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Refugee Reading Room at Space 1026 – Amze Emmons
February 15, 2011 · 7 Comments
“Library” is one of those rare words that held different connotations for me as I made the mystical transition from childhood into maturity. As a child, the small branch of the public library just a few blocks away from my home offered the promise of Reading Rainbow-style journeys into other worlds, bright picture books splattered with enough colors to rival the appeal of a candy store window, and the chance to make friends in any of a number of after-school programs. Once I entered high school, however, “library” quickly became associated with term papers, the echoing halls of silence and dust that characterize the Central Branch, and imposing walls of books stacked high beyond the reach of all but a ladder-equipped librarian. Entering Amze Emmons’ Refugee Reading Room, at Space 1026 through February 26, was like being transported instantaneously back to those easy-to-reach worlds of early childhood.
Cityscape background from Amze Emmons' Refugee Reading Room.
From the outside, Space 1026 looks like the setting for a backroom deal in a heist movie – a graffiti-covered door with caged frame over its window opens out to a steep, wooden staircase littered with newspapers and broom closet supplies. The gallery space, complete with chandelier and faded, green settee, has an air of worn elegance, like a Victorian salon caught at the winding-down point in a time-lapse photography sequence. Emmons’ show, with its pastel colors and modern urban appeal, creates a pleasant contrast that still manages to suit the room, like a brightly-colored cartoon landscape suddenly popping up in the midst of drab reality a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The silhouette of a city landscape, painted in asymmetrical lines worthy of the hand of Dr. Seuss, provides a backdrop to the exhibition. Propped up in corners and flowing over the floor like waste from an abandoned construction site are several wooden-beams, A-Frames and crates painted carnation pink. The sea of pastel debris, an homage to Emmons’ interest in refugee architecture, almost washes over a table that provides the focal point of the show: the “Reading Room Library.” Scattered over this table, constructed of a wooden flatbed propped up on plastic crates, an avalanche of paper products awaited the crush of people arriving for the First Friday opening. Seated on plastic children’s stools or crowded around the table, guests were encouraged to peruse the array of literature, photography and experiments-in-design.
Samples included in the "Refugee Reading Room Library."
“I think this particular project was heavily influenced by my collaboration on Printeresting, which is a kind of art project/art journalism project that I work on with R.L. Tillman and Jason Urban, and through that I’ve been put in touch with a lot of small press publications,” remarked artist Amze Emmons the night of the opening.
To the right of the library stands a mock-up of a newspaper stand, with white signs reading “FREE” in large, black font hanging along a series of shelves in the back. Included among the free gifts are samples of works from the library, as well as issues of the zine Machete, and various farcical tags, computer printouts, pins and matchbooks.
Free souveniers from the newspaper stand.
“I guess the big idea of the exhibit is that it’s a kind of gift economy,” Emmons explained. “And rather than just working with people who made zines – there’s poets, there’s cartoonists, there’s illustrators, there’s a lot of different types of creative people who contributed to this. And I’m sort of curious to see what happens if all that stuff is put into conversation.”
From the reaction of the First Friday crowds, whose excited chatter kept a steady background beat echoing across the small space, it seems that Emmons achieved the purpose behind the Refugee Reading Room. As individuals walked away with piles of souvenirs cradled in their arms, it became clear that the conversation would continue beyond the walls of Space 1026, breaking the fourth wall between a gallery and the outside world.
In a sense, Refugee Reading Room is the story of what would happen to a library without walls, plopped casually in the middle of a city street. It offers yet another context in which to view a “library” – as a forum-like space where ideas and individuals can freely come together.
Tags: amze emmons, jason urban, machete, printeresting, refugee reading room, rl tillman, space 1026
This is a nice review, and I am a fan of Amze’s work, but I am bothered by Minutella’s implication that the fourth wall was broken because people “walked away with piles of souvenirs,” convincing her that “the conversation would continue beyond the walls of Space 1026.” I have heard similar comments about Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ piles of candy, and these reactions misunderstand both Gonzalez-Torres and Emmons. Do we really need to take physical souvenirs in order to take something with us? Emmons mentions a gift economy: art is a gift we take away in our minds and our hearts, even (or especially) when our hands are empty. If the work is good, we’ll probably talk about it with our friends. Way back in 1844, Marx wrote that our physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by the sense of having. Can we at least try to prove him wrong?
Hi Daniel, while I am in total sympathy with what you say about how people should not need a souvenir to remember something and talk about it, I also firmly believe in the gifting of free art. If it stimulates discussion and good feeling about art, that’s great. Art divorced itself from the public a while ago and turned the discussion inward–you have to be an artist, critic, gallerist, administrator to “get” a lot of what’s out there now. Most people who are not artists or in those other categories are pretty uninterested in, scared of or dismissive of art. Anything that gets those people back into thinking about art is a good thing. If it requires a kickstart with a little object, that’s not harmful. Plus, some artists just like to give art away, and that’s generous.
Hey Roberta,
I have no problem with takeaways, but your final comment about generosity is exactly what i’ve heard said about the Gonzalez-Torres candy, and it bugs me because I think it misses the fundamentally generous nature of making art, period. Lewis Hyde talks about this in his book The Gift. I believe, for example, that Van Gogh’s work is extremely generous and came from a deep impulse of human fellowship. So to look at a physical takeaway as different in this sense is too concrete a way of thinking, and I suspect it impoverishes us.
With regard to art and the public, I’m not sure I believe that art is necessarily divorced from the public, or that takeaways bring people in who would otherwise be uninterested. Space 1026 basically reaches a small art-involved circle, except when it does things beyond its walls. But consider the Christian Marclay video now in Chelsea, that is pulling incredible numbers of people in, many of whom are probably not art-regulars. What’s the takeaway in Marclay’s show? Just memories. Has Marclay gotten more people thinking and talking about art? Sure looks like it.
Hi again, I agree that all art is a gift and all art is generous. For sure. And I’m glad Christian Marclay is bringing them in–his art is awesome and very accessible to boot. If anyone can reach the public with art he can. Is it possible that what Marclay and giveaway art have in common is that they both really truly want to reach this wider audience- art for the people? I don’t know, some art is generous to a point but not to the point of welcoming all comers. I want to say that the giveaways at the collectives be they free performances or free zines like in Amze’s show, are also partly about creating good feeling in the community. Kind of like a pot luck where everybody brings and everybody eats.
We’re probably going on too long for a comment section, but let me offer one last thought. A potluck where everybody brings – that’s not what we have here. Visitors to the Refugee Reading Room do not bring anything but their curiosity, which is more than enough. The big idea in Amze’s show, in part, is what he has brought in for us. Amze has deep knowledge of zines and related art-making nationally, and he has engineered a conversation among them, offering us a library (as Minutella wrote), providing easy access to a slice of cultural practice we might not otherwise know. There are also thoughts here about collective mind, but that’s another topic.
You mention free performances – going to a gallery and watching a performance is actually the same dynamic as going to see paintings. You walk in for free, you are given an experience, and you take that away with you. All galleries are free to enter, and as such they enrich their community. I am leery of superficial distinctions between performance, takeaways, and other modes like painting and sculpture because such distinctions confuse more than they reveal.
nonsense! this is what comments are for…high falutin discussions that hopefully expand on the content of the post. alright so potluck is the wrong comparison. Maybe house party is more like it. I saw people from other collectives at this show and thought it was “collective solidarity,” people coming out to support, and to imbibe. As for free performances, I do think they’re more like giveaways than paintings. They are gone after an evening, like the party. And they are different in that they often involve the audience in a provocative way–not everybody wants that. They are more like free theater. they cost money and time to produce (so do paper giveaways), and they are uncompensated, generally. And while a painting might sell, nobody can sell something that’s been given away (although I guess the documentation of some happenings can be sold)…
All art forms are equally empowered to provoke, as repeated wrangles with federal funding have shown, Smithsonian most recently. Performances are ephemeral, true, but let’s not be naive (or overly concrete) about compensation either. As an artist of any stripe, you can’t quit your day job unless people get excited about your work. if enough people are excited, money will come along that helps you make more work, whether through grants, sales, whatever. So whether its a performance or a painting, if people dig what you’re doing you’ll probably receive support to do more of it. The point is therefore not whether something can or cannot be sold directly. On some level, from the art-market point of view, you are always selling yourself. The trick is not to sell your soul, and Lewis Hyde talks about this too, at the end of his book The Gift.