Please join us on Wednesday 18 September, 6-8pm for the UK launch of I Shivered Violently / Don’t be Startled in the Night by Bryony Quinn and Paul Bailey published by Set Margins.
I Shivered Violently / Don’t Be Startled in the Night … approaches the renowned dynamic ordering and continual inventory of the Sitterwerk Foundation Kunstbibliothek as a site and a system of intrigue. In the publication, two essays track the intent of a bespoke machine, fitted with an RFID scanner, that reads the shelves of the library at the end of the day. Visitors return items to the shelves at random and so, at night, an up-to-date record — and map — of the collection is created.
The behaviour of magnets, prompted by their role in the library’s technology, guides the attention of this publication, and is the subject of the written essay by Bryony Quinn. A visual essay, by Paul Bailey, which arranges material harvested from the Sitterwerk collection and beyond, deals with the conditions and manipulations of seeing with, and through, machines.
Throughout the evening, the publication will become a prop to guide a series of live, looped, networked readings in an attempt to bring into view the poetics and possibilities of (dis)order, (il)legibility and (dis)orientation.