TThis event was a film and talk at the library in St.Ives as part of the September festival 2018. Abigail Reynolds had won a BMW grant that financed and organised every detail of her proposed trip on the Silk Rd from China to Rome to the sites of 15 lost Libraries.. Part of the deal was also the production of a book which looked very beautiful and can be purchased or borrowed from the library. The film was made using an old 16mm Bolex movie camera and edited to be shown as two simultaneous images, done because the medium of books presents two pages to us. It was 18minutes long and designed to be looped but we viewed it from start to finish. It was rather enigmatic, full of brief romantic glimpses and ranged from her small daughter asking questions to the artist being arrested in Egypt and a shot of her next to the magnificent BMW motorcycle provided for her to ride part of the way.
Abigail then told us more about the project and how her adventurous trips went. I hoped she was recording this because she spoke very well about both the personal aspects of being a woman undertaking the three visits and about the importance of libraries as non commercial public places and the danger of possibly future disintegration and loss of digital media. She chose film deliberately as a physical medium and wanted to actually go to the places to experience them.
The questions from the audience were very interesting although the one referencing the first translation by a woman of an ancient greek work into english was made by a man whose lengthy sideways approach to asking a question verged on giving a talk of his own.
Abigail spoke enthusiastically about the privately endowed large libraries in Americnd I was surprised to hear her attributing the present lack of valuing of uk libraries which are closing down not to the political Conservative government austerity cuts but to the fact that people took for granted what the welfare state had been providing.
I hope there was some understanding that it is politics that drives these cuts and that a Labour government is our hope of maintaining and investing in public facilities for education such as libraries.
I left before I could raise this as I needed to catch the last bus which was unfortunately at 6 o'clock, another symptom of having to rely on private profit to provide services. I was able to email a query to Abigail. Her reply supports libraries being a public service but still suggests that this prevents private philanthropy saving them, whereas I would say private benefactors would be welcome to donate large sums to preserve them but have not been doing that and that we cannot rely on private benevolence.
' Lost Libraries' by Abigail Reynolds. 2017 This is an interesting book to handle and read. It has been lovingly put together with different textures and colours and layouts and a new technology that allows smartphone users to access soundtracks.
I have quibbles with a few details, particularly the author's way of referring to Cornwall as England even though living in St.Just she might know many of us consider this inappropriate and although as she travels from country to country she might be sensitised to issues of boundaries and identity.
However, overall the text and pictures are fascinating , facts, observations and personal feelings given equal parts. There are some lovely original remarks such as likening people queuing to see a cave as like the film going through the gate of the Bolex movie camera that she has chosen to use. This decision seems to be because of film's physical non digital form but makes for difficulties and is a heavy camera whilst also perhaps being an art cred gambit a la Tacita Dean.
Abigail Reynolds acknowledges the strain of travelling alone, needing some contact, someone on her side, and I can hardly imagine her wanting to leave her young children and partner to take on these trips. She was able to include them on part of the Italian researches. Her ambition to achieve the project when her proposal won this huge prize must have been enormous.
There are many lovely phrases, of her imagining the harem women at Qu'on Palace in Uzbekistan when she sees the museum attendants in a courtyard, 'a sort of sherbet leisure of bright dresses and laughter', and watching the sun set over Tashkent, ' a peach skewering itself on the distant spike of the TV tower'.
There isn't more than a hint of her political views, nothing positive to say about the soviet era or Mao, but the courage to contest the need for women to wear heavy make up to enhance their beauty.
I enjoyed all the quotes for example Petrarch, 'What has been lost cannot be destroyed or diminished'. I learnt all sorts of things such as that Trajan's column was originally in the centre of a library of several floors so that its narrative could be followed easily. Also that a whole Iibrary, The Villa of Papyri, remains in burnt fragments which we now have the technology to decipher if the Italian government had the will to do this using multi spectral digital imaging.
She deduces from a remark of Augustus that reading was normally aloud not to oneself in the fourth century CE. She asserts that Romans at the time of the eruption at Herculaneum had no word for volcano and no understanding of what it was. I want to question these assertions.
Abigail bothers to credit the help of many people at the end of the book, all in alphabetical order except that Theresa Gleadowe, wife of Nicolas Serota, and very important person in establishing the CAST project for art in Cornwall, is singled out separately.
I would have liked to hear about what is happening to St.Just library and to have the credit for austerities' damages firmly attributed to Conservative government, but Abigail Reynolds is not one to make a clear political statement. One wonders if BMW 's grant prohibits this?
She does however say,'We take for granted the stability of peacetime, the subtleties of freedom. We squander our resources on trivia and, with our attention diverted, allow the things that generations have fought for to slip through our fingers'. Do buy the book or even more appropriately request and borrow it from your library
