Look Closely. The Artist’s Book
Four-Colour Process Mediation Around the Library’s Collection of Artists' Books
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration by writing to biblioteca@museoreinasofia.es from 9 December onwards
Saturday, 17 December 2022: 11am, 11:30am and 12pm; 2 hours and 30 minutes
Previous calls:
2nd call: 26 November 2022 - 11am, 11:30am and 12pm; 2 hours and 30 minutes
1st call: 8 October 2022 - 11am, 11:30am and 12pm; 2 hours and 30 minutes
Look Closely is one of the action lines that shapes the mediation programme Casi libros (Almost Books). This particular line centres on training users in the artistic and documentary holdings from the Museo’s Library and disseminating manifold specialist tools designed for art research and contemporary creation by way of a series of formats comprising workshops, courses and thematic guides, to take place over the course of a year.
Following on from the first edition centred on the photobook, Colectivo HUL, in collaboration with the Museo’s Education Area and Library and Documentation Centre, puts forward a new mediation device around the Library’s collection of artists’ books. A simple approach to one of the most hard-to-classify printed art forms is behind an attempt to take a closer look at some of the most relevant creators and works, starting from the execution of their ideas.
The activity is made up of a morning workshop — split into three groups with different access — which aims to raise awareness, through four stations based on the principles of four-colour printing, of the array of possibilities within the artist’s book, from its poetic beginnings with Mallarmé and Apollinaire to its more contemporary expressions. During the process, some of these strange and original copies housed in the Library will be explored, before finally creating an in-house publication, be it via illegible books, rolls of the dice, typewriters, postcards, cassette tapes or any other thing which, from our imagination and according to Ulises Carrión, can be (in)catalogued as:
(other)
(anti)
(almost)
books
Colectivo HUL came into being in 2014 through its associations with the Damn, A Book! micropublishing and face-slap festival. Under the tag “cultural loutishness” it has carried out every kind of curatorial, artistic, editorial and education activity for institutions such as Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Sport, public libraries from Madrid City Council, M21 Radio, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, and the Escuela de Art Thinking de Pedagogías Invisibles. Since 2019, it has developed the CMYB mediation project with the Museo Reina Sofía’s Education Area and Library and Documentation Centre Departments.