MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL

UNTITLED (SLEEPERS)
2004
7 photographic prints, 20 x 24cm each

INTERLUDE: THE READER’S TRACES
2005
Publication, 120 pages

The national library in Berlin is a prime example of modern architecture, divided by subject matter across different levels that resemble floating platforms. It’s easy to get lost in the space among the staircases that connect one level with the other. The reading areas are mixed with the bookshelves, which makes it different from other libraries because the books seem spread all over the space. The library is quiet and always full. I am not here reading books, but observing how readers make use of the space. At the entrance, people need to empty their bags and put all the necessary tools. Transparent carrier bags are available from the cloakrooms and are used for carrying working materials and loose items. This simple security measure makes all the belongings visible. There is a repertory of items that can be seen through these plastic bags: computers, books, notebooks and a collection of small gadgets, objects that appear useful but are often unnecessary, such as food, mobile phones, pens, post-its, color markers, photocopies, wallets, tissues, aspirins, ear plugs, glasses, etc.
In every table, each person builds a temporary island, a territory where it’s possible to detect the reading and learning strategies. The range varies from very simple and minimal setups, to a whole infrastructure in order to retain knowledge. There is a relation between the reader and the book, but libraries also impose a way of reading, a space dedicated exclusively for this activity, where everything apart from reading becomes immediately visible. Organized in such a way that nothing would distract you from the original task, it can acquire an opposite function. In that sense, it becomes easier to get distracted by all the books that are not related to the original search, the people passing by, or even a
smallest sound. As a promoter of distraction, during the visit to a library it’s not difficult to find yourself reading many different things; the simple accumulation of material, and the possibility of walking through the corridors, gives one the feeling that the original choice is just a small slice nestled within a superfluity of knowledge. Frequently, the story ends with a table covered with books and a piece of paper covered with strange and random notes. (…) Books in libraries are public items; different people read the same copy. Each reader leaves their own traces and marks: a piece of paper used to separate the pages, a note, a train ticket - they all become unresolved texts, hinting at something to be disclosed. The discovery of such traces creates an opening, occupying an intermediate space or an iterative time. Excess or residues are the remains of an event that implies a deficit or a gap. These interruptions suspend the continuous accumulation of knowledge and force us to enter a new time that has been cut from its original moorings. For one moment the database structure of the library and the narrative experience of reading come together…

The project and publication Interlude: The Reader’s Traces includes contributions by: Hubert Czerepok, Paul Elliman, Dario Gamboni, Raimundas Malasauskas, Harry Mathews, Ian Monk, Peter Piller, Manuel Raeder, Steve Rushton and Enrique Vila-Matas.

MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL (1975, Mexico City, MX) lives between Amsterdam and Berlin since completing her research at the Jan Van Eyck Academy (Maastricht) in 2003. Her recent projects and exhibitions include These Ruins You See at the Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico City); Interlude: the reader’s traces, an intervention in public libraries (Paris, Berlin and New York); Institute of Chance at the International Institute of Social Studies,(Amsterdam), The Last Piece of John Fare, GB Agency (Paris), Blackboxing at Project Art Center (Dublin) and 10 Defining Experiments at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami). In 2007, she co-curated with Irene Kopelman a research exhibition entitled A for Alibi at De Appel (Amsterdam). In 2004, she was awarded the Prix de Rome prize in the Netherlands.