About this Event
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. Jorge Luis Borges
***
In today’s day and age, spaces of free, open, and public access are few and far between, increasingly disappearing as private entities take over spaces once understood as public—from culture to transportation. Amidst these societal changes, libraries are a stalwart of access. For many people they are a space to find much more than reading. They offer spaces for caregivers to spend time with their charges, are where a clean restroom is found, and frequently function as cooling and warming stations amidst increasingly extreme climates. At their core, while beginning as a collection of publications, libraries grow as spaces for curiosity to meet the needs of those who arrive.
For these reasons, the library has also been adopted as a format by many artists—as a process-based space where intimate writing and open conversation converge. A growing number of artists conceive of libraries–collections, series, and places of study—as the structure for dialogue and public programming, placing writing and the transmission of ideas at their core. In this context, a library becomes more than a repository of knowledge. It functions as a living space for exchange, reflection, and collective inquiry, where reading, writing, and conversation are understood as interconnected practices.
At Skowhegan, our Lehman Library is open 24 hours a day and has become a small hub on campus—a parenthesis where you can stop and rest, a place to research, and also a place to wander through the many stories written by others. There, publications collected from 1946 to present document the attention and needs of our community of artists–literature, history, global antiquities, cultural theory, politics, pop culture, dance, and more. It’s also our preferred space for all kinds of conversations, exchanges and writing-reading performative situations. The Library on our website grew out of this ethos, as an exercise to stretch the bounds between our expanded community and readers. In this new editorial-archival platform, we continue with commissions, and grow the presence of voices in this space. More stories, fictions, depictions, and drafts.
As The Library approaches one year, we want to consider, discuss, and test as a prompt the many different meanings of “the library,” as a gathering, a rehearsal space, a collection, and an organizational logic with open-access and transmission at its core.
This symposium is organized by the definitions of the term, bringing together voices that explore this structure in their respective spaces, online or in-person, and broaden how and whom can engage with artistic pedagogy.
Join us in part or for all sessions of this three-part event!
5:00–5:15 PM: Opening Remarks
5:20–6:30 PM: Session I
The creation of libraries as spaces for dialogue and public programming are an expanded method of artistic practice that transforms writing and reading into a shared, performative experience. These spaces not only preserve and circulate knowledge; they also create opportunities for encounters, exchanges, and collective forms of meaning-making, turning the acts of reading and writing into living, relational processes. To open the symposium, we ask: how do artists approach libraries as creative works, and simultaneously create places where creative work can continue?
In this first session of the symposium, we will focus on libraries as an artistic format, founded by artists and writers who conceive these spaces as a corporeal extension of writing and reading. Artists who write often work across image, text, and gesture as interconnected, non-linear forms that inform and sustain one another.
Speakers: Mette Edvardsen (Norma T) and Amarie Cemone Gipson (The Reading Room HTX), in conversation with Ruth Estévez (Skowhegan)
6:40–7:50 PM: Session II
Collections offer the foundation of modern-day libraries, akin to wunderkammers, the idiosyncratic cabinets of curiosities composed of artwork, antiquity, scientific items, and more, typically, gathered during colonial travels. The process of “collection” has multiple connotations—it is a process that speaks to systems of power engendered by the capacity to collect, and also a framing device that speaks to thematic, networked thinking within an idiosyncratic system. In our second session, we explore what collections mean in the context of artists’ collection-based projects and arts-driven libraries: How can collection-based libraries subvert existing power dynamics within artistic structures? What does collection offer as an artistic method?
Speakers: Sunny Iyer (Wendy’s Subway) and Jillian Suárez (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture), in conversation with Lilia Rocio Taboada (Skowhegan)
8:00–9:00 PM: Closing Session: An Artist Response
As an entity in total, libraries offer a structure of logic through their systems of seriality, index, and form. A serial system also allows for chance encounters to occur. This relationship between structure and chance is one which many artists explore, creating sameness and repetition as a means for surprise and improvisation. For this final session, we ask an artist to respond to the logic of the library, and consider what this framework can mean. How would you portray your library, or the idiosyncratic systems of another?
Artist Response by Shirt
***
Speakers:
Mette Edvardsen is a performer and choreographer working with language, voice and writing as material for her pieces. Alongside her live works, she has developed a publishing practice, both within her own artistic work as well as an independent small press. Since 2021, she has run Norma T.
📚 Norma T is a project room, an occasional bookshop and a fictional friend, in her workspace in Oslo. An onsite library collection of her long-term project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (2010–ongoing), where a group of people learn books by heart and together form a library of living books, is hosted at Norma T and contains the paper copies of all the memorized books, a shadow library, and a reference library.
Amarie Cemone Gipson is a Houston-based cultural worker dedicated to fostering literacy around Black art and cultural production through critical writing, librarianship, and public programming. She has held curatorial assistant and fellowship positions at several American art institutions, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2024, she was awarded the AICA-USA’s Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism. Gipson is the founder of The Reading Room HTX based in Houston, Texas.
📚 The Reading Room HTX is an independent reference library and site for intellectual gathering devoted to Black visual art and cultural history. Anchored by a growing collection of 1,000+ books and online resources, the library hosts free educational programs designed to promote visual literacy, foster critical thinking and nurture curiosity.
Sunny Iyer collaborates with others to produce art book fairs and spaces for alternative education. In her role as Fairs & Editions Coordinator at Printed Matter, she co-organizes the NY and LA Art Book Fairs. She is the shop steward of the Printed Matter Union. As Program Director of Wendy’s Subway, she curates a wide range of events with an emphasis on writing workshops and reading groups. She is a member of Writers Against the War on Gaza. Her research and artistic practice focuses on independent distribution networks, experimental pedagogy, and Indian classical dance. Her writing can be found in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Plank Magazine, Colorama, and elsewhere.
📚 Wendy’s Subway is a reading room, writing space, and independent publisher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They support emerging artists and writers in making experimental, urgent work and create alternative modes for learning and thinking in community. Wendy’s Subway is dedicated to encouraging creative, critical, and discursive engagement with arts and literature. Their interdisciplinary program includes readings, talks, performances, and reading groups, as well as sliding-scale writing workshops and intensives. Their multi-series publishing initiative includes artists’ books, poetic texts, and hybrid-genre works by time-based artists. Their non-circulating library holds a collection of over 4,000 titles, ranging from poetry and fiction, to criticism and art books.
Jillian Suárez is the Associate Director of Research Services at the 📚 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library, where she directs the strategic vision and daily operations for the Center’s reading rooms. Grounded in prior leadership at The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, her work focuses on expanding access to special collections and surfacing marginalized voices within the historical record. A collaborative leader, Jillian pairs technical expertise in digital systems and collection policy with an unyielding commitment to inclusive patron experiences. She advocates for the foundational principle that information belongs to everyone, ensuring researchers feel fully supported while navigating complex collections and sensitive histories. Jillian holds an M.L.S. from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, and a B.A. in Art History from Florida International University.
Shirt is a rapper and conceptual artist working in New York City. He is currently active on social platforms Instagram and Twitter. He is also Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Facade Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with artists to transform active construction sites into space to exhibit public art.
*Refreshments and light fare will be served
Event venue & nearby stays
Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture - New York Office, 136 West 22nd Street, New York, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.