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Like many of the visitors to the Alpenhof, we spent most of our time as residents of Die Bibliothek Andreas Züst enchanted by the library itself. It wasn’t only the books – an exciting combination of rare collector’s editions and mundane titles together drawing a portrait of a man – that caught our attention, but also the classification system through which these are arranged. Many of the categories, including das Weib (the female), Weltanschauungen (worldviews), and alternative Weltbilder (alternative images of the world), sparked our imagination, inviting us to discover what they hold, and what they might exclude. But none were as alluring as the Beschissene Restgruppe, the ‘shitty leftovers’ that would not fit anywhere else. Located in a poorly-lit corner beneath the stairs, this little section captivated us, and we found ourselves returning to it again and again. The following is an attempt to undo it. For our journal entry, we propose a virtual re-organisation of a few of the shitty leftovers into the general library system.
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A book on the history, ethnography and economy of silk goes into the Erotica section.
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John F. Kennedy’s A Nation of Immigrants gets put in the section devoted to the Außerirdische (alien).
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An exploration of Warum Katzen malen (Why Cats paint) is clearly a question that belongs in the Ästhetik (aesthetics) section.
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A Migros annual report for the year 2000 is a collection of facts and figures akin to the notions addressed in the section on the Futuristen (Futurists).
An article inspired by the classification system of Die Bibliothek Andreas Züst is forthcoming in the October issue of OAR, Issue 2: Validity.
April 2017
Text: Jessyca Hutchens, Anita Paz, Naomi Vogt, and Nina Wakeford (OAR editors).