FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics), a recurring public dinner that provides financial support to emerging artmakers, has awarded a $1000 grant to the project “Underground Library.” The funding will be used to purchase book-making supplies for book production, facilitate the creation of an on-line forum, and for launching each underground library publication with public readings by published and un-published members of the community. So this baby is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Kindle.

Underground Library Project Summary

The underground library is a full-scale book-making and distributing project aimed at resuscitating the literary impulse with mystery, community, DIY verve, and innovation. Through the hand-crafting and self-distribution of 6 limited-edition hardcover books annually (70+ per edition), the group will:

• Publish works by members of The Metric System, Red Bucket Films, and other New York/Brooklyn based collaborative communities.
• Distribute them through an Heirloom process whereby books are passed through peers, their name retained on a library card, and access given to a community web space, in addition to past publications.
• Establish a web component facilitating community discussion.

Underground Library’s Importance to the Community

The project aims to creating an alternative to the internet-encouraged “get anything, anytime” impulse. The group hopes to recapture a personal, valuable experience with artwork by distributing projects along a community circuit – whereby books are passed along based on close relationships rather than wide-scale marketing strategies. Each Heirloom book carries a trail of signatures, and becomes a collaborative space wherein an individual experience can be understood as shared amongst a larger whole. A value placed on physical objects uses self-distribution to encourage face-to-face interaction, and empowers individuals as arbiters of work they believe in, with considerable hand in the trajectory it travels.

PHOTOS, click to enlarge

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FEAST: Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics

'Green My Bodega' Awarded FEAST Grant: Experiment With City Food Infrastructure

'Underground Library' Awarded FEAST Grant: Local, Hand Crafted Books Shared by a Network of Readers.