Libraries conjure up images of kindly old librarians, rows of books, and quiet rows of people thirsty for knowledge.  Made for and within communities, they are made to categorize knowledge, to allow efficient and specialized research.  They are also rarely thought of as institutions of control.  Even the Patriot Acts looked at libraries as hotbeds of subversion rather than as the friendly face of power.  In 2001, Temporary Services, an artist collective based in Chicago, decided to point out the ideological structure of the traditional library.  They inserted one of a kind or limited edition art books into the library system without the knowledge of the administration.  The works were placed in sections chosen by the artists, not the staff (which would have placed them in an art section), and were therefore returned to both context and the possibility for contact with a wide variety of people that would normally never have thought to access the work.  Temporary Services asked questions that need to be asked more often:  does an artist’s work on the police, for instance, belong in an artificially created and decontextualized art section, or does it belong with the other books on the police?  Is subversive work destroyed by removing it from context, and if so, isn’t that an ideological act intended to protect existing power structures?  Treated as a sort of combination of museum and science laboratory, libraries have an aura of holiness that doesn’t allow one to question its methods of control, even though they are such a vital resource for the absorption of knowledge.  By subverting the system within a community of artists, in a way that slowly unraveled within the other communities of patrons and staff (many of the books were actually checked out, and some have been placed in permanent circulation), Temporary Services managed to address the flaws in the institution in a way that revitalized the possibilities for artwork within any ideological apparatus while simultaneously avoiding many of the problems inherent to what we know of as contemporary art practice.  This paper will examine The Library Project through its interaction with various audiences/authors, locate the piece within the larger context of critical theory and political struggle, and then attempt to chart the ways in which it creates a space within which other artists can work outside of the marginalized venues relegated to the arts.

 Presented at the (Re)imagining Power conference, Brandeis University,  March 2005