AF Open Call

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The Open Call is my biggest regret. I had a very clear image of the books I wanted to see. I wanted books that replicated the feeling of the Peruvian Piracy cases. Books that created a sense of suspicion, that confronted the reader with the removal of the authority of the author. And by hosting them in the library we would question how we use the library, interact with the canon, etc. I didn’t realise at the time that it wasn’t really ok to project those expectations onto the free labour of other people, or maybe I didn’t have the skills to sell what I thought was the concept at the core of the project. Instead, we received lots of books from all over the world, in the most generous way, but they were mostly artist’s books. Fairly enough, the books were all authored objects in themselves, with poetic descriptions and lots of care, but not what I had envisioned. And now we felt we owed all those people, that we needed to find a way to credit them, to always carry all the books to exhibitions (physically carry most of the time, in our luggage, through planes, airports and foreign cities). We still owe them and what happens with the collection is a big problem. But part of me still doesn’t understand why we made that contract and if we created a system of exploitation at what point can we let go, or how can we take it apart.

Annotated by AF