To mark the fifth Rolling Paper festival, LE BAL Books is organising a two-day off-site workshop with artist and publisher Lia Pradal (Païen). Survivor Library is an American digital library containing thousands of copyright-free books that teach how to rebuild a civilisation after collapse.
Divided into sections as diverse as ‘carpentry’, ‘beekeeping’, ‘herbal medicine’ and ‘shelter’, the books can be accessed individually in PDF format or in their entire 256 gigabytes of data, which can be ordered and delivered on an external hard drive.
What printed and tangible form could this survivalist library take? How can an entire library be transposed into a transportable and ergonomic sum? What choices should be made?
The workshop will involve each participant exploring and reconstructing a specific section of the library. Each sequence created by a participant will become a chapter in a joint book published in risography.