14/9/2006
The Martha Rosler Library
NICC, Antwerp
The Martha Rosler Library offers the visitor an opportunity to approach this open source of information with her or his own interests, and to create new affinities and connections between the elements of the library that add to more than the sum of knowledge contained in it.
An intinerant project
MuHKA, Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerp, NICC and Siemens Arts Program are
pleased to announce the opening of the Martha Rosler Library in Antwerp on September
14, 2006 at 8.30 pm, as part of the exhibition ACADEMY. Learning from Art. Comprised
of approximately 7,700 titles from the artist's personal collection, the Library was
opened to the public by e-flux in November 2005 as a storefront reading room. The
contents range from political theory, art history and poetry to science fiction,
mystery and children's books; they include periodicals, dictionaries, maps and
travel books, as well as photo albums, posters, postcards and newspaper clippings.
A personal library represents the private sphere of an individual, her way of
acquiring and combining knowledge. Accumulation is the result of an intellectual
inquiry that takes place in parallel with a more random search, which can lead us to
unexpected textual, and therefore mental, spaces. The Martha Rosler Library offers
the visitor an opportunity to approach this open source of information with her or
his own interests, and to create new affinities and connections between the elements
of the library that add to more than the sum of knowledge contained in it.
A reading group will be assembled to use the library as the basis for a series of
informal discussions around texts chosen by Martha Rosler and members of the group.
The meetings were initiated in New York, and are continuing at all locations of the
library as it travels. In Antwerp a series of reading groups organised by the NICC
and MuHKA will take place in the Martha Rosler Library during its stay in Antwerp.
For each meeting, a guest reader will select a text from the library and lead the
group. Guest readers include the 'If I can't dance I dont want to be part of your
revolution' reading group from Amsterdam which will be led by Frederique Bergholtz
and Annie Fletcher and will take place on October 25th at 7pm.
Martha Rosler will give a talk on October 18th, the inaugeral lecture in a lecture
series organised by MuHKA during 2006/2007.
A publication on this project, produced in collaboration with Revolver (Archiv fur
Actuelle Kunst) and Frankfurter Kunstverein, which hosted the library this past
summer, will be available next year.
Martha Rosler is Brooklyn-based artist who works in video, photo-text, installation,
sculpture, and performance, and writes on aspects of culture, with particular focus
on everyday life and the public sphere. She is a renowned teacher who has lectured
widely, nationally and internationally, and has published ten books of photography,
art, and writing. Rosler was awarded the Spectrum International Prize in Photography
for 2005 and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in 2006.
Info:
http://www.muhka.be
http://www.nicc.be
http://www.e-flux.com/projects/library
http://www.siemensartsprogram.com
NICC
Pourbusstraat 5 - Antwerp
Mo - fri 10.00 am - 6.00 pm