Swap, Drop and Roll is an ongoing series of projects which invite the public to design and build a self-running, self-organising ‘situational library’. Sharing a book, whether material or otherwise, requires a point of contact, a common space through which there may be an exchange of energy, along with the exchange of the book itself. The Situational Library is an attempt to make visible, if only for an instant, the communities that form at each of these exchanges. Within this Situational Library there is the potential for the divergence and reconfiguration of the book, not through some alteration of its medium or mode of inscription, but through those who hold the idea of the book in common.
The first edition of Swap, Drop and Roll and the first Situational Library, which occurred in the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in 2012, consisted of a room containing thousands of discarded books from the State Library, a workbench and some archiving tools. Once more, during ISEA2013, the public will be invited to participate – by bringing a book, in paper or electronic form, to add or swap, to help build a Situational Library.
Andy Simionato is a designer, artist and publisher of books on art from, in and around the internet. With his partner Karen Ann Donnachie he founded the influential art periodical This is a magazine (www.thisisamagazine.com) in 2002, and more recently Atomic Activity Books (www.atomicactivity.com) in 2008. His designs and artworks have appeared in publications such as Vogue Italy, Rolling Stone, Vision China, Amsterdam Weekly, Tokion New York, and in art institutions such as Kunstverein Neuhausen (Germany), Arnhem’s Museum of Modern Art (Netherlands) and the Triennale Design Museum (Italy). In a 2010 feature article for the progressive art and architecture magazine Archistorm, French design critic and curator Catherine Geel described Andy as a ‘paranormal designer.’ He is currently completing a PhD by research at Edith Cowan University, in which he questions the book to come in electronic space.
Original code by Phil Lewis. All project plans, and code will be available at: www.swapdropandroll.org.
