symbiothek – work in progress
a library is a collection of resources that can be used to implement a program
a library is an engine of ideas, of routines, of imaginaries
a library is a collection of books
Themenfelder: #epistemology #criticalthinking #morethanhuman #otherings #hacking #deeptime #collapsology #dystutopia #scifi
«All the cards […] could be carefully kept for future use. Each formula would require its own set of cards, and by degrees the engine would have a library of its own.» Charles Babbage, The Analytical Engine (1888)
symbiothek is a manifold: it is an actual collection of books (mainly in the fields of non-fiction and nature writing/experimental poetry/essays) and an exploration of the conceptual possibilities of a library in the 21 century. symbiothek wants to rethink the library as a mobile and fluid space, as an infrastructure for physical books, but also as a metaphorical place, related to ‘software libraries’: an exchange of routines, of ideas, of hacks.
Do we books need to be taken care of especially, 2026, or are they an outdated cultural practice? We have all heard of the mass scanning and shredding of books as part of the training of language models: books incorporated into, digested by AI, dissolving as a physical form of text or repository of knowledge.
15 nov – | – new weird book club – | – sci-fi sunday
this is pretty amazing: sin blaché and helen macdonald [yes, the h is for hawk helen macdonald] are coming to symbiont for a bit of a secret off buchbasel gig. or a weird book club special. or a scifi sunday again, finally!
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sunday 15 nov, afternoon/evening
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the book club is meeting at 4pm to discuss this weirdness of a book – prophet (feel free to drop in if you have read the book)
sin and helen are joining us for an open exchange/reading from 5-6.30pm
dinner for everyone after! we’ll be setting up a big table
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the guardian called it ‘a trippy, philosophical science-fiction novel with the pacing of a thriller and the pulse of a romance’ [and a beautifully queer one, that is]