I received a book from The Conversational Library this morning. It came with a letter from the Librarians, Townley & Bradby http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=12215
which explained the terms of the loan and said a little about their feelings about the book. Its such a lovely letter I've copied it out.
Dear Alex
Here's that Bedwyr Williams book which we promissed to hand over. We've probably mentioned it to you four or five times over the last few months; in fact, back in March when all 3 of us visited Store Gallery, did I actually restrain your arm as you went to buy a copy? Maybe not. Memory is a shifty beast, as any copper knows.
It's interesting that the thought of parting with it make the book more valuable, and makes one read it in a nervous way, dipping into it greedily, trying to retain a few of Bedwyr's bon mots even as they melt away like boiled sweets.
I say 'parting with the book' because we're lending it to you under the terms of the newly inaugurated Conversational Library. The terms are:
please keep it for a length of time in some way proportional to your pleasure in receiving or reading it.
keep it or dispose of it in any way you choose
we won't ask for it back, but if someone else who's also received an item from the library requests the book, we'll ask you to post it on to them (if you've still got it that is).
As the keeper of an item from the Conversational Library, we'll send you regular updates on other items in the collection. We want to share books & written stuff that we've found interesting. And we like the thought that this book might extend the conversation we were having about the apparent flatness and lifelessness of Bedwyr's stuff in the gallery. But the ethos of the Conversational Library is informed as much by self centred practicality as it is by generosity: we've got more books than we can fit on our shelves, so we're hoping to disseminate then across the shelves of our friends as a form of external storage.
We were doing a bit of aforementioned nervous browsing as we wrapped the book up for you. Anna said she liked the book a lot more than the Store solo show. She thought the image+text format presented his work more favourably. For one thing, image and text are given fairly equal weighting, whereas in the gallery, the objects or images always have more presence than the little text panels. For another, his wry humour, the ironic detachment which allows him to to introduce issues (death of the Welsh language, school bullying etc) and then float away from them, come over better in the intimacy of a book.
ButwaddaUrekon?
Hope to see you soon
Anna and Lawrence
I spent the morning avidly reading the book (except for the essay at the end, I'm saving that) and I'll post my response tomorrow.
