable cutting board business on Etsy? While
librarians have long been advocates of free and democratic access to
information, I trust — I hope — that they’re helping their patrons to
cultivate a [critical perspective](https://placesjournal.org/article
/tedification-versus-edification/) regarding [the politics of “technological
innovation”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology) — and the
potential instrumentalism of makerhood. Sure, Dewey was part of this
instrumentalist tradition, too. But our contemporary pursuit of “innovation”
promotes the idea that “making new stuff” = “producing knowledge,” which can
be a dangerous falsehood.
Library staff might want to take up the critique of “innovation,” too. Each
new Google product release, new mobile technology development, new e-reader
launch brings new opportunities for the library to innovate in response. And
while “keeping current” is a crucial goal, it’s important to place that
pursuit in a larger cultural, political-economic and institutional context.
Striving to stay technologically relevant can backfire when it means merely
responding to the profit-driven innovations of commercial media; we see these
mistakes — innovation for innovation’s sake — in the [ed-
tech](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology) arena quite often.
[![George Peabody Library, The John Hopkins University. \[Photo by Thomas
Guignard\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![George
Peabody Library, The John Hopkins University. \[Photo by Thomas
Guignard\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-19x-1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-19x.jpg)George Peabody
Library, The John Hopkins University. [Photo by [Thomas
Guignard](https://www.flickr.com/photos/timtom/5304555668/)]
## Reading across the Infrastructural Ecology
Libraries need to stay focused on their long-term cultural goals — which
should hold true regardless of what Google decides to do tomorrow — and on
their place within the larger infrastructural ecology. They also need to
consider how their various infrastructural identities map onto each other, or
don’t. Can an institution whose technical and physical infrastructure is
governed by the pursuit of innovation also fulfill its obligations as a social
infrastructure serving the disenfranchised? What ethics are embodied in the
single-minded pursuit of “the latest” technologies, or the equation of
learning with entrepreneurialism?
As Zadie Smith [argued
beautifully](http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-
london-blues/) in the _New York Review of Books_ , we risk losing the
library’s role as a “different kind of social reality (of the three
dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values
beyond the fiscal.” 31 Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus
College, offered an [equally eloquent
plea](http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/some-assumptions-
about-libraries#sthash.jwJlhrsD.dpbs) for the library as a space of exception:
> Libraries are not, or at least should not be, engines of productivity. If
anything, they should slow people down and seduce them with the unexpected,
the irrelevant, the odd and the unexplainable. Productivity is a destructive
way to justify the individual’s value in a system that is naturally communal,
not an individualistic or entrepreneurial zero-sum game to be won by the most
industrious. 32
Libraries, she argued, “will always be at a disadvantage” to Google and Amazon
because they value privacy; they refuse to exploit users’ private data to
improve the search experience. Yet libraries’ failure to compete in
_efficiency_ is what affords them the opportunity to offer a “different kind
of social reality.” I’d venture that there _is_ room for entrepreneurial
learning in the library, but there also has to be room for that alternate
reality where knowledge needn’t have monetary value, where learning isn’t
driven by a profit motive. We can accommodate both spaces for entrepreneurship
_and_ spaces of exception, provided the institution has a strong _epistemic
framing_ that encompasses both. This means that the library needs to know how
to read _itself_ as a social-technical-intellectual infrastructure.
It’s particularly important to cultivate these critical capacities — the
ability to “read” our libraries’ multiple infrastructures and the politics and
ethics they embody — when the concrete infrastructures look like San Antonio’s
[BiblioTech](http://bexarbibliotech.org/), a “bookless” library featuring
10,000 e-books, downloadable via the 3M Cloud App; 600 circulating “stripped
down” 3M e-readers; 200 “enhanced” tablets for kids; and, for use on-site, 48
computers, plus laptops and iPads. The library, which opened last fall, also
offers computer classes and meeting space, but it’s all locked within a
proprietary platformed world.
[![Bexar County BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bexar
County BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-21x-1020x573.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-21x.jpg)Bexar County
BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. [Photo by Bexar BiblioTech]
[![Screenshot of the library’s fully digital collection. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Screenshot
of the library’s fully digital collection. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-20x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-20x.jpg)Screenshot of
the library’s fully digital collection. [Photo by Bexar BiblioTech]
In libraries like BiblioTech — and the [Digital Public Library of
America](http://dp.la/) — the collection itself is off-site. Do _patrons_
wonder where, exactly, all those books and periodicals and cloud-based
materials _live_? What’s under, or floating above, the “platform”? Do they
think about the algorithms that lead them to particular library materials, and
the conduits and protocols through which they access them? Do they consider
what it means to supplant bookstacks with server stacks — whose metal racks we
can’t kick, lights we can’t adjust, knobs we can’t fiddle with? Do they think
about the librarians negotiating access licenses and adding metadata to
“digital assets,” or the engineers maintaining the servers? With the
increasing recession of these technical infrastructures — and the human labor
that supports them — further off-site, [behind the
interface](https://placesjournal.org/article/interfacing-urban-intelligence/),
deeper inside the black box, how can we understand the ways in which those
structures structure our intellect and sociality?
We need to develop — both among library patrons and librarians themselves —
new critical capacities to understand the _distributed_ physical, technical
and social architectures that scaffold our institutions of knowledge and
program our values. And we must consider where those infrastructures intersect
— where they should be, and perhaps aren’t, mutually reinforcing one another.
When do our social obligations compromise our intellectual aspirations, or
vice versa? And when do those social or intellectual aspirations for the
library exceed — or fail to fully exploit — the capacities of our
architectural and technological infrastructures? Ultimately, we need to ensure
that we have a strong epistemological framework — a narrative that explains
how the library promotes learning and stewards knowledge — so that everything
hangs together, so there’s some institutional coherence. We need to sync the
library’s intersecting infrastructures so that they work together to support
our shared intellectual and ethical goals.
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###### Author's Note
I’d like to thank the students in my “Archives, Libraries and Databases”
seminar and my “Digital Archives” studio at The New School, who’ve given me
much food for thought over the years. Thanks, too, to my colleagues at the
[Architectural League of New York](http://archleague.org/) and the [Center for
an Urban Future](http://nycfuture.org/). I owe a debt of gratitude also to
Gabrielle Dean, her students, and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins, who gave me
an opportunity to share a preliminary draft of this work. They, along with my
colleagues Julie Foulkes and Aleksandra Wagner, offered feedback for which I’m
very grateful.
###### Notes
1. See Matthew Battles, _Library: An Unquiet History_ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); Lionel Casson, _Libraries in the Ancient World_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Fred Lerner, _The Story of Libraries_ (New York: Continuum, 1999).
2. Casson explains that when Alexandria was a brand new city in the third century B.C., its founders enticed intellectuals to the city — in an attempt to establish it as a cultural center — with the famous Museum, “a figurative temple for the muses, a place for cultivating the arts they symbolized. It was an ancient version of a think-tank: the members, consisting of noted writers, poets, scientists, and scholars, were appointed by the Ptolemies for life and enjoyed a handsome salary, tax exemption … free lodging, and food. … It was for them that the Ptolemies founded the library of Alexandria” [33-34].
3. Donald Oehlerts, _Books and Blueprints: Building America’s Public Libraries_ (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991): 62.
4. David Weinberger, “[Library as Platform](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries/by-david-weinberger/),” _Library Journal_ (September 4, 2012).
5. For more on “infrastructural ecologies,” see Reyner Banham, _Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies_ (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009 [1971]); Alan Latham, Derek McCormack, Kim McNamara and Donald McNeil, _Key Concepts in Urban Geography_ (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009): 32; Ming Xu and Josh P. Newell, “[Infrastructure Ecology: A Conceptual Mode for Understanding Urban Sustainability](http://css.snre.umich.edu/publication/infrastructure-ecology-conceptual-model-understanding-urban-sustainability),” Sixth International Conference of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) Proceedings, Berkeley, CA, June 7-10, 2011; Anu Ramaswami, Christopher Weible, Deborah Main, Tanya Heikkila, Saba Siddiki, Andrew Duvail, Andrew Pattison and Meghan Bernard, “A Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems,” _Journal of Industrial Ecology_ 16:6 (December 2012): 801-13. Most references to infrastructural ecologies — and there are few — pertain to systems at the urban scale, but I believe a library is a sufficiently complicated institution, residing at nexus of myriad networks, that it constitutes an infrastructural ecology in its own right.
6. Center for an Urban Future, [“Opportunity Institutions” Conference](http://nycfuture.org/events/event/opportunity-institutions) (March 11, 2013). See also Jesse Hicks and Julie Dressner’s video “[Libraries Now: A Day in the Life of NYC’s Branches](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/libraries-now-new-york-video.html)” (May 16, 2014).
7. Center for an Urban Future, _[Branches of Opportunity](http://nycfuture.org/research/publications/branches-of-opportunity)_ (January 2013): 3.
8. Quoted in Katie Gilbert, “[What Is a Library?](http://narrative.ly/long-live-the-book/what-is-a-library/)” _Narratively_ (January 2, 2014).
9. Real estate sales are among the most controversial elements in the New York Public Library’s much-disputed Central Library Plan, which is premised on the sale of the library’s Mid-Manhattan branch and its Science, Industry and Business Library. See Scott Sherman, “[The Hidden History of New York City’s Central Library Plan](http://www.thenation.com/article/175966/hidden-history-new-york-citys-central-library-plan),” _The Nation_ (August 28, 2013).
10. Toyo Ito, “The Building After,” _Artforum_ (September 2013).
11. Eric Klinenberg, “[Toward a Stronger Social Infrastructure: A Conversation with Eric Klinenberg](http://urbanomnibus.net/2013/10/toward-a-stronger-social-infrastructure-a-conversation-with-eric-klinenberg/),” _Urban Omnibus_ (October 16, 2013).
12. I’m a member of the organizing team for this project, and I hope to write more about its outcomes in a future article for this journal.
13. Michael Kimmelman, “[Next Time, Libraries Could Be Our Shelters From the Storm](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/arts/design/next-time-libraries-could-be-our-shelters-from-the-storm.html),” _New York Times_ (October 2, 2013).
14. Ruth Faklis, in Joseph Janes, Ed., _Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library_ (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013): 96-7.
15. The Seattle Central Library was a focus of [my first book](http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-new-downtown-library), on public library design. See _The New Downtown Library: Designing With Communities_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
16. Personal communication with Marcellus Turner, March 21, 2014.
17. Marcellus Turner in _Library 2020_ : 92.
18. Ken Worpole addresses library partnerships, and their implications for design in his _Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide_ (New York: Routledge, 2013). The book offers a comprehensive look the public roles that libraries serve, and how they inform library planning and design.
19. Kristin Fontichiaro in _Library 2020_ : 8.
20. See Bill Ptacek in _Library 2020_ : 119.
21. The quotations are from my earlier article for Places, “[Marginalia: Little Libraries in the Urban Margins](http://places.designobserver.com/feature/little-libraries-and-tactical-urbanism/33968/).” Within mass-digitization projects like Google Books, as Elisabeth Jones explains, “works that are still in copyright but out of print and works of indeterminate copyright status and/or ownership” will fall between the cracks (in _Library 2020_ : 17).
22. I dedicate a chapter in _The New Downtown Library_ to what makes a library “contextual” — and I address just how slippery that term can be.
23. This sentence was amended after publication to note the multiple motives of implementing the bookBot storage and retrieval system; its compact storage allowed the library to reintegrate some collections that were formerly stored off-site. The library has also developed a Virtual Browse catalog system, which aims to promote virtual discovery that isn’t possible in the physical stacks.
24. According to a late 2013 web-based survey of libraries, 41 percent of respondents provide maker-spaces or maker activities in their libraries, and 36 percent plan to create such spaces in the near future. Most maker-spaces, 51 percent, are in public libraries; 36 percent are in academic libraries; and 9 percent are in school libraries. And among the most popular technologies or technological processes supported in those spaces are computer workstations (67 percent), 3D printers (46 percent), photo editing (45 percent), video editing (43 percent), computer programming/software (39 percent). 33 oercent accommodated digital music recording; 31 percent accommodated 3D modeling, and 30 percent featured work with Arduino and Raspberry Pi circuit boards (Gary Price, “[Results From ‘Makerspaces in Libraries’ Study Released](http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/16/results-of-makerspaces-in-libraries-study-released/),” _Library Journal_ (December 16, 2013). See also James Mitchell, “[Beyond the Maker Space](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/05/opinion/backtalk/beyond-the-maker-space-backtalk/),” _Library Journal_ (May 27, 2014).
25. Anne Balsamo, “[Videos and Frameworks for ‘Tinkering’ in a Digital Age](http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/anne-balsamo-tinkering-videos/),” Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning (January 30, 2009).
26. This sentence was amended after publication to note that the Apple Technology Showcase was named after former NCSU faculty member Dr. J. Lawrence Apple and his wife, Ella Apple; in an email to the author, library director Carolyn Argentati wrote that the corporate pun was intentional.
27. Emily Badger, “[Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators](http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/02/why-libraries-should-be-next-great-startup-incubators/4733/),” _Atlantic Cities_ (February 19, 2003).
28. Stephen Abram in _Library 2020_ : 46; Courtney Greene in _Library 2020_ : 51.
29. See my “[Resonant Texts: Sounds of the Contemporary American Public Library](http://www.wordsinspace.net/publications/Mattern_Senses%20and%20Society.pdf),” _The Senses & Society_ 2:3 (Fall 2007): 277-302.
30. See David Harvey, _A Brief History of Neoliberalism_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
31. Zadie Smith, “[The North West London Blues](http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-london-blues/),” _New York Review of Books_ Blog (June 2, 2012).
32. Barbara Fister, “Some Assumptions About Libraries,” Inside Higher Ed (January 2, 2014).
###### __Cite
Shannon Mattern, "Library as Infrastructure," _Places Journal_ , June 2014.
Accessed 09 Jun 2019.
WHW
There Is Something Political in the City Air
2016
What, How & for Whom / WHW
“There is something political in the city air”*
The curatorial collective What,
How & for Whom / WHW, based
in Zagreb and Berlin, examine
the interconnections between
contemporary art and political and
social strata, including the role of art
institutions in contemporary society.
In the present essay, their discussion
of recent projects they curated
highlights the struggle for access to
knowledge and the free distribution
of information, which in Croatia also
means confronting the pressures
of censorship and revisionism
in the writing of history and the
construction of the future.
Contemporary art’s attempts to come to terms with its evasions in delivering on the promise of its own intrinsic capacity to propose alternatives, and
to do better in the constant game of staying ahead of institutional closures
and marketization, are related to a broader malady in leftist politics. The
crisis of organizational models and modes of political action feels especially acute nowadays, after the latest waves of massive political mobilization
and upheaval embodied in such movements as the Arab Spring and Occupy and the widespread social protests in Southern Europe against austerity
measures – and the failure of these movements to bring about structural
changes. As we witnessed in the dramatic events that unfolded through the
spring and summer of 2015, even in Greece, where Syriza was brought to
power, the people’s will behind newly elected governments proved insufficient to change the course of austerity politics in Europe. Simultaneously,
a series of conditional gains and effective defeats gave rise to the alarming
ascent of radical right-wing populism, against which the left has failed to
provide any real vision or driving force.
Both the practice of political articulation and the political practices of
art have been affected by the hollowing and disabling of democracy related
to the ascendant hegemony of the neoliberal rationale that shapes every
domain of our lives in accordance with a specific image of economics,1
as well as the problematic “embrace of localism and autonomy by much
of the left as the pure strategy”2 and the left’s inability to destabilize the
dominant world-view and reclaim the future.3 Consequently, art practices
increasingly venture into novel modes of operation that seek to “expand
our collective imagination beyond what capitalism allows”.4 They not only
point to the problems but address them head on. By negotiating art’s autonomy and impact on the social, and by conceptualizing the whole edifice
of art as a social symptom, such practices attempt to do more than simply
squeeze novel ideas into exhausted artistic formats and endow them with
political content that produces “marks of distinction”,5 which capital then
exploits for the enhancement of its own reproduction.
The two projects visited in this text both work toward building truly
accessible public spaces. Public Library, launched by Marcell Mars and
Tomislav Medak in 2012, is an ongoing media and social project based on
ideas from the open-source software movement, while Autonomy Cube, by
artist Trevor Paglen and the hacker and computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, centres on anonymized internet usage in the post–Edward
*
1
2
3
4
5
David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso, London and New York, 2012, p. 117.
See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, Zone books,
New York, 2015.
Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 83.
See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World
Without Work, Verso, London and New York, 2015.
Ibid., p. 495.
See Harvey, Rebel Cities, especially pp. 103–109.
“There is something political in the city air”
289
Snowden world of unprecedented institutionalized surveillance. Both projects operate in tacit alliance with art institutions that more often than not
are suffering from a kind of “mission drift” under pressure to align their
practices and structures with the profit sector, a situation that in recent
decades has gradually become the new norm.6 By working within and with
art institutions, both Public Library and Autonomy Cube induce the institutions to return to their initial mission of creating new common spaces
of socialization and political action. The projects develop counter-publics
and work with infrastructures, in the sense proposed by Keller Easterling:
not just physical networks but shared standards and ideas that constitute
points of contact and access between people and thus rule, govern, and
control the spaces in which we live.7
By building a repository of digitized books, and enabling others to do this
as well, Public Library promotes the idea of the library as a truly public institution that offers universal access to knowledge, which “together with
free public education, a free public healthcare, the scientific method, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Wikipedia, and free software,
among others – we, the people, are most proud of ”, as the authors of the
project have said.8 Public Library develops devices for the free sharing of
books, but it also functions as a platform for advocating social solidarity
in free access to knowledge. By ignoring and avoiding the restrictive legal
regime for intellectual property, which was brought about by decades of
neoliberalism, as well as the privatization or closure of public institutions,
spatial controls, policing, and surveillance – all of which disable or restrict
possibilities for building new social relations and a new commons – Public
Library can be seen as part of the broader movement to resist neoliberal
austerity politics and the commodification of knowledge and education
and to appropriate public spaces and public goods for common purposes.
While Public Library is fully engaged with the movement to oppose the
copyright regime – which developed as a kind of rent for expropriating the
commons and reintroducing an artificial scarcity of cognitive goods that
could be reproduced virtually for free – the project is not under the spell of
digital fetishism, which until fairly recently celebrated a new digital commons as a non-frictional space of smooth collaboration where a new political and economic autonomy would be forged that would spill over and
undermine the real economy and permeate all spheres of life.9 As Matteo
Pasquinelli argues in his critique of “digitalism” and its celebration of the
6
7
8
9
See Brown, Undoing the Demos.
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Verso, London and
New York, 2014.
Marcell Mars, Manar Zarroug, and Tomislav Medak, “Public Library”, in Public Library,
ed. Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and What, How & for Whom / WHW, exh. publication, What, How & for Whom / WHW and Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, 2015, p. 78.
See Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, and Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008.
290
What, How & for Whom / WHW
virtues of the information economy with no concern about the material
basis of production, the information economy is a parasite on the material
economy and therefore “an accurate understanding of the common must
be always interlinked with the real physical forces producing it and the material economy surrounding it.”10
Public Library emancipates books from the restrictive copyright regime
and participates in the exchange of information enabled by digital technology, but it also acknowledges the labour and energy that make this possible. There is labour that goes into the cataloguing of the books, and labour
that goes into scanning them before they can be brought into the digital
realm of free reproduction, just as there are the ingenuity and labour of
the engineers who developed a special scanner that makes it easier to scan
books; also, the scanner needs to be installed, maintained, and fed books
over hours of work. This is where the institutional space of art comes in
handy by supporting the material production central to the Public Library
endeavour. But the scanner itself does not need to be visible. In 2014, at
the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, we curated the
exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, which dealt with conflicts triggered by
struggles over access to knowledge and the effects that knowledge, as the
basis of capital reproduction, has on the totality of workers’ lives. In the
exhibition, the production funds allocated to Public Library were used to
build the book scanner at Calafou, an anarchist cooperative outside Barcelona. The books chosen for scanning were relevant to the exhibition’s
themes – methods of reciprocal learning and teaching, forms of social and
political organization, the history of the Spanish Civil War, etc. – and after
being scanned, they were uploaded to the Public Library website. All that
was visible in the exhibition itself was a kind of index card or business card
with a URL link to the Public Library website and a short statement (fig. 1):
A public library is:
• free access to books for every member of society
• library catalog
• librarian
With books ready to be shared, meticulously cataloged, everyone is a
librarian. When everyone is librarian, the library is everywhere.11
Public Library’s alliance with art institutions serves to strengthen the
cultural capital both for the general demand to free books from copyright
restrictions on cultural goods and for the project itself – such cultural capital could be useful in a potential lawsuit. Simultaneously, the presence and
realization of the Public Library project within an exhibition enlists the host
institution as part of the movement and exerts influence on it by taking
the museum’s public mission seriously and extending it into a grey zone of
10
11
Ibid., p. 29.
Mars, Zarroug, and Medak, “Public Library”, p. 85.
“There is something political in the city air”
291
questionable legality. The defence of the project becomes possible by making the traditional claim of the “autonomy” of art, which is not supposed
to assert any power beyond the museum walls. By taking art’s autonomy
at its word, and by testing the truth of the liberal-democratic claim that
the field of art is a field of unlimited freedom, Public Library engages in a
kind of “overidentification” game, or what Keller Easterling, writing about
the expanded activist repertoire in infrastructure space, calls “exaggerated
compliance”.12 Should the need arise, as in the case of a potential lawsuit
against the project, claims of autonomy and artistic freedom create a protective shroud of untouchability. And in this game of liberating books from
the parochial capitalist imagination that restricts their free circulation, the
institution becomes a complicit partner. The long-acknowledged insight
that institutions embrace and co-opt critique is, in this particular case, a
win-win situation, as Public Library uses the public status of the museum
as a springboard to establish the basic message of free access and the free
circulation of books and knowledge as common sense, while the museum
performs its mission of bringing knowledge to the public and supporting
creativity, in this case the reworking, rebuilding and reuse of technology
for the common good. The fact that the institution is not naive but complicit produces a synergy that enhances potentialities for influencing and
permeating the public sphere. The gesture of not exhibiting the scanner in
the museum has, among other things, a practical purpose, as more books
would be scanned voluntarily by the members of the anarchist commune
in Calafou than would be by the overworked museum staff, and employing
somebody to do this during the exhibition would be too expensive (and the
mantra of cuts, cuts, cuts would render negotiation futile). If there is a flirtatious nod to the strategic game of not exposing too much, it is directed less
toward the watchful eyes of the copyright police than toward the exhibition
regime of contemporary art group shows in which works compete for attention, the biggest scarcity of all. Public Library flatly rejects identification
with the object “our beloved bookscanner” (as the scanner is described on
the project website13), although it is an attractive object that could easily
be featured as a sculpture within the exhibition. But its efficacy and use
come first, as is also true of the enigmatic business card–like leaflet, which
attracts people to visit the Public Library website and use books, not only to
read them but also to add books to the library: doing this in the privacy of
one’s home on one’s own computer is certainly more effective than doing
it on a computer provided and displayed in the exhibition among the other
art objects, films, installations, texts, shops, cafés, corridors, exhibition
halls, elevators, signs, and crowds in a museum like Reina Sofia.
For the exhibition to include a scanner that was unlikely to be used or
a computer monitor that showed the website from which books might be
12
13
Easterling, Extrastatecraft, p. 492.
See https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2012/10/28/our-belovedbookscanner-2/ (accessed July 4, 2016).
292
What, How & for Whom / WHW
downloaded, but probably not read, would be the embodiment of what
philosopher Robert Pfaller calls “interpassivity”, the appearance of activity or a stand-in for it that in fact replaces any genuine engagement.14 For
Pfaller, interpassivity designates a flight from engagement, a misplaced libidinal investment that under the mask of enjoyment hides aversion to an
activity that one is supposed to enjoy, or more precisely: “Interpassivity is
the creation of a compromise between cultural interests and latent cultural
aversion.”15 Pfaller’s examples of participation in an enjoyable process that
is actually loathed include book collecting and the frantic photocopying of
articles in libraries (his book was originally published in 2002, when photocopying had not yet been completely replaced by downloading, bookmarking, etc.).16 But he also discusses contemporary art exhibitions as sites of
interpassivity, with their overabundance of objects and time-based works
that require time that nobody has, and with the figure of the curator on
whom enjoyment is displaced – the latter, he says, is a good example of
“delegated enjoyment”. By not providing the exhibition with a computer
from which books can be downloaded, the project ensures that books are
seen as vehicles of knowledge acquired by reading and not as immaterial
capital to be frantically exchanged; the undeniable pleasure of downloading and hoarding books is, after all, just one step removed from the playground of interpassivity that the exhibition site (also) is.
But Public Library is hardly making a moralistic statement about the
virtues of reading, nor does it believe that ignorance (such as could be
overcome by reading the library’s books) is the only obstacle that stands
in the way of ultimate emancipation. Rather, the project engages with, and
contributes to, the social practice that David Harvey calls “commoning”:
“an unstable and malleable social relation between a particular self-defined social group and those aspects of its actually existing or yet-to-becreated social and/or physical environment deemed crucial to its life and
livelihood”.17 Public Library works on the basis of commoning and tries to
enlist others to join it, which adds a distinctly political dimension to the
sabotage of intellectual property revenues and capital accumulation.
The political dimension of Public Library and the effort to form and
publicize the movement were expressed more explicitly in the Public Li14
15
16
17
Robert Pfaller, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners, Verso, London and New York, 2014.
Ibid., p. 76.
Pfaller’s book, which first appeared in German, was published in English only in 2014.
His ideas have gained greater relevance over time, not only as the shortcomings of the
immensely popular social media activism became apparent – where, as many critics
have noted, participation in political organizing and the articulation of political tasks
and agendas are often replaced by a click on an icon – but also because of Pfaller’s
broader argument about the self-deception at play in interpassivity and its role in eliciting enjoyment from austerity measures and other calamities imposed on the welfare
state by the neoliberal regime, which since early 2000 has exceeded even the most sober (and pessimistic) expectations.
Ibid., p. 73.
“There is something political in the city air”
293
brary exhibition in 2015 at Gallery Nova in Zagreb, where we have been
directing the programme since 2003. If the Public Library project was not
such an eminently collective practice that pays no heed to the author function, the Gallery Nova show might be considered something like a solo exhibition. As it was realized, the project again used art as an infrastructure
and resource to promote the movement of freeing books from copyright
restrictions while collecting legitimization points from the art world as enhanced cultural capital that could serve as armour against future attacks
by the defenders of the holy scripture of copyright laws. But here the more
important tactic was to show the movement as an army of many and to
strengthen it through self-presentation. The exhibition presented Public
Library as a collection of collections, and the repertory form (used in archive science to describe a collection) was taken as the basic narrative procedure. It mobilized and activated several archives and open digital repositories, such as MayDay Rooms from London, The Ignorant Schoolmaster and
His Committees from Belgrade, Library Genesis and Aaaaaarg.org, Catalogue
of Free Books, (Digitized) Praxis, the digitized work of the Midnight Notes
Collective, and Textz.com, with special emphasis on activating the digital
repositories UbuWeb and Monoskop. Not only did the exhibition attempt to
enlist the gallery audience but, equally important, the project was testing
its own strength in building, articulating, announcing, and proposing, or
speculating on, a broader movement to oppose the copyright of cultural
goods within and adjacent to the art field.
Presenting such a movement in an art institution changes one of the
basic tenets of art, and for an art institution the project’s main allure probably lies in this kind of expansion of the art field. A shared politics is welcome, but nothing makes an art institution so happy as the sense of purpose that a project like Public Library can endow it with. (This, of course,
comes with its own irony, for while art institutions nowadays compete for
projects that show emphatically how obsolete the aesthetic regime of art is,
they continue to base their claims of social influence on knowledge gained
through some form of aesthetic appreciation, however they go about explaining and justifying it.) At the same time, Public Library’s nonchalance
about institutional maladies and anxieties provides a homeopathic medicine whose effect is sometimes so strong that discussion about placebos
becomes, at least temporarily, beside the point. One occasion when Public
Library’s roving of the political terrain became blatantly direct was the exhibition Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, which we organized in the summer of 2015 at Gallery Nova (figs.
2–4).
The exhibition/action Written-off was based on data from Ante Lesaja’s
extensive research on “library purification”, which he published in his book
Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjige u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih (Libricide: The Destruction
of Books in Croatia in the 1990s).18 People were invited to bring in copies of
18
Ante Lesaja, Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjige u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih, Profil and Srbsko narodno
294
What, How & for Whom / WHW
books that had been removed from Croatian public libraries in the 1990s.
The books were scanned and deposited in a digital archive; they then became available on a website established especially for the project. In Croatia during the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of books were removed from
schools and factories, from public, specialized, and private libraries, from
former Yugoslav People’s Army centres, socio-political organizations, and
elsewhere because of their ideologically inappropriate content, the alphabet they used (Serbian Cyrillic), or the ethnic or political background of the
authors. The books were mostly thrown into rubbish bins, discarded on
the street, destroyed, or recycled. What Lesaja’s research clearly shows is
that the destruction of the books – as well as the destruction of monuments
to the People’s Liberation War (World War II) – was not the result of individuals running amok, as official accounts preach, but a deliberate and systematic action that symbolically summarizes the dominant politics of the
1990s, in which war, rampant nationalism, and phrases about democracy
and sovereignty were used as a rhetorical cloak to cover the nakedness of
the capitalist counter-revolution and criminal processes of dispossession.
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
set up scanners in the gallery, initiated a call for collecting and scanning
books that had been expunged from public institutions in the 1990s, and
outlined the criteria for the collection, which corresponded to the basic
domains in which the destruction of the books, as a form of censorship,
was originally implemented: books written in the Cyrillic alphabet or in
Serbian regardless of the alphabet; books forming a corpus of knowledge
about communism, especially Yugoslav communism, Yugoslav socialism,
and the history of the workers’ struggle; and books presenting the anti-Fascist and revolutionary character of the People’s Liberation Struggle during
World War II.
The exhibition/action was called Written-off because the removal and
destruction of the books were often presented as a legitimate procedure
of library maintenance, thus masking the fact that these books were unwanted, ideologically unacceptable, dangerous, harmful, unnecessary, etc.
Written-off unequivocally placed “book destruction” in the social context
of the period, when the destruction of “unwanted” monuments and books
was happening alongside the destruction of homes and the killing of “unwanted” citizens, outside of and prior to war operations. For this reason,
the exhibition was dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of Operation
Storm, the final military/police operation in what is called, locally, the
Croatian Homeland War.19
The exhibition was intended as a concrete intervention against a political logic that resulted in mass exile and killing, the history of which is
glossed over and critical discussion silenced, and also against the official
19
vijeće, Zagreb, 2012.
Known internationally as the Croatian War of Independence, the war was fought between Croatian forces and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army from 1991 to
1995.
“There is something political in the city air”
295
celebrations of the anniversary, which glorified militarism and proclaimed
the ethical purity of the victory (resulting in the desired ethnic purity of the
nation).
As both symbolic intervention and real-life action, then, the exhibition
Written-off took place against a background of suppressed issues relating
to Operation Storm – ethno-nationalism as the flip side of neoliberalism,
justice and the present status of the victims and refugees, and the overall character of the war known officially as the Homeland War, in which
discussions about its prominent traits as a civil war are actively silenced
and increasingly prosecuted. In protest against the official celebrations
and military parades, the exhibition marked the anniversary of Operation
Storm with a collective action that evokes books as symbolic of a “knowledge society” in which knowledge becomes the location of conflictual engagement. It pointed toward the struggle over collective symbolic capital
and collective memory, in which culture as a form of the commons has a
direct bearing on the kind of place we live in. The Public Library project,
however, is engaged not so much with cultural memory and remembrance
as a form of recollection or testimony that might lend political legitimation
to artistic gestures; rather, it engages with history as a construction and
speculative proposition about the future, as Peter Osborne argues in his
polemical hypotheses on the notion of contemporary art that distinguishes
between “contemporary” and “present-day” art: “History is not just a relationship between the present and the past – it is equally about the future.
It is this speculative futural moment that definitively separates the concept
of history from memory.”20 For Public Library, the future that participates
in the construction of history does not yet exist, but it is defined as more
than just a project against the present as reflected in the exclusionary, parochially nationalistic, revisionist and increasingly fascist discursive practices of the Croatian political elites. Rather, the future comes into being as
an active and collective construction based on the emancipatory aspects of
historical experiences as future possibilities.
Although defined as an action, the project is not exultantly enthusiastic
about collectivity or the immediacy and affective affinities of its participants, but rather it transcends its local and transient character by taking
up the broader counter-hegemonic struggle for the mutual management
of joint resources. Its endeavour is not limited to the realm of the political
and ideological but is rooted in the repurposing of technological potentials
from the restrictive capitalist game and the reutilization of the existing infrastructure to build a qualitatively different one. While the culture industry adapts itself to the limited success of measures that are geared toward
preventing the free circulation of information by creating new strategies
for pushing information into a form of property and expropriating value
20
Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art, Verso, London
and New York, 2013, p. 194.
296
What, How & for Whom / WHW
fig. 1
Marcell Mars, Art as Infrastructure: Public Library, installation
view, Really Useful Knowledge, curated by WHW, Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2014.
Photo by Joaquin Cortes and Roman Lores / MNCARS.
fig. 2
Public Library, exhibition view, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 3
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, exhibition detail, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 4
Written-off: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Operation
Storm, exhibition detail, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2015.
Photo by Ivan Kuharic.
fig. 5
Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum, Autonomy Cube,
installation view, Really Useful Knowledge, curated by WHW,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2014.
Photo by Joaquín Cortés and Román Lores / MNCARS.
through the control of metadata (information about information),21 Public Library shifts the focus away from aesthetic intention – from unique,
closed, and discrete works – to a database of works and the metabolism
of the database. It creates values through indexing and connectivity, imagined communities and imaginative dialecticization. The web of interpenetration and determination activated by Public Library creates a pedagogical endeavour that also includes a propagandist thrust, if the notion of
propaganda can be recast in its original meaning as “things that must be
disseminated”.
A similar didactic impetus and constructivist praxis is present in the work
Autonomy Cube, which was developed through the combined expertise of
artist and geographer Trevor Paglen and internet security researcher, activist and hacker Jacob Appelbaum. This work, too, we presented in the
Reina Sofia exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, along with Public Library
and other projects that offered a range of strategies and methodologies
through which the artists attempted to think through the disjunction between concrete experience and the abstraction of capital, enlisting pedagogy as a crucial element in organized collective struggles. Autonomy Cube
offers a free, open-access, encrypted internet hotspot that routes internet
traffic over TOR, a volunteer-run global network of servers, relays, and services, which provides anonymous and unsurveilled communication. The
importance of the privacy of the anonymized information that Autonomy
Cube enables and protects is that it prevents so-called traffic analysis – the
tracking, analysis, and theft of metadata for the purpose of anticipating
people’s behaviour and relationships. In the hands of the surveillance
state this data becomes not only a means of steering our tastes, modes of
consumption, and behaviours for the sake of making profit but also, and
more crucially, an effective method and weapon of political control that
can affect political organizing in often still-unforeseeable ways that offer
few reasons for optimism. Visually, Autonomy Cube references minimalist
sculpture (fig. 5) (specifically, Hans Haacke’s seminal piece Condensation
Cube, 1963–1965), but its main creative drive lies in the affirmative salvaging of technologies, infrastructures, and networks that form both the leading organizing principle and the pervasive condition of complex societies,
with the aim of supporting the potentially liberated accumulation of collective knowledge and action. Aesthetic and art-historical references serve
as camouflage or tools for a strategic infiltration that enables expansion of
the movement’s field of influence and the projection of a different (contingent) future. Engagement with historical forms of challenging institutions
becomes the starting point of a poetic praxis that materializes the object of
its striving in the here and now.
Both Public Library and Autonomy Cube build their autonomy on the dedi21
McKenzie Wark, “Metadata Punk”, in Public Library, pp. 113–117 (see n. 9).
“There is something political in the city air”
305
cation and effort of the collective body, without which they would not
exist, rendering this interdependence not as some consensual idyll of cooperation but as conflicting fields that create further information and experiences. By doing so, they question the traditional edifice of art in a way
that supports Peter Osborne’s claim that art is defined not by its aesthetic
or medium-based status, but by its poetics: “Postconceptual art articulates a post-aesthetic poetics.”22 This means going beyond criticality and
bringing into the world something defined not by its opposition to the real,
but by its creation of the fiction of a shared present, which, for Osborne,
is what makes art truly contemporary. And if projects like these become a
kind of political trophy for art institutions, the side the institutions choose
nevertheless affects the common sense of our future.