Library Returns

BACKGROUND: 'Library Returns' was the keynote live performance installation by Mick Douglas, presented at the opening night of 'Art Against the Grain', an exhibition by RMIT Gallery of works from the RMIT University Art Collection and artists associated with RMIT. The work drew upon books in the RMIT Library arts and humanities book collection, and statistics on their use, to generate an interactive performance of book reading into megaphones that recorded and replayed loops of spoken passages from books. CONTRIBUTION: 'Library Returns' investigated RMIT Library's data on book loan usage - books loaned, returned, missing, and lost - to generate a new interactive performance that enacts a live distillation of the dynamic social processes of citation and circulation of ideas through books. Library visitors encountering the performance were provoked to question the influence of particular books, authors and ideas as they were drawn into a live condensed process of the transmission, transformation and generation of knowledge. The work contributes a new live art research method of provoking audience reflection on the role of social interaction and forms of mediation in communities of knowledge creation. It extends Douglas' ongoing creative practice-based research in socially-engaged public art and performance. SIGNIFICANCE: This work was included in an exhibition presented by RMIT Gallery which was part of RMIT Library's 700s Art Festival: a celebration of the 700s of the Dewey Decimal System-the largest part of the collection at RMIT Swanston Library. The opening event was attended by over 300 people, and the exhibition received wide discussion in online forums, and was disseminated in the publication 'Strange shelf-fellows: works from the 700s arts festival' edited by Nicola Coady.