The Reading Room

The Reading Room is a project based in Berlin with the aim to maintain, archive and represent products of contemporary art practices evolving within printed and published formats. Through archival methodology, critical reflection and strategic methods of presentation, The Reading Room will focus on these representations of contemporary practice that both utilise and interrogate the published form as their primary medium.

In addition to the traditionally understood artist’s books, monographs or exhibition catalogues, the published format is now widely utilised as a primary site for various art practices. Often secondary when compared to the established presentation space of the gallery, the act of publishing has diversified and widened into self-contained body of artistic communication and research. The Reading Room focuses on the publication as medium and context for artistic practice, in which the artists choose deliberately and critically the publication as support, while using its materiality, edges and frame as tools for both visual and semantic expressions.

The Reading Room is based on former institutional “Reading Rooms” (such as the one of the British Museum in London), and functions as such: it will be open for public viewing, with those wanting to use it being required to make an appointment and also register beforehand their particular interested in the publications or the project. The Reading Room takes its initial presentation location from the idea of the “Salon”, gathering its printed matters under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host. The visitors and readers of the Reading Room ring the bell of a private apartment, climb up the stairs to it, and then are able to sit in a separate study room.