Our libraries / Nos bibliotheques

« Je ne connaissais pas … et tu as éveillé ma curiosité. Je le rajoute à ma longue liste « To read » ». […] ‘ There is never enough time for reading, re-reading.’ […] ‘ Reading is both a virtue and duty’. Sharon Kivland and Fabienne Bideaud have been talking together for a year. Commencing by several meetings in a Parisian cafe, at Sharon’s house-studio on the banks of the Rance, during the exhibition Entreprise de seduction at the Espace d’art contemporain hec, in Jouy en Josas— their dialogue took shape in April 2018 during the Set up event at the Cité des Arts in Paris. For this public evening, they proposed ‘Rendez-vous in the Library’, a reading in two voices, one in English and the other in French, from the book A Lover’s Discourse. Un discours amoureux, written by Sharon Kivland and published by ma bibliothèque, a small press run by the artist. Posters showing parts of their respective libraries also lined the walls of a reading room laid out for the evening. In order to prolong their discussions, the artist and the curator decide to initiate a new writing game, engaging in a daily correspondence during the month of July, each writing in her native language, the subject being their readings. Taking this form, the exchange became a kind of diary, in which is discussed their relation with books but also the visits of friends, travels in Italy or to an island on the Atlantic coast... They share privileged times, those dedicated to the other, what occupies their minds, their daily readings: novel, essay, daily news, cookbook, flyers, revolutionary calendar, history book, home economics, poetry... There is also the question of how to place the books in a library, seeking a classification system.