Fantasies of the Library

When we think of the library we often focus on its systems of order—the even-spaced rows of shelves, the discrete call numbers on the spines of books. But Fantasies of the Library reveals that our experience of the library is instead one of chaotic discovery and unexpected interconnections, a true reflection of the often nonlinear and dreamlike state of our own minds.

Dan Cohen, Executive Director, Digital Public Library of America

In an age of engineered serendipity and algorithmically generated enlightenment, of Big Data and semantic webs, it's easy to forget that so many of our database dreams (and nightmares) began on a bookshelf. Fantasies of the Library reminds us that our library collections have long served as sites of discovery and fortuitous accident, epistemological inquiry and ontological re-orientation. These dreams and dialogues unfold not only between the library's book covers, but in its architectures of knowledge, both physical and conceptual. Here we can reimagine the library as a site of creative inquiry, where rearranging books and interleaving pages can spark new fantasies, revelations, and revolutions.

Shannon Mattern, Associate Professor of Media Studies, The New School

This book is a space of the curatorial. Its pages serve as sites to exhibit knowledge, while pointing to the library as a locus of discursive excavation. Playful pagination creates unexpected juxtapositions which reveal the limits of linearity; this book-as-exhibition reminds us that reality is full of irregularities and unforeseen layers. These fantasies of the library are more real than fiction.

Ute Meta Bauer, Professor and Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore

The library as digital-analog remix, as labyrinth, as madness—a spectacular exploration of knowledge infrastructures in transition. Brilliant, restless, searching: Fantasies of the Library is a meta-tour of the archive with the ghosts of Foucault, Borges, and Flaubert.

Paul N. Edwards, Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan