is how Pamela M. Lee describes Martine Syms’ ten-minute video Notes on Gesture (2015) in her book The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption (no place press, 2019).
I am looking at a spread of Syms’ 2020 book Shame Space (Primary Information) comprising a seascape and a room with two empty swivel office chairs.
My hapless librarian has taken two related books with and by Syms from the shelves: Publishing as Practice (Ulises) and implications and distinctions (Dominica), arranged them suggestively and taken a photo.
Click.
Now, I presume you are sitting there wanting me to make some connection between the books, right? Something about the process of moving from video or film to book and publishing practice that participates in a cataloguing gesture of its own akin to a library?
But I’m in no mood for that today, so all you have is his photo as a placeholder, perhaps, for a library to come.