Our work is about interiority, the internal monologue that goes along with reading. Or, the internal dialogue that emerges between a book and its reader. This is one of the reasons why the pine forest seems so fitting for a monument made of books, to disappearing 'bookishness'. When we visited the pine forest last Fall at Fieldwork, we both responded to the silence of the trees and a felt solitude that we wanted to deepen. We both ‘saw,’ independently as we walked different ends of the forest, the monumental pile of books within the trees, as a kind of silent witness to books that no longer ‘speak’.
Our monument is composed of contributions of discarded books from the Ottawa Public Library Rideau Street branch, St. Vincent de Paul, Ottawa U and Carleton University libraries. We have amassed approximately 1500 books. For more, see the blog posts.
We are Ottawa based artists Barbara Cuerden and Karina Kraenzle.