‘Stadsbiblioteket’ Mapping and Intervention

The project's aim was to map and then to identify opportunities for interventions in the City Library in Gothenburg. 

In the mapping process, the analysis of aspects related to context, community, time, material and legacy - such as boundaries, rituals and politics of control for instance - were investigated through  “the table”, as an object that operates in several ways in this place.  

After the mapping phase, some interventions were made. The aims of these interventions were:

- to speculate on the possibilities for libraries to become a place which allows producing and sharing knowledge, maybe in similar way as Wikipedia does in the digital world;

- to reflect on the power of libraries in countries where several books have been banned but also in Sweden, where there were some situations of parents pressuring libraries and schools to banned some children books or publishers to change some books’content. This power can also appears in ‘inoffensive’ ways, as the growth of “trigger warning” in USA and also in Europe;

- to reflect and challenge the power of the City Library in relation to curating the knowledge, like highlighting books in special shelves for instance.

Project developed with Marlena Karpa and Tajda Cesarek