Join us on an embodied conversation and nature walk that invites exploration of the form, function, and feeling of libraries as ecosystem through planetary relations. We move across historical time and global library contexts to the material hands on practice of making paper as a collective record-keeping tool. What does relational practice look like through library history, everyday library work, and the ecological memory of paper? Cindy Anh Nguyen will share from her newly published book Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam to offer historical Vietnamese perspectives on the everyday social and political meaning of libraries. Malery Nguyen will guide participants through her papermaking practice, invoking culinary relationships, the material history of paper, and its preservation. Facilitators will guide participants through the process of making paper using recycled and collected materials from the site. Participants will each take home a piece of handmade paper with inclusions from the collective discussion, nature walk, and meditative reflections.
By the end of this session, attendees will:
- Know how to make paper and use the papermaking process as a framework to imagine related regenerative systems for libraries and preservation
- Relate ecosystems of the natural world to the physical nature of books and paper
- Collectively practice cultivating relationality within library work and the ecosystem of paper, people, and poetic practices
Cindy Anh Nguyen is Assistant Professor at University of California, Los Angeles with appointments in Information Studies, Digital Humanities Program, and Asian Languages & Culture. Her research examines the historical practices of knowledge production, preservation, and communication in Southeast Asia through libraries, encyclopedia, and print media. She is the founder of Culture Futures Rest Lab which explores cultural and computational questions of interpretation by centering global south codesign and multivocal knowledge making.
Malery Nguyen is a second-year graduate fellow in Library & Archives Conservation at the Winterthur Musuem and University of Delaware. Her research explores the history of papermaking, book structures, and collecting practices in Southeast Asia and how these historical practices may inform the current preservation of Southeast Asian collections in the United States. She has studied, practiced, and taught papermaking through her studio practice and during an artist’s residency at Women’s Studio Workshop.
Participants should bring:
- A vessel to carry wet paper home: plastic bag, tupperware
- Shoes and clothes you don’t mind getting wet, or an apron
- Drinking water & a sack lunch, if desired
Registration is capped at 20 people; all ages welcome and carpooling encouraged. The Library Field is at 249 Croton Dam Road, in New Castle, NY. Participants will meet in the parking lot of the Sunny Ridge Preserve, and we will all walk in together. More details will be made available upon registration.