Manuscript Cultures
Exhibition opening on 12 September‘Everything is Connected through Atmospheres of Unreadability’
11 September 2023

Photo: UHH/Esfandiari
This autumn, Axel Malik turns the SUB Hamburg into ‘The Feverish Library’. In our interview, he talks about the impact of art in public spaces and why libraries are the ideal environment for his unreadable signs.
Dieses Interview ist auch auf Deutsch erschienen.
For two months, the users of the SUB will see your signs every day when entering the building and come across them again in various places within it. Does art have a different effect if we encounter it in everyday places instead of in a gallery? And why do you often choose the former for your work?
Art that we encounter in places outside the exhibition system can open up other perceptions. By entering into a relationship with the space and its functions, it creates a tension. Art can unfold its communicative potential of friction and confrontation very well in public and dynamic zones of work, life, and learning. One can approach art in a very individual way and repeatedly experience it at different distances and moments. This allows for a wide range of perspectives and more subtle processes of reflection.
Since my project is about writing, I want to initiate dialogue in places that have a high communicative charge of their own. For example, the two revolving doors at the entrance play an important role in my installation in the SUB. An incidental and purely functional process – entering or leaving the library – takes on a special meaning because body-sized signs that form a counterpart are involved in the movement. And both show a different side when coming in and going out.
You have created installations in many well-known libraries before, for example in Berlin and Weimar, most recently in the Thuringian University and State Library. What keeps you returning to libraries?
At first glance, libraries – understood as cultural repositories which consist of distinct, readable, typographically unambiguous signs – seem like the most unsuitable space for unreadable signs and atmospheres of unreadability. But in fact, the opposite is the case.
Handwritten traces in the form of unreadable but not illegible signs can open up unexplored horizons of writing. They expose the intensity, breadth, and force of complex and filigree cascades of movement that never repeat themselves in their individual, uncontrolled form. In this way, signs that step out of their typographic confinement point to an unbelievably differentiated capacity and seismographic potential of the writing movement itself.
I am also attracted to libraries because they reveal not only what writing means but also what it may become. Essentially, I am proposing to expand the concept of writing to include the uncontrolled auto-poetic affects of the writing movement. What places could be better suited to introduce this proposal into cultural discourse than libraries?
What qualities make a space interesting for you? Which surfaces are suitable for interacting with your signs?
All architectural features that deviate from the norm or that make a statement are interesting to me. Surfaces that can be observed from different points of view can be very well marked and occupied by signs.
You explored the SUB often and thoroughly while developing the concept for the ‘Feverish Library’. What are the characteristics of the building, and how are they reflected in your installation?
You can approach the building from two different sides, from diagonally left and from diagonally right. Standing in front of the slightly tunnel-shaped entrance in the middle, a broad façade rises up. Its rhythmic structure and wide glass surfaces convey a permeability between the inside and the outside. I wanted to respond to both the entrance, which is marked with figurines, and the façade, which is textured with signs. Inside, the library makes an impression of continuity despite its nested areas. I will mark and charge different zones with very different works. My structural texts will clearly express the speed, the pull, and the duration of the writing processes. I will explore the heated and feverish dynamics, but also the changes of direction inherent in the writing movement. Everything is connected through atmospheres of unreadability.
The SUB exhibition and the parallel UWA conference ‘Studying Written Artefacts’ also mark the end of your ‘Increasing Countdown’, with which your engagement as Artist in Residence began two years ago. How do the impressions you gained during this time figure in your work?
The variety of impressions, encounters, and confrontations that took place is difficult to summarise, especially in a short form; they are too manifold. An encounter of researchers and artists can be inspiring, but the methods and strategies they employ are very contrasting. Besides productive interfaces, there are also incompatibilities. Both sides speak the same language, but very differently.
Irina Wandrey from the CSMC library and me are currently preparing a book that will reflect processes, questions, and other aspects of my time at CSMC. The volume will show many of my works that have emerged during these years.
The Feverish Library
An Installation by Axel Malik
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky (SUB)
12 September - 31 October 2023
Opening event: 12 September, 6:00 pm, at the main entrance of the SUB. Registration: pr"AT"sub.uni-hamburg.de