International Public Space Library
Books and ex libris stickers
2011
Artist Statement
The International Public Space Library (IPSL) is a global interactive public space project comprised of a growing collection of donated books that have been placed in public locations around the world by participant donors.
Unlike a traditional library, the IPSL is not housed in a physical building; any public place is a potential temporary location for the IPSL. Anyone can donate or borrow a book from the IPSL. To donate a book, simply affix the free, Web-downloadable IPSL ex libris in the book you want to donate downloadable here: http://momentech.blogspot.com/2010/09/international-public-space-library-ipsl.html. Then place the book in a public space anywhere in the world. IPSL explores how borders can be crossed–and how ends can be turned into beginnings–simply by placing books in the public space. Finding an IPSL book in Montreal, the viewer picks it up, enjoys it, then deposits it…in New York. Or Tokyo. Or Cairo. Or Johannesburg. This dimension is exciting–and speaks directly to the exhibition organizers’ contention that “field, studio, and lab are not only places where knowledge is produced, or ethnographic data gathered, but are spaces of everyday life and local cultural production; they are generative sites of encounter, negotiation, conflict, celebration, failure, disappointment and revelation–all of which can unsettle (or ossify) discursive, disciplinary, and methodological boundaries.” The idea for the IPSL was inspired by the discovery of a book in the public space in St. Montan, France, inside of which was inscribed similar text.
Biography
A New York-based experimental production studio, MomenTech coined the term Augenblicksmus to describe a creative philosophy based on the notion of the momentary to develop new themes for the mobilization of transnational progressivism, post-humanism, neo-nomadism and futurism. With instructional works, public interventions, and audience participatory projects, MomenTech views artmaking as creative production, providing art solutions to curators, producers, directors, exhibition organizers looking for new ways to engage the public on critical issues and theoretical problems in modern Western approaches to art.
