instructions to read this article

1. We don't speak from an     individual perspective, we bet on collective experience to speak as a     crowd, as a polyphony of human and non-human voices;
2. In order to think about the     future of libraries, it is necessary to trace their genealogy and make a     clear difference. There are no set solutions or answers to decolonial     practices, it takes a life's work to face the doubts and dwell on the     problems;
3. In order to establish new practices it is necessary to deal with     the problems as a walk in the forest, where many threads and paths present     themselves simultaneously and chaotically; some threads are pursued and     others are not. We must get lost in it.

(not so) far away

This essay begins in afar away land; as if a fugitive choreography could be materialized when readinga book. An ontology of fugitivity that operates at the intersection of blackstudies and feminist science and technology studies as a performance ofresistance to dominant systems of knowledge.

Weimagined a journey to a world that is about to disappear, but where the spiritsand ghosts can not be captured in documents. The attempt here is to acknowledgethat there is life and history beyond the document. A journey to refuse thisstatement and to open portals to dismantle old structures, to a place of refuge, of encounter, of displacements,of exchange, that amplifies dissident experiences of living. A journeyto (not so) far away to imagine what a library can actually become nowadays. How can a library enable anontological turn to become a collective space that produces a cosmology of theencounter?

Wemust be in a wake towards languages, cosmologies and technologies ofremembering and learning subscribed under another ontological foundation. Wecould invite the book Against The Grain:A Deep History of the Earliest States is a 2017 book by James C. Scott, tohelp us fight against this "standard civilizational narrative" thatplaces language through writing as an advanced and superior technology of humandevelopment^[1]. But we could also invite David Kopenawa,in the book A Queda do Céu: Palavras deum xamã Yanomami [The falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman] from 2010 tostrengthen our argument against the white supremacy of knowledge of the bookitself^[2].

Butshould we abandon the library and the books? Or could we recreate it? How canone find a library today and not operate in it the lines of necessary andtransversal revolutions in relation to gender, raciality, class, ethnicity,means of production? In this text we will try to address some ideas aroundother possibilities of choreographic composition with a multiplicity ofknowledge to propose the library as a place to encounter the difference and toinvent a common, in a radical way.

falling sky and death expression of power

David Kopenawa in the The falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman,show us a system of hegemonic power that insists on annihilating otherontologies. Kopenawa narrates the moment when the outsiders (westerns) come totheir forest and the first thing they did was to give new names to the ones inthe community. To name something! Western people love to give names, the StatusApparatus operates through codification-recodification to capture the indocilflow of life.^[3] In Kopenawa's narrative we can grasphow these unequal forces of power (the power to name something) operate as adestruction of another's world, by ignoring names that are already there. Through the categorization andnomenclature of things and subjects the epistemological separation of the westto the “rest of the world “ takes place. In this grammar of exclusion thedocuments play a key role in the construction and creation of history as weknow it.

SuzanneBriet, a French librarian, historian and a significant pioneer ofdocumentation, starts her treaty with the postulate: “The document as a proofin support of a fact” to reaffirm something that is immutable and permanent,that can be saved, preserved and classified. She explains to us how the idea ofmemory and archive has to do with a technology of death of other peoples andnarratives^[4]. She presents the document as aproof of life in the western world. We can invite Achille Mbembe to address theconcept of necropolitical power to observe this phenomenon, this choreographyof terror^[5]. Power, the author explains, is materializedby the "expression of death". What would be the relation between thecaptivity and colonialism with the documents and the collections in thelibraries as the way knowledge is produced and established in the westernworld. A library is mainly constituted by documents, but definitely is not onlythat.

Thatcan lead to the perpetuation of a systemic violence that continuously destroyssome “in vivo” conditions by naming, describing, presenting, commenting andcataloging life? Kopenawa says that he did not learn about the things of theforest by setting his eyes on books; but by drinking the elders breath. Thisgesture can explore more porous boundaries in relation to memory, delving intoa singular documentation that opens a place for others' histories. That can diginto this grammar of exclusion another system of existence, that operates as aregime of the invisible, of the unknown. The absence of documents most of thetime deals with the invisibility of ontologies that can highlight other codes, systems,languages, practices and ecologies.

The whitepeople’s way of thinking is different. Their memory is clever but entangled insmoky and obscure words. They do not truly know the things of the forest. Theycontemplate paper skins on which they have drawn their own word for hours. Ifthey do not follow their lines, their thoughts get lost. Our elders did nothave image skins and did not write laws on them…So their word never went faraway from them… (KOPENAWA,2013, p. 23)

Theongoing social, political and ecological catastrophe that we are immersed in,that is ruled by imperialism and the (neo-pos) colonialism, must be stopped. weare not trying to argue towards the book as only a colonial storage. Although Ibelieve there is something that could be learnt with the wise words of theshaman that I would like to bring to foreground, about the knowledge beingembodied in the absent-presence of perception, affection, ancestors and spiritsthrough the elements of the forest. Could a library host a place for theliving? Would it be possible to imagine knowledge as a dance in which the flowand the pace are addressed and articulated by its participants and theirnarratives ?

art library and decolonization

The distinction between Western and non-Westerncollections is problematic in itself. The library as a materialization of acolonial heritage accomplishes the extermination of existences and condemnsthem to vanish away by taking an important part in an ancient technology ofexploitation and assault. It is a captivity statement of the in vivocondition that annihilates the knowledge transmission embodied in experiencesof living.  Many universities spend alarge part of their institutional budgets on acquiring new library books,paying for high online journal subscription fees and recruiting library staff.Expanding the collection to make it more diverse usually operates, and just ina few moments, as a neo-liberal practice of capital accumulation. The expansionof the library's collection already addresses the deficit in relation tominorities. Foucault warned us, in his initial lecture at the College deFrance, that the writing system founded on the hegemony of the author leads usto the repetition and strengthening of the power poles of a time, of anepistemology - in this case, a western-centered one^[6].

Thesolution of most libraries to expand their collection and to achieve a strategyof integrating non-western knowledge needs a broader reflection on the book asa medium or as a gatekeeper of knowledge. A book should be read as a place ofencounter, an effective constellation of times, an opening for spaces andvoices, a multiplicity and never a one person object.

Abook is not the result of a solitary writing, just the opposite, it minglesnomadic distribution of singularities, tangles of encounters, thoughts,delirious practices and dreams together entangled with humans and non-humans.It is an attempt of raising awareness and thinking about the networks thatlibraries can make possible if they are occupied with non-books archives (withpractices, encounters, groups, etc).

Theaim is to create movement; a tension in those polarities and dismantle them.The library that could be built concerning perspectives of disruption bylearning with radical propositions. As a desire machine to inspire discussionand encourage debate around the library as a shared public good. And, also, asa pedagogical platform for creative practices to challenge the normsestablished. How can art libraries be generative resources and sites of actionfor all who identify as queer, as women, as black, as Indigenous, as people ofcolor?

not so far non-documented libraries

We would like to proposea broader discussion of art libraries as sites of intersubjective communion,spanning practices that range from personal assemblage to those of spontaneouscollectives and the ones associated with community centers and publiclibraries. How could the library be a place to host embodied experiences in aradical turn? How could it be the crossroad of worlds that do not cancel eachother out but make space for impossible choreographies?

We invite you to think of the library as aportal which can make visible conflicts and dissonances. We would like tospeculate about ways in which knowledge spread and its hegemonic technology ofavoiding contamination. We would imagine discentring ways of organization(without a central control or top down structure), to tangle overlappingconnections, constantly being created without a specific focus where the book is only a partof it but not the core.

Diffraction,splicing dispersal migrants in a complex dance taking the example of theZapatistas, a social movement of indigenous Mexicans seeking to catalyze civilsociety's full democratic power where schooling and learning is treated asfluid, supported by freely constructed social relationships, and themaintenance of the spaces including the library is collective. Learning is animmersion. To think about emergencies and political imaginaries like this iturges us to understand the legitimation of science comes from theinstitutionalization that entangles capitalism-imperialism, racism and its formof violence and exploitation.

librarian-choreographer

If we try to move awayfrom the library as an institution, but bring our analysis closer to the peoplewho occupy it, such as the librarian and her role as an agent of innovativepractices. Since the librarian, by institutional power, already occupies thisfacilitating position of practices between knowledge and access to knowledge inthe library. She is the gatekeeper.  Thelibrarian could produce a sensorial reorientation of the library; a peculiardance of being together in homelessness. A librarian that makes it possible tohost the placeless and outsider voices of the Sovereign Power, includingpractices of dreaming, escaping, screaming, flying, sliding, spelling, divingand dancing.

Thelibrarian can articulate in the space of the library a multiplicity ofexperiences that bring diverse public, ages, social and cultural backgrounds, avolcanic eruption, a flock of birds or antilopes on the run. The book not as anobject to be consumed but to recognise all the emancipatory possibilities thatcomes along that. A place for sharing technologies of listening, tellingstories, remembering, naming the unknown, seeing the invisible, voicing theundercommons and experiencing migration realities.

Thelibrarian that can transform the hegemonic practices and bring to life (insidethe institution) forgotten wisdoms. It activates the documents to friction thenormativity and the reality to (re)invent an immaterial collection instead ofconsuming, buying, expanding and conquering. Instead, we can think of practicesthat invite social exchanges, expansion of community knowledge, contact withother knowledge beyond (and alongside) books and people.

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bibliography

Briet, Suzanne.(1951).Qu'est-ce que la documentation? Paris: Éditions documentaires, industrielles ettechniques.

Deleuze, Gilles. Derrames II: aparatos de estado y axiomáticacapitalista. 1a Ed. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Cactus, 2017.

Kopenawa, Davi, andBruce Albert. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. 2013.

Mbembe, Achille.Necropolítica. in Revista Arte & Ensaios, n. 32, 2016. Saw at ​​https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ae/article/view/8993/7169 (consulted at 03/05/2022)

Scott, James C. Againstthe grain. A deep history of earliest states. Yale: Yale University Press,2017.

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about authors

FlaviaPinheiro, DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam

FlaviaPinheiro is a choreographer and performer from Recife, Brazil currently based in Amsterdam. Her research  foregrounds networks of resilience andresistance to systems of knowledge by fabulative speculations around Scienceand Technologies. Her artistic practice in an ongoing attempt to create breathing and  vital conditions; in an unstoppable dance shecreates improbable exchanges with the nonhumans such as bacterias, plants,birds, antelopes and ghosts. She focuses in states of survival and a refusal ofcaptivity   by proposing  a radical ontological turn. She navigates indifferent medias (photography, video, performance, installation, sound, writing) to underline  how diversity andtransversality  can contribute to(un)learning colonial pedagogies.

She built the platform South Boom Boom togetherwith Tom Oliver, Mario Lopes and many others; a publication and a series ofconferences which aims to function as an anticolonial statement expressed fromthat absurd position of studying and living in Amsterdam coming from the GlobalSouth. It aims to discuss the importance of dissident invisibility in art andeducation to contribute to the knowledge about how institutions can articulateand enact an anti-racist and anti-colonial agenda engaging with a broader anddiverse community.

https://flavia-pinheiro-site.webflow.io/

Rafael Limongelli (orcid 0000-0001-9911-0936) isan anarchist, PhD candidate in education (UNICAMP), master in education(UNIFESP), bachelor in social sciences (PUCSP) and technician in performingarts (INDAC). He published the books Cretino (2013) and Duna (2018) by EditoraPatuá. Since 2018 is the director of Flipei - Festa Literária Pirata dasEditoras Independentes (www.flipei.net.br); is the curator and producer ofRizoma Livros (www.rizomalivros.com.br), since 2017, a nomadic bookstore setupinside a 1980s school bus, specializing in independent publishers; andproduction coordinator of Salão do Livro Político(http://salaodolivropolitico.com.br/). Develops research and practices inintegrated arts, transiting between education, dance, theater, performance,literature and visual arts. Was curator of the multi-artistic space Capital 35,where he developed the Programa de Formação Autônoma (PFA) and the program ParaFicar Juntxs (PFJ). He has developed several collective initiatives inanarchist and anti-capitalist education with social housing movements in SãoPaulo, through spaces such as Casa Mafalda, Favela do Moinho; with quilombolamovements in Aracati, Ceará, where he organized Casa da Maré, collective andself-managed cultural space of Cumbe, the quilombola territory. Composes thecollective LIMA - Insurgent Laboratory of Anarchist Machineries (https://linktr.ee/lima_a) and the collective Cara de Cavalo withCarolina Bianchi.

^[1] Scott, James C.Against the grain. A deep history of earliest states. Yale: Yale UniversityPress, 2017.

^[2]Kopenawa, Davi, andBruce Albert. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. 2013.

^[3] Deleuze, Gilles. Derrames II: aparatos de estado yaxiomática capitalista. 1a Ed. Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires: Cactus, 2017.

^[4] Briet, Suzanne. Qu'est-ce que la documentation?Paris: Éditions documentaires, industrielles et techniques, 1951.P.3

^[5] Mbembe, Achille. Necropolítica. in Revista Arte &Ensaios, n. 32, 2016. Saw at ​​https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ae/article/view/8993/7169 (consulted at 03/05/2022)

^[6] L’Ordre du discours, Leçon inaugurale au Collège deFrance prononcée le 2 décembre 1970,

ÉditionsGallimard, Paris, 1971.

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