What will it be next? Books as landfill?
Take heart: the books used to construct this room have a future life — “but meanwhile they will have been worked on as sculpting matter and as the spirit of the place where the artist intends to hold us: an hexagonal enclosure with a passage defined by mirrors that assure the vertigo of a fall, the ad infinitum fragmentation, the panic of spatial disorientation characteristic of a virtual infinity,” according to the translated website of Prague artist Matej Kren.
Whatever. The Book Cell Project remained intact for six months, demonstrating “the work … of piling up thousands of books, creating an architectonic structure where we are invited to step inside.”
On the other hand, is there a cell we would rather occupy? “Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,/Are a substantial world, both pure and good,” wrote Wordsworth.
” … and books are yours,
Within whose silent chambers treasure lies
Preserved from age to age; more precious far
Than that accumulated store of gold
And orient gems, which, for a day of need,
The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs.
These hoards of truth you can unlock at will:”
