Shadow libraries

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For independent, shadow, feminist, free/libre, self-hosted, pirate, autonomous, collective, community and artist digital libraries
  • Bibliotecha.jpg
  • When everyone is librarian library is everywhere.jpg
AAAAARG
Anna's Archive
Bibliotecha
Bootleg Library
Creating Commons
Feminist Search Tools
Giving What You Don't Have
Infrastructural Manœuvres
Interfacing the Law
Library Genesis
Library of Inclusions and Omissions
Monoskop
Piracy Project
Pirate Care Syllabus
Public Library / Memory of the World
Radovan from planet Meta
Sci-Hub
Teaching the Radical Catalogue
Textz.com
UbuWeb
Unbound Libraries
WORM Pirate Bay


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Timeline[edit]

🗐 Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, Basel: distro, Nov 2025.
  • Read Write Run, Klagenfurt, 2024. Photo: Johannes Puch.
  • Read Write Run, exhibition, Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, 25 September–15 November 2024. With Constant, Institute for Computational Vandalism, The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI), Memory of the World, Monoskop, permacomputing.net, UbuWeb, Varia, a.o. Exhibition by Dušan Barok. Curated by Gudrun Ratzinger and Franz Thalmair.
One of the most important internet activists to date, Aaron Swartz strongly shaped and influenced the development of the Web in his short lifetime, envisioning and participating in essential and innovative net projects such as: drafting Creative Commons licensing models, defining RSS standards, or working on platforms such as Reddit or anonymous whistleblowing sites, amongst others. Curious about the world and mostly self-taught, he was passionate about libraries and a defender of open archives. Conscious about the immense benefits for the creative developments of arts, science, and society provided by open knowledge, F/LOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) movement, and net neutrality, he kept actively advocating for those causes.
In the same spirit, providing free public access to academic journals by releasing them from a paywall, Alexandra Elbakyan at just 23 years old developed the Sci-Hub platform in 2011: “The project is legal, while restricting access to information and knowledge is not. The current operation of the academic publishing industry is a massive violation of human rights”, she states. Accused of copyright violation or piracy, the web page has its access blocked by many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and is only accessible through Virtual Private Networks, TOR Browser, or mirror sites.
“But sharing isn’t immoral–it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy”, declares Swartz, in his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto (2008). (mur.at, 2023)
  • Reading the Library, flyer, 2021.
  • 🗐 Der radikale Katalog, special issue of Fabrikzeitung, Zürich: Rote Fabrik, Dec 2021.
The digital networks have expanded the volume of available text exponentially since to the days of print. So much so that if we were to print out a catalogue of books that we can store a personal computer hard-drive, the catalogue would require a couple of large volumes of fine print. Yet, in many situations and many societies, reading from paper still remains the preferred way of accessing knowledge.
At the same time, pirate copying and distribution we tend to perceive as a phenomenon of digital culture. However, the dissemination of knowledge before the digital depended crucially on photocopying and pirate re-prints. Photocopied books and articles passed down from generation to generation and from scientist to scientist have enabled many to finish their studies, to become scientists and to teach younger generations. The „knowledge society” three decades ago would not have been conceivable without the illegal sharing of knowledge, just as the „knowledge society” today isn’t conceivable without the illegal sharing of knowledge. Therefore, the past and the future of struggles over access to knowledge can be gleaned from paper struggles. (Public Library, 2020)
  • Memory of the World catalogue by Slowrotation at Paper Struggles, 2019.
🗐 Open Scores: How to Program the Commons, ed. Creating Commons, 2020.
  • Open Scores, exhibition and workshops, panke.gallery, Berlin, 21 September–12 October 2019. "This exhibition brings together 16 practices through which artists articulate their own forms of (digital) commons. From online archives, to digital tools/infrastructure and educational formats, the projects envision a (post-)digital culture in which notions of collaboration, free access to knowledge, sustainable use of shared resources and data privacy are central." With 0xdb.org, Aaaaarg, AND publishing, Constant, CuratingYoutube.net, dock18.ch, erg.be, Furtherfield, Monoskop, Mz* Baltazar’s Lab, NetHood, Neural, Public Library / Memory of the World, #QUEERingNETWORKing, Tactical Tech, UbuWeb, a.o. Curated by Creating Commons. The "Temporary Library for Creating Commons" is available at MIZ, the library of Zurich University of the Arts. Catalogue. Exh. guide. FB.
  • Pirate Care, conference, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, 19–20 June 2019. CfP. FB. Video.
  • Artistic Shadow Libraries, video installation, within Find the File festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 21–24 March 2019. Cornelia Sollfrank’s interview montage shows artists creating web archives as commons practice.
  • Exhibition Library, Seoul, 2018. Photo: Lee Kai Chung.
  • Exhibition Library, exhibition, Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018: Eu Zen, Seoul Museum of Art, 5 September–18 November 2018. "For this work, artists, designers, curators, poets and collectives created thirty catalogues of imaginary exhibitions. Exploring both the potential and impossible in art, the resulting exhibition library also serves as a “library of exhibitions.”" With Audio Visual Pavilion, Mediabus, Monoskop, Multimedia Institute, Museum of American Art-Berlin, Possible Bodies, Purple Noise, Supermuch, Technopolitics Working Group, UbuWeb, a.o. Convened by Dušan Barok. Curated by Kyung Yong Lim.
🗐 Guerrilla Open Access, ed. Memory of the World, 2018.
  • Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care, conference, 26–27 June 2018. "Two days of critical discussion about creating a more diverse and equitable future for open access." With Culture Machine, Mattering Press, Memory of the World / Public Library, meson press, Open Humanities Press, POP, punctum books, a.o. Organised by The Post Office. [6]
  • Shadow Libraries UbuWeb in Athens 2018.jpg
  • Shadow Libraries: UbuWeb in Athens, exhibition, symposium and workshops, Onassis Cultural Center & National Museum of Contemporary Art (ESTE), Athens, 16–18 March 2018. "What is UbuWeb? Is an archive capable to propose a different sort of art history? 3 days of talks and workshops in order to explore this and other shadow libraries." With Creating Commons, Eclipse, Jean Boîte Éditions, K-Hole, Monoskop, PennSound, People Like Us, The Pirate Bay, Public Library / Memory of the World, UbuWeb, a.o. Curated by Ilan Manouach and Kenneth Goldsmith. Booklet PDF.
  • The Serving Library in The House That Heals the Soul, 2017.
  • The House That Heals the Soul, exhibition, Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, 22 July–3 September 2017. "Public libraries have become one of the last remaining spaces where people can gather without expectation or requirement. As the future of libraries and their buildings becomes increasingly precarious, this exhibition aims to expand an understanding of the potential of libraries as sites of resistance, shelter, preservation, creation and restitution, and to do so in a dynamically public way as a functioning library of libraries." With Aaaaarg, The Book Lovers, My Bookcase, OOMK, Publication Studio Glasgow, The Serving Library, Temporary Services, a.o. Curators: Viviana Checchia, Ainslie Roddick, Nick Thurston. [7]
Happy birthday, Ubu.com!
Dear fellow custodian,
Ubu.com turns 20 this year. For about the same time the Internet has been a mass medium on a global scale and we, personally, have been using it on a daily basis. This is a perfect occasion for a gift - to Ubu, to the Internet and to ourselves: two mirrors, one at ubu.memoryoftheworld.org and one at ubu-mirror.ch. (Custodians.online, 2016)
  • Militant Technics, MayDay Rooms, London, 6–10 December 2015. With Aaaaarg / Public School, Pirate Cinema, Public Library, Memory of the World and MayDay Rooms.
Raven.png
In Elsevier's case against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, the judge said: "simply making copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website, disserves the public interest." Alexandra Elbakyan's original plea put the stakes much higher: "If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge."
We demonstrate daily, and on a massive scale, that the system is broken. We share our writing secretly behind the backs of our publishers, circumvent paywalls to access articles and publications, digitize and upload books to libraries. This is the other side of 37% profit margins: our knowledge commons grows in the fault lines of a broken system. We are all custodians of knowledge, custodians of the same infrastructures that we depend on for producing knowledge, custodians of our fertile but fragile commons. To be a custodian is, de facto, to download, to share, to read, to write, to review, to edit, to digitize, to archive, to maintain libraries, to make them accessible. It is to be of use to, not to make property of, our knowledge commons. (Custodians.online, 2015)
🗐 Mondothèque: A Radiated Book, Brussels: Constant, Sep 2016.
  • Paul Otlet, Mondothèque: Pantothèque - Mundaneum - (Documentothèque), 1936.
Once one read; today one refers to, checks through, skims. (Paul Otlet, 1903)
  • Ideographies of Knowledge, Mundaneum, Mons, 3 October 2015. "A symposium unfolding from the intention to reflect upon the legacy of Paul Otlet and his work from the perspective of today's knowledge archives." With CAS FAMU, Constant, Monoskop, Mundaneum, Public Library / Memory of the World, XPUB, a.o. Convened by Dušan Barok. Video.
🗐 Public Library, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015.
  • Public Library, Zagreb, 2015. Photo: Ivan Kuharić.
  • Javna knjižnica / Public Library, exhibition and conference, Galerija Nova, Zagreb, 27 May–13 June 2015. With Aaaaarg, The Ignorant Schoolmaster and His Committees, K_O_K, Library Genesis, MayDay Rooms, Midnight Notes Collective, Monoskop, Praxis, Public Library / Memory of the World, Textz.com, UbuWeb, a.o. Organised by WHW and Multimedia Institute. About: Antonija Letinić (Kulturpunkt.hr). [10] [11] [12] [13]
Public Library WKv Stuttgart 2014 .jpg
Oscillating between the “legal” and “illegal”. Open, independent, and (digitally) networked structures of sharing books, films, music, art, knowledge, et cetera, have been established–always oscillating between the “legal” and “illegal”–at least since the mid-1990s. In the meantime, models of “legal commons” and “common properties” that wish to regulate and legalize ways of sharing things had not only been implemented as “alternative agreements” but also controversially discussed, as they still rely on the capitalist logics of property. The conference basically explores those projects and networks for sharing knowledge, which neither accept the increasingly strict regulations of the (increasingly privatized) official infrastructures and systems of education nor the new monopoles of knowledge (Google, Amazon, etc.).
Curating the archive / library. Of interest here are, besides open digital libraries, also artistic ways of dealing with the structures of the archive and of archiving. Furthermore the necessity and criteria of curating open-access-libraries and -collections such as UbuWeb, Monoskop, Aaaaarg.org, Archive.org or Library Genesis will be discussed.
Constructions of a universal knowledge. Another aspect of the conference concerns critical reflection of the grand narratives and projections of “universal knowledge,” “universal libraries,” and other “world projects.” Reaching from the public library conception of the seventeeth century to projects such as the “Mundaneum”–a Belgian utopia from the early twentieth century, which conceived a city that would bring together all knowledge of the world in one flexible classification system–to Google.
Regulations, classifications, hierarchies. Furthermore, the conference aims to discuss the regulations, classifications, hierarchies, and protocols inherent to the infrastructures of education and knowledge production: from the mechanisms and effects of indexing systems or academic curriculums to dualistic relationships such as teacher-scholar, amateur-expert, “server-client” . . . On the opposite side, alternative models such as The Public School will be presented.
„The Public School is a school with no curriculum. It is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything.
State responsibility. Besides developing open, decentralized, independent, and/or anarchistic infrastructures, we feel it is at the same time important to insist on the state/public’s responsibility of financing and maintaining access to education, knowledge, and art "for everybody" on a large scale. How could we, from this perspective, imagine future relationships between state-managed macro and self-managed micro structures of education and knowledge?
Something is always missing. At the same time, those “big machineries” of knowledge, discourse, and attention need to be constantly called into question by those structures that arise because there is a lack, because something is missing, and that give voice and visibility to the neglected and unexpected. For, above all, it is not only about the question of access to knowledge, but about how to create, articulate, and bring into play other, hidden, and/or suppressed knowledge. (Württembergsicher Kunstverein, 2014)
  • Public Library. Rethinking the Infrastructures of Knowledge Production, Württembergsicher Kunstverein (WKV) & Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, 30 October–23 November 2014. An exhibition/laboratory/'scandromat' and a conference about today’s conditions of knowledge production: from the neoliberal politics of education and the monopolization of “intellectual property” to alternative critical and anarchistic ways of sharing and “borrowing” knowledge. With Aaaaarg, Eipcp, GeoCities Research Institute, Giving What You Don't Have, Herman's Library, Internet Archive, Library Genesis, Ljudmila, Marxists Internet Archive, Monoskop, Pirate Cinema, Postcapital Archive, Praxis, Public School, UbuWeb, a.o. Program. Video. Photos.
Just like mp3 in music, electronic publishing began as a non- or even anti-commercial subculture: with literary classics freely published by Project Gutenberg, with underground books and pamphlets such as the “Principia Discordia” and Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal this Book” circulating on electronic bulletin boards, computer hackers swapping “disk mags”. Long before the Amazon Kindle, ASCII e-books and e-zines were popular underground media, with their own minimalist aesthetics and radical politics. Since the 1990s, artists and media activists have entered this field as well, building up pirate libraries with electronic versions of classical art and critical theory books, and extending the concept of free software and peer-to-peer file sharing to publishing. What has been achieved in this culture, what is its status quo, and what can mainstream publishing learn from it? (Florian Cramer, 2014)
  • Underground e-publishing, session at the conference Off the Press: Electronic Publishing in the Arts, WORM, Rotterdam, 23 May 2014. With Monoskop, Pad.ma, Public Library, hosted by Florian Cramer. Video: [14] [15] [16] [17].
  • JSTOR Pirate Headquarters, Düsseldorf, 2014. Photo: Achim Kukulies.
  • Printing Out the Internet, Mexico City, 2013.
There are so many initiatives recently dealing with archiving of different artistic, cultural and historical materials, which are induced by the possibilities of digitization as a new round of 'actualization' and new spaces for dissemination of the material dealt with. The dominant framework of those initiatives is still institutional – by that, public/state institutions are employing contemporary tools in order to remain in their great narratives of 'history', 'heritage' and '(national) culture', to remain in control. However, we are more interested in initiatives which are invested in practices diverging from institutional and state strategies. Instead of conservation, we would like to think of 'live archives'; instead of nourishing canons, we would like to think of creation of 'history from bellow' as 'a counter-memory' – with all their possible implications.
Within that changed perspective on archives and libraries, we would like to think further: how to make conditions for breaking still authorial positions of 'a librarian' and 'an archivist', and of the ownership over the archived material? By sharing, would be the first answer, with its double-bind – as 'an openness of control'; or as its appropriation from the uncritical one.
Formation of the 'counter-memory' would imply observation of the past not in retrospective, therefore, it would mean observation of the past as more actual/recent then the present and more uncertain then the future (B. Buden). Then politics of archiving in terms of actualization of archived material would mean a saturation of politics, of an invention of politics contained in the archived material. Could un-archives and practices of un-archivist, un-librarian (as in 'everyone could be one...') be diverted from care&nourishing of the archived material which are employed in something called 'archiving science', towards different affectivity invested in it? (kuda.org, 2013)
  • 🗐 Tribuna, HAIP 2012 addendum, special issue on open access, Dec 2012.
  • HAIP 2012: Public Library / Javna knjižnica, conference and exhibition hosted by Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, 28–30 November 2012. With Aaaaarg, Behemot, Centre for Labour Studies (Centar za radničke studije), Ignorant Schoolmaster and His Committees (Učitelj neznalica i njegovi komiteti), Internet Archive, Library under the canopy (Knjižnica pod krošnjami), Ljudmila, MaMa, Monoskop, Mute, Neural, Pad.ma, Post-media lab, Tribuna, Worker Punkers University (Delavsko punkerska univerza), a.o. Video.
Developed around a near-10,000-item printed card catalogue that indexes the content of the AAAARG Web site, the AAAARG Library creates a temporary, participatory space for the free redistribution of textual material. The Library will exist alongside the paid economy of the Fair, offering an extra-institutional space that will develop through a symbiotic (rather than an oppositional) relationship to the systems of exchange that structure the Fair. During the course of the three day event, a librarian will be on staff in Fillip's project room (I01) to fulfill book requests using the material available on AAAARG. A computer and scanner will also be on location enabling patrons of the Library to share material with the communities of both the Book Fair and AAAARG. Exhibiting publishers are strongly encouraged to submit material to the Library and may do so at any time during the project. (Fillip, 2010)
  • AAAARG Library, site-specific installation, in conjunction with the fifth annual NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 5–7 November 2010. Commissioned by Fillip (Vancouver). Announcement, [19].
  • Oil21 2007.jpg
"Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century" - this quote by Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, one of the world's largest Intellectual Proprietors, offers a unique perspective on the current conflicts around copyrights, patents and trademarks. ... With their campaign for "Digital Rights Management", the copyright industries attempt to simultaneously outlaw the Universal Computer, revoke the Internet and suspend the fundamental laws of information. (oil21.org, 2007)
  • The Oil of the 21st Century. Perspectives on Intellectual Property, series of events held at Telegrafenamt, Tucholskystr. 6, Berlin, Wiederaufbau für Kreditanstalt, Mauerstr. 68, Berlin, Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå and Mumbai, 18 October–22 December 2007. A project by Bootlab, based on a concept by Partner gegen Berlin, produced in cooperation with Sarai, The Thing and Waag Society, and funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Website. Booklet. Video. Photos. 0xdb, "developed as part of the "Oil of the 21st Century" project, is a proposal for a new type of cultural database, build on top of file-sharing networks – and a practical intervention in the ongoing conflict between the protection of intellectual property and the exercise of fair use rights."
  • Free Adorno.gif
The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture, presided by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, has just advanced science and culture to a whole new level: Sebastian Luetgert, the founder of textz.com, is facing a warrant of arrest and may go to jail if he fails to pay more than 2,300 euros in damages for the alleged copying of two essays by Theodor W. Adorno that the foundation claims as their "intellectual property". Reemtsma was kindly asked to settle, but refused. (textz.com, 2004)
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AAAAARG[edit]

AAAAARG (originally AAARG, the acronym of Artists, Architects, and Activists Reading Group) is an online text repository. It was created by the artist Sean Dockray in 2005 and serves as a library for The Public School, a framework supporting autodidact activities. Aaaaarg has grown into a community of researchers and enthusiasts from contemporary art, critical theory, philosophy, and related fields who maintain, catalog, annotate and run discussions relevant to their research interests. As of 2025, it is offline.

  • The Public School, Los Angeles, 2010.

About[edit]

  • Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, eds. Dušan Barok, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and Nick Thurston, Basel: distro, Nov 2025, [134 pp].
  • Pelle Snickars, "Publikationshack", in Universitetet som medium, eds. Matts Lindström and Adam Wickberg Månsson, Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2015, pp 9-46. (Swedish)

Links[edit]

Website. The Public School meetings archive, 2009-2016. Memory of the World repertorium. Wikipedia-DE.

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Monoskop[edit]

Monoskop is an independent web-based educational resource and research platform for arts, culture and humanities founded in 2004. Monoskop features wiki pages with multilingual genealogical bibliographies of contemporary themes and movements in art, culture, and society such as Fediverse, technofeminism, decolonial aesthetics, the Anthropocene, community radio, free software, artists' publishing, performance, sound art and experimental film and video, accompanied by personal bio-bibliographical profiles of their exponents. Many of the titles in the bibliographies are linked to electronic versions of publications made available on Monoskop or other free and libre libraries.

  • Monoskop.org Screenshot 2025-10-26 detail.jpg

About[edit]

  • Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, eds. Dušan Barok, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and Nick Thurston, Basel: distro, Nov 2025, [134 pp].
  • Kunsten a sirkulere Monoskop 2024.jpg
  • Thurston Nick 2024 In Solidarity and From Curiosity.png
  • Nick Thurston, "In Solidarity and From Curiosity", in Ubu@50 – 50 Ubus: Everything Is Temporary, eds. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, Zagreb: Multimedia Institute, May 2024. Conversation with Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak and Dušan Barok.
  • Niederberger Shusha 2021 Radical Care Shadow Libraries und die Imagination anderer Institutionen.png
  • Mariabruna Fabrizi, Fosco Lucarelli, "Monoskop, 2004-", in Database, Network, Interface: The Architecture of Information, Paris: Caryatide, and Lausanne: Archizoom (EPFL), 2021, p 157. Exh. catalogue. Distributor. Exhibition. [26]
  • Goriunova Olga 2021 Uploading our Libraries The Subjects of Art and Knowledge Commons.jpg
  • Kudlova Adela 2019 Delat odvazna rozhodnuti Rozhovor s Dusanem Barokem.jpg
  • XPUB 2019 Interview with Dusan Barok.jpg
  • Thylstrup Nanna Bonde 2018 The Licit and Illicit Nature of Mass Digitization.jpg
  • Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, "Monoskop", in Thylstrup, The Politics of Mass Digitization, MIT Press, 2018, pp 89-94, n161-162, HTML.
  • Vanessa Kowalski, "Monoskop", in Kowalski, On Curating, Online: Buying Time in the Middle of Nowhere, Helsinki: Aalto University, 2018, pp 129-137. Case study in Master's Thesis in Curating, Managing, and Mediating Art. [31]
  • William Blueher, "Monoskop", Art Libraries Society of North America, Oct 2017. Review.
  • Dekker Annet 2017 Copying As a Way to Start Something New A Conversation with Dusan Barok About Monoskop.jpg
  • Barok Giorgetta Nicoletti 2015 Monoskop Interview EN IT.jpg
  • Wark McKenzie 2015 Metadata Punk.jpg
  • McKenzie Wark, "Metadata Punk", in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 111-117.
    • "Metapodatkovni punk", trans. Dušanka Profeta, in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 41-47, PDF. (Croatian)
  • Medak Tomislav 2015 The Future After the Library UbuWeb and Monoskops Radical Gestures.jpg
  • Lenka Rišková, "Monoskop.org", in Rišková, Kultúra v sieti.Nezávislé iniciatívy v umení a kultúre nových médií v Bratislave po roku 2000, Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2015, pp 37-39 & 50-51. Master's thesis. [35] (Slovak)
  • Barbora Linková, "Monoskop", ch. 6.3 in Linková, Archivy a sbírky. Od uměleckého archivu k internetové databázi, Brno: Masaryk University, 2014, pp 61-65. Master's thesis. (Czech)
  • Robert Bobnič, Jurij Smrke, Jasmina Šepetavc, "Monoskop", Tribuna, December 2012, pp 16-17. Interview conducted Nov 2012 during HAIP festival in Ljubljana. (Slovenian)
  • Oliver Rehák, "Monoskop nových médií", 3/4 21-22, Bratislava: Atrakt Art, 2007. (Slovak)

Links[edit]

Website. Monoskop Log. Mastodon. Memory of the World repertorium. Wikipedia-SK.

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Public Library / Memory of the World[edit]

Public Library Memory of the World.png

Public Library / Memory of the World is a network of interconnected shadow libraries, each maintained locally and independently from the others. It is modelled after the concept of the public library, extended to the digital realm: with books ready to be shared, meticulously cataloged, everyone is a librarian. When everyone is librarian, library is everywhere.

Public Library / Memory of the World was initiated in 2012 upon the invitation of Kiberpipa to curate their biannual HAIP festival in Ljubljana. Conceived at a moment where public libraries came under threat of austerity measures and where the networked infrastructures of sharing came under an increased threat of closing, it was aimed at strengthening and connecting those infrastructures and provoking debates that addressed the imposed and implicit territorial, socio-economic and legal barriers to the universal access to knowledge. Since this initial outing, Public Library continued to be developed and presented a.o. in dedicated exhibitions at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Galerija Nova under What, How & for Whom / WHW in Zagreb, Galerija SULUV under Kuda.org in Novi Sad, in collective exhibitions Dear Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana and Really Useful Knowledge in the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, in hackathons at Impakt festival in Utrecht, in Post-Digital Publishing workshop at Transmediale in Berlin, in Archive/Anarchive/Public Library workshop at Kuda.org in Novi Sad, in the residencies at Constant in Brussels, Calafou in Barcelona, MayDay Rooms in London and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. (2019)

  • Memory of the World.png

About[edit]

  • Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, eds. Dušan Barok, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and Nick Thurston, Basel: distro, Nov 2025, [134 pp].
  • Memory of the World ed Guerrilla Open Access 2018.jpg
  • Guerrilla Open Access, ed. Memory of the World, Coventry: Post Office Press, Rope Press, and Memory of the World, 2018, 34 pp. Texts by Memory of the World, Christopher Kelty, Balázs Bodó, and Laurie Allen.
  • Medak Mars WHW eds Public Library Javna knjiznica.jpg
  • Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, 144 pp. Texts by McKenzie Wark, Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, Manar Zarroug, and Paul Otlet. (English)/(Croatian)
  • In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub 2015.png

Links[edit]

Website. Libraries: Memory of the World, Herman's Library, K_O_K, Midnight Notes, Praxis, Printing Out the Internet. YouTube channel. Repertorium.

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Textz.com[edit]

Textzcom.logo.png

Textz.com is a warez database for texts. Its first iteration was run by Sebastian Lütgert/ROLUX from 2001 with the slogan »we are the & in copy & paste«. The website has been relaunched on 22 March 2020.

In the earlier version, one could find text with and without copyright, fictional and theoretical texts, manifestos, articles and song lyrics. Texts by Theodor W. Adorno side by side with texts by the autonome a.f.r.i.k.a.-Gruppe, Douglas Adams appeared next to Klaus Theweleit and Kathy Acker. The texts originated from various sources. They were submitted by authors themselves, supplied to the textz.com database by various online collaborators as freely circulating texts on the Net, or were scanned in from printed media page by page, processed via a text recognition program, and transformed into ASCII files.

  • Textzcom.2020.png

About[edit]

  • Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, eds. Dušan Barok, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and Nick Thurston, Basel: distro, Nov 2025, [134 pp].
  • "The Society of Intellectual Property", textz.com, 2005.

Links[edit]

Website. pngreader, 2003. walser.php, 2002. Memory of the World repertorium. MediaArtNet.

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UbuWeb[edit]

UbuWeb is the most significant and largest online archive of avant-garde art; it was initiated and is led by conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith. UbuWeb has grown into a relevant and recognized critical institution of contemporary art. Artists want to see their work in its catalog and thus agree to a relationship with UbuWeb that has no formal contractual obligations. [41]

  • UbuWeb 2025.png

About[edit]

  • Careful: A Repertorium on Shadow Library Practice, eds. Dušan Barok, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, and Nick Thurston, Basel: distro, Nov 2025, [134 pp].
  • Jacopo Rasmi, "Platforms of Curiosities: Weird Ways of Publishing Movies", in The Politics of Curiosity: Alternatives to the Attention Economy, eds. Enrico Campo and Yves Citton, London: Routledge, 2024. [42]
  • Ubu at 50 50 Ubus Everything Is Temporary 2024.jpg
  • Gill Partington, "Kontext ist alles. Kenneth Goldsmith und UbuWeb", Merkur 866, Jul 2021, pp 59-66. [45] (German)
  • Goldsmith Kenneth Duchamp Is My Lawyer The Polemics Pragmatics and Poetics of UbuWeb 2020.jpg
  • Kenneth Goldsmith, "UbuWeb", Prague: Artyčok/Academy of Fine Arts, 28 Jan 2019, 56 min. Video. Audio. Talk on UbuWeb and Custodians Online. Part of TBA21's Class of Interpretation.
  • Happy birthday Ubu.com 2016.png
  • McKenzie Wark, "Metadata Punk", in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 111-117.
    • "Metapodatkovni punk", trans. Dušanka Profeta, in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 41-47. (Croatian)
  • UbuWeb, 2014
  • Marcell Mars, Manar Zarroug, Tomislav Medak, "Public Library (An Essay)", Memory of the World blog, 27 Oct 2014; printed in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 75-85; reposted on Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft: Open-Media-Studies-Blog, 17 Dec 2018. On the idea of public library.
    • "Javna knjižnica (Esej)", trans. Una Bauer, in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 7-17. (Croatian)
  • "UbuWeb", Cargo 3, Sep 2009, p 74. Interview. [55] (German)

Links[edit]

Website. Bluesky. Avant-Garde All The Time, podcast series, 2007-2011. Mirror: ubu-mirror.ch. UbuWeb web archive, Library of Congress. Memory of the World repertorium. Wikipedia.


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