The project will take over the Broadway building for one month during February, transforming the space into a makeshift library. Visitors are encouraged to share, swap and discuss their favourite reading material, and view work by artists, writers and filmmakers.
- FILM & VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
(top to bottom) The Strange Names Collective, (Phil Stanier)451, Ongoing archival project; Leanne Bell Gonczarow, Astronomy for Beginners, Digital Video (10 mins 35 secs), Altered Book and Magnifying Glass, 2007
In association with MACE ARCHIVE and OXFAM
The outdoor façade of the building will read as an open book with scrolling text contributions and accounts from artists and writers of what lies within the doors of Broadway from their own perspectives.
- CINEMA SCREEN
Featuring shorts by artists and filmmakers inspired by the written word or the environment of libraries, including Bang! Film Festival lo fi favourite Jack Welsby’s Count Library, 2002; the classic Associations by John Smith, 1975 and Bruce Webb’s beautiful Rare Books and Manuscripts from 2005.
Rare Books and Manuscripts (still), 2005
READING ROOM EVENTS IN THE MEZZANINE
Every Thursday at 7pm during February there will be a Reading Room session in the upstairs Mezzanine.
5th February: The Reading Room discussions at Broadway will commence with a session on Jorge Luis Borges story ‘The Library of Babel’, 1941. The session will be led by Reading Room curator Jennie Syson.
Borges’s narrator describes how his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for many of the texts some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents.
Despite — indeed, because of — this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. However, Borges speculates on the existence of the “Crimson Hexagon”, containing a book that contains the log of all the other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God.
12th February: Join Nottingham Writer’s studios Richard Pilgrim for an enlightening discussion of a section of Julian Barnes’ 1989 novel ‘A History of the World in 10 and a half chapters.’
A stowaway aboard Noah’s Ark gives us his account of the Voyage – a surprising, subversive one, quite unlike the official version, but one that explains a lot about how the human race has subsequently developed. A guest lecturer on a cruise ship in the Aegean has his work interrupted by a group of mysterious visitors who place him in a cruel dilemma. And an ecclesiastical court in medieval France hears a bizarre case . . . Barnes creates a kaleidoscope of narrative voices – from fiction and fact, painting and snatches of autobiography – that comes slowly and compellingly into focus. This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader’s imagination...
19th February: Reading of Steve Martin Play ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’ led by Nathan Miller, co-director of Hatch. Join in with this informal reading and discussion of this seminal piece of comic theatre, with strange parallels to the social hub of Broadway Bar. (event to be confirmed)
Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a play written by Steve Martin in 1993. It features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin AgileMontmartre, Paris. It is set on October 8, 1904, and both men are on the verge of an amazing idea (Einstein will publish his special theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907) when they find themselves at the Lapin Agile, where they have a lengthy debate about the value of genius and talent while interacting with a host of other characters.
26th February: Readings and discussion of commissioned pieces for the glass screen.
The final Reading Room at Broadway will be a critique of written and read pieces during the month. Including writers and artists commissions for the glass screen plus interventions in the bar.
Booking information: these event are free but spaces are limited. Please book well in advance to receive the texts to prepare for the sessions. email jennie@hinterlandprojects.com
- EXCHANGE LIBRARY IN THE CAFÉ BAR
Fresh from the dusty shelves of The Reading Room, Broadway presents an installation of second hand classics for your perusal. Books have been provided for patrons of the café bar through an ‘honesty/swap’ system. Bring a book you no longer want and swap it for one you’d rather give shelf space to at home. Leftover or unwanted books at the end of the project will be donated to Oxfam’s book recycling scheme.
