Libraries have always appeared to me as fantastical places, imbued with limitless possibility, harbouring the prospect of unimaginably exciting journeys through space and time. I could lose myself for hours in a library, encountering vivid characters, following their wild lives, tracing ideas, concepts, and stumbling into places brought to life by the words of writers, poets, thinkers – all of which would leave lasting impressions on my and my imagination. As I’ve grown, I have learnt to appreciate the ways in which the library – in form and function – has changed, evolving as we have evolved, incorporating new needs and requirements, weighing the value of community, shared stories and experiences. This resonates with me at an incredibly intimate level – this beautiful act of constant expansion that libraries have absorbed, bringing together the tangibility of text with the warmth of space. However, the primacy of narrative remains so central today; there are ‘libraries’ where one can ‘check out’ an individual to listen to their anecdotes. This concept struck me as sheer brilliance – as storytellers, we have so much to say, and the infinity within each one of us is but a library of tales, chronicles, odes and elegies. All of this along with my sentiments around the library as a space kept bringing me back to how whether we consider art and design, or technology, and the physical sciences, everything encircles the idea that eventually what we’re looking to come home to is a story.
I read Borges’ The Library of Babel back during my undergraduate years at university. When I first read the story, admittedly, I was confused – Borges’ words often dealt a heavy onslaught, slipping past me faster than I could comprehend his conjuring. Upon reading it again a few times, I was entirely enamored by his magnificent library, lost in his winding descriptions of space, time and nothingness. Overtime, as it slumbered somewhere in the back of my mind – I grew more fond of it. I continued to ponder on the possibilities of such a library – its architecture now curiously reminiscent of the way the internet works today, yet somehow I find the library in Babel a lot more comforting – a mapped place rather than an endless abyss.
As a creative, I tried to respond to that feeling by creating a set of publications that could attempt to encapsulate the ideas Borges spoke of in his texts, and work together to represent a personal reinterpretation of Louis Borges Library. Constructed through careful designing, the created publications attempt to allude to the ideas constructed in Borges’ text – those of an unending library, of which Man is an imperfect librarian. The story itself sets a theatrical tone of enigma and divinity, and therefore the design elements were chosen very carefully, only to express key concepts from the book.
To keep pace with the austerity of the text, I chose a geometric style of illustration. Borges’ described the library to be made up of infinite hexagons, and so I worked with simple shapes imposed atop each other in different opacities, as an attempt to evoke the limitless and recurring expanse of the library.
Multiple pages in the books are filled with repeated lines that resemble books stacked next to each other in endless shelves, to encourage the visual illusion of being lost in the hypnotic library. One publication features a crimson cover, echoing the existence of the central, inaccessible hexagonal that Borges’ speaks of—containing books with images.
I tried to give the reader a feeling of this hopeless inaccessibility by hiding images between the French folds of the book.
The type throughout the books reassembles the original text, but has been rearranged to signify new meanings, an interpretation of cyclicality and totality taken directly from Borges’ idea of the books in the library encompassing every possible combination of the alphabet. Finally, the selection of paper purposefully reflects on the described lack of light in the fabled library; with its darker yet mildly translucent properties, the print on the paper is present, yet somehow insufficient.
I find myself often compelled to revisit this piece, musing changes to the book design that may help me better elucidate Borges’ ideas. But perhaps it is in that feeling of dejection that I connect with him best, where we both try our best to describe the true magnificence of the library of Babel, but in vain.
