Designblog

It should be here – here somewhere in the crowd. So small and delicate with it’s plain surface. A small rectangle to be overlooked so easily among the other squares: Rectangles, check rectangles, parallelograms and trapeze.

It’s suppose to be here – right here on the shelf! But others have taken its place. Pushed it from the archive. Where is it? with its special and beautiful exterior – it is fascinating like the other two.

I have it so clearly in my mind, but I don’t see it. Black spots all over – not the one I’m looking for.  

The small black dot on the woodlike surface you could look through whenever you have been allowed to look inside. Who really decides who? Why have the others dispelled it from its normal place? Maybe it wasn’t alienated, but someone found it and found it as interesting as I did. Maybe they chose it for the same reason – or maybe another just as reasonable. Who really decides who? The book or me? Or do we even get the chance if the others beat us to it! Hopefully it will be back!

Waiting. For the next to come along.

I am plain, hard and angular, but soft and blue under the surface. Filled with interesting elements, like a little treasure – waiting to be found. A treasury of various jewelleries. Shape, material, colour and content. Judging from my appearance I look like something out of a dumpster or like I should be returned to a recycling station. If only people could see.

Looking aside or being abnormal does not need to be terrifying, but should bring forth curiosity.

Grab the book as it lies here on the shelf with its naked surface. It doesn’t seem all that interesting, but somehow you still feel drawn to it. A book where the content does not show, this must indeed be a disadvantage. Who would choose this book based on its external?

Do we choose the book or does it choose us?

777.6-cat-304

A completely blank cover surface among all the other books in the library. Just plain white with no text. No information. This alone awakens my interest. No title, no writer, no summary, no number on its back.

This book seams different. It comes on almost boring, but it still makes you wonder. Why is it like that? What’s in it? What does it say? Maybe it tells a secret which you can only get to know about if you pick the book.
The book doesn’t shine when it is on the shelf. It’s small, slender and white – very neutral. Maybe it contains something that has been hidden away waiting to be rediscovered.

If you look closer you see that it works as a box. So it hasn’t got the “normal” book feeling. When you open the box, you sense how fragile it is. Despite its abnormal appearance this book is like many others of its kind held together by tape.

Inside the box is a collection of postcards

Rietveld Academie Library No: 777.6

“subjective library” images and flickr tag-cloud

Read the reflections of A and C group’s journey into the Rietveld Library’s Design and Art section. This journey to investigate, made our fascinations, preconceptions and hidden desires manifest. How does a subjective book choice create a personal mirror and leaves traces of tags, connecting Design to Art, exposing autonomy in both.

Read about the subjective, open and intiutive first book choice from the Design section of our library. Wonder about the tags connected to those accounts. Follow the continuing story as a second book is selected based on those tags created. Witness the third posting in which those sets of tags lead us from Design to Art. A move that forces us to reflect upon the connection between them both.

Follow the continuing accounts of the three succeeding investigating postings by clicking on the yellow link. Experience the total list of tags created during this “Subjective Library” Project.

LIST OF TAGS:

3289 days, A4, cover, funky colors, television, unatractive, film photography : fauna, flora, interesting, lines, strange, fluffy, simple, horrible, brainwork, complicated, proud, “to know” : disorder, game, grid, systematization, “One Minute Sculpture” : library, swindler, breaking news, library loser, extraordinary, talented : space, absence-presence, framework, surrounding, returning : abnormal, rediscover, choice, plain, others : 1000, 754., direction, signs, city, direction, traffic, political, posters : blue Pinocchio, screaming, spine of book, blue, Pinocchio, blue fairy, eyecandy, contemporary, folk, mentality : not getting there, unknown, judging by covers, content, connection, strangers, subject : supermarket, theft, housewife, tiny, midlife crisis, multilingual : logic, question, reason, consciousness, interest, remarks, impossible, mathematical, perspective : attraction, strange, swissfolk, art, death, life, love, Maurizio Cattelan : cover, old book, unique, obsession, miniature : Anita, eyes, portrait, dominant, name, color, film : Wiener Werkstätte, characteristic, hand work, mass fabrication, original, process, realization, detail, photography, the nude : cheap fashion, funny, random, tattoo, tribe, weird, mysterious, tribe : attraction, new texture, action, quick, warning, a priori, new, amusement, choices, eye-catching, eyes, random : escape reality, library, overflow of impulses, fruitless reality, jostling time, absorbing force, déjà-vu : arrange, industrial, library, architecture, museum, self-made, Andreas Gursky, index : city, nomadic, reality, funky, colors, interiors : contrast, fat, texture, typography, culture, nudity : conceptional, distance, no image, steps, thinking space, braille : cat, compulsive, font, chaos, subjective, illustration, objective, random, Tadao Ando : airplane, airport, choice, structure, worldmap, 756, 80’s, human, machines, unique, flying : dot, jewelry, shapes & forms, yellow, children, fun, paint, playful, all colors, blue, green, theory : extraordinary, life, normal, objects, absurd : 80’s, desire, fashion, party, techno, desire, fabrics, orgasmatic : alchemy, identical, methaphysics, mysticism, mythology, Arabic, identical, inaccurate, ladies, naked, orient, sculptures, stereotypes : Canada, Indian symbols, kitsch, raven, Indian art, Mexico, Jeff Koons, porn : attraction, gold, meeting an old lover, recognition, cheap, irresistibility, not psychology, wrong, beauty, compare, contrast, couple, same, similarity, together, two books, ugliness : connection, embroidery, hundred years, death, funerals, general terms, invisible, object, spirit, visible : color, feeling, personal story, feminism, graphic : first sight, mystery, old-fashioned, bloody, mad, rituals, revelatory, Yin : oblivion, automatic lives, bottom shelve, eat, mantra, story-making, colorful, dogs, double-take, eat sleep, vases, vegetables : attracted, nothing, black, disturbing.

still curious read the books involved at the Gerrit Rietveld Library, (catalogue numbers are included).