federica teti - Bibliothek der Zukunft / Sculpture Navale #2

The Library of the Future – BDZ functioned as both an island and an open floating platform: A place for sharing, construct, negotiate, exchange knowledge, printing and experiment working and living as part of a collective.

Between 2018 and 2019, ftts, Das Archipel, collectif mit, and Studio Flex gathered around “Sculpture Navale,” a research project and international nomadic residency focused on “living and working on water” and regarding water as a common and public space. In 2019, they collaborated to expand the floating platform of Archipel at Verings Canal in Hamburg and inaugurated the “Library of the Future – BDZ.”
Throughout the summer of 2019, they resided and worked aboard the Library of the Future for four weeks, organising a dense program comprising workshops, lectures, and concerts. As part of it, ftts initiated and facilitated a printing workshop for children and adults from the neighbourhood.

The project was a collaboration among collectif mit, ftts, and ARCHIPEL. It was a component of the international nomadic residency “Sculpture Navale,” with primary locations in Hamburg (DE) and Nantes (FR).

“The Library of the Future aims to be a place of direct negotiation: Here, current visions for an upcoming time can be tested. However, the quasi “construction-related problems” of such a dynamically contradictory structure are easily understandable (which we appreciate!): Its inflationary title alone contains such a degree of provocation towards conventional expectations of a “progressive future”, for example, when the LoF suggests using an old printing press instead of (desired) high technology, after the template has been hand-carved in linoleum… – When we operate the print workshop together with the people and the children, we catapult through time: “Today we work with yesterday’s inventions for the world of the day after tomorrow”. —> Here the full report in german: ftts_ Report BDZ 2019