Building spilling books

"Biografias," an installation by Alicia Martin at Casa de America, Madrid. "5,000 Books Pour Out of a Building in Spain" (via Imaginary Foundation)

• [timmaguire]

  Looks more like it’s puking books.

  • [tomrigid]

    Ink-stained retch?

• [goldenearth]

  Yep, I agree – it’s a vomit of books

• [CaptainPedge]

  What a waste of books…

  • [Feargus Stewart]

    This is about the same as book burning

    • [Tim Drage]

      *book publishing

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_book

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      No, it’s more like eating live babies.  With a serrated spoon.  And flambé.

    • [stygyan]

      I think of book burning as a way to eliminate all books that “need” to be censored. For this, surely they used unwanted books. Maybe deteriorated books, maybe old and obsolete encyclopedias, yellow pages or just Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown books. Nothing to be lamented.

      • [ATXinventor]

         I sort of was 1/2 part OK with someone pictured recently that had used old computer manuals… Though I wish I had saved somewhere my first Apple IIe Chinenglish ones :-)

    • [Nathan Hornby]

      Not really, I’m pretty sure that’s an act of censorship, this is just someone using a whole load of old books.

      Preserving knowledge is important, books however are just a medium; would you be as upset if it were made of cassette tapes or floppy discs?

      The alternative would have been recycling or incineration anyway (I highly doubt he went and bought them all from the rare section of a local bookshop), so actually this is a fantastic use of books. Looks great too, must look impressive IRL and the building’s architecture looks amazing, which is incidental but does help it to look amazing.

  • [Tim Drage]

    came to post ‘IN B4 IRRATIONAL CONCERN-TROLL WEEPING ABOUT DESTROYING BOOKS’ but too late :(

  • [ATXinventor]

     Well, at least I’m not the only one to be saddened by this. I guess it’s a tiny bit better than just “recycling” or trashing them, but not much …

  • [Christopher Wayne Donn]

    But there’s just so, so many books these days.  So, so many.

    • [Donald Petersen]

      Marry, ’tis true.  And it doesn’t take a hell of a lot of imagination to realize that not all of them have value.  There exists a tiny minority of books that are only useful as temporary carbon sequestration.  Like, say, 98% of the surviving telephone Yellow Pages from a few years ago.  Or a certain percentage (certainly not all!) of remaindered copies of latter paperback editions of V.C. Andrews-branded titles.  Things like that.

      There’s no imminent danger of a shortage, guys, so catch your breath before you lament the destruction of certain books.  Don’t fetishize them too much.

  • [MrEricSir]

     Don’t worry, they were all copies of “Twilight.”

• [mobobo]

  that is absolutely gorgeous

• [Lobster]

  Librorrhea?

  • [Christopher]

    I feel it’s only fair to warn you that I’m going to use that term at every possible opportunity, and that I’m always going to give you credit for it.

    Fortunately opportunities aren’t likely to come up often, because I imagine they will always lead to people asking if I talk to lobsters often.

    • [Lobster]

       I can live with that. :)

  • [Ton S]

    Bravo!

• [ShawShaw]

  Oof… I knew I shouldn’t have eaten so many Twilight and Dan Brown novels all at once… *HURRFF*

• [awjt]

  I hope that’s not MY book, belching forth, fenestrally.

• [mischele jamgochian]

  Gorgeous! Now I know what to do with our library discards…

• [mischele jamgochian]

  … and how to escape the library in case of emergency!

• [CaptainPedge]

  Maybe I’m just seein git from a British perspective where within a week this would just end up as a rain soaked pile of mashed up pulp with a bunch of graffitti