THE LFTT LIBRARY AT BRACKWEDE LIBRARY

Since June 2015, the artist Angelika Höger of Artists Unlimited has taken care of a selection of the library, which consists of “cultural instructions”, specially for Bielefeld. This special collection includes books on natural sciences and gardening, practical instruction manuals and modern self-help literature. For almost a year now, artists from Bielefeld have been dealing with the library, expanding its potential for meaning and opening it to for experimental readings.

In May 2016 The LFTT Library was invited to programme an exhibition and series of events at Brackwede District Library as part of ‘lAb’ (www.lab-artistsunlimited.de) an ongoing project of curator Anna Jehle. This invitation was a welcome opportunity to showcase the development of the work.  The project was a collaboration between Brackwede District library as host, the Bielefeld Artist Association Artists Unlimited (inc. Angelika Höger) and The LFTT Library. The invited artists were; Vera Brüggemann, Viola Friedrich, Helen Horgan, Angelika Höger, Antje Löbel, Gabriele Undine Meyer and Hildegard Nattebrede. During the exhibition in the District library the selection was open to the public and a number of events took place including a performance by Oona Kastner and Markus Schwartze

Pictured above: Gabrielle Undine Meyer’s work with ‘Teach Yourself Typewriting’ Pitmans College (1966). Undine Meyer fell in love with this book from the 1960s, a time when the artists mother worked as a secretary in Germany. Undine Meyer bought a typewriter and loosely following the instructions and exercises, taught herself to type. The endeavour was showcased in the form of a multimedia installation and performance work. www.gabriele-undine-meyer.de

Artist and Illustrator Vera Brüggeman (pictured above) has been working as an illustrator and artist since 1995, drawing for books, games, posters, magazines, and textbook publishers among other things. Brüggeman chose a bi-lingual gaelic-english book on Irish language composition to respond to with witty and formally elegant drawings. The series has since been expanded and is to be published as a book. See www.verabrueggemann.de for more information. Below: ‘Aids to Irish Composition‘ published by M.H. Gill & Son, Dublin (1938).

Angelika Höger (below) is known for her large scale kinetic installations made from found domestic objects (a practice she has termed ‘Housewife Engineering’ ).  While looking after The LFTT Library selection at Artists Unlimited the artist came across a number of illustrated technical books including ‘Artistic & Scientific Taxidermy and Modelling’ by Montagu Browne (1896) and ‘How Radar Works’ by Kenneth Ullyett (1948). Combining the fleshy with the extramundane, Höger built a number of small appliances that exhibited strange sentient qualities; like a page turning machine that responds to a motion detector and a tiny motor that spins a paper flower into bloom. www.angelika-hoeger.de

Antje Löbel (below) was struck by an Art Nouveau craft book on paper flower making while looking through the collection and decided to form a group around working sculpturally with paper which have been holding regular meetings at The LFTT Library at Artists Unlimited ever since. Her contribution to the show was the result of a period of focused immersion in the patterns and folds of intricate paperwork. www.antje-loebel.de

Artist Viola Friedrich (below) crafted and photographed a series of miniature laboratories from electronic scrap inspired by the book ‘Electrons, Electric Waves & Wireless Telephony’ by J. A. Fleming (1923). Employing model building, staged photography, and found material including as plants, minerals and engineering waste, Viola Friedrich creates points of connection for narratives behind her pictures. What has happened or will happen in the future leaves it to the imagination of the beholder. Friedrich studied photo design at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld and graduated in 2002 with a diploma from Prof. Karl Martin Holzhäuser. http://www.violafriedrich.de/

Hildegard Nattebrede (below) created a series of drawings inspired by ‘An Insect Book for The pocket’ by Edmund Sanders (1951)

PHOTOS: Lucie Marsmann, Marcus Poch and Helen Horgan (2016).