NN Contemporary Art and Library Stack are delighted to announce the launch of their new online public lending library The NN Contemporary Art Branch of Library Stack, a public collection of digital publications and digital media projects from across the contemporary art and design spheres. This freely accessible digital platform will support artistic research whilst augmenting NN Contemporary Art’s curatorial research and public programming agendas. The Branch also inaugurates a new joint publishing program to produce lendable digital projects within this extended library space, testing new modes of institutional collaboration, conservation, distribution and circulation.
The Branch library will launch with the ebook Ming Romantic: Collected and Bound, 2nd Edition by the New York design firm Synoptic Office (Caspar Lam and YuJune Park). Ming Romantic explores the complexities of designing a new Chinese font and touches on both histories of printed language in China and global issues in graphic design. The launch features an online event with the authors in conversation with Chris Wu (co-founder of design studio Wkshps), happening on 10th February 2022 on Zoom.
The Branch library provides free access to media files (including multi-format ePubs, video and audio media) for either direct download or individual borrowing. Featured publications can be accessed by Branch users from anywhere in the world and include digital artworks, artists’ publications, podcasts, archival ephemera and objects from established alternative publishers such as Link Editions, Hatje Cantz, Onestar Press, Sternberg Press, L’Internationale Online and Open Humanities Press.
Library Stack circulates a vast array of digital arts and design ephemera by plugging into the heritage database infrastructure of the global library system, thus operating outside the scope of commercial internet platforms. In dialogue with NN Contemporary Art’s research, exhibition and publication aims, this joint experimental public Branch library will contribute to a longer-term exploration of the digital infrastructure for loaning and borrowing digital objects, revising post-pandemic definitions of ‘the local’ and ‘translocal’ and mapping alternative publishing models for the arts and culture sectors. This inquiry positions the Branch library as a field of experimentation in community-driven accessioning models for institutions through digital tools.
The launch of the Branch and the digital commissioning programme was made possible by the Arts Council England. For press enquiries, please contact marketing [at] nncontemporaryart.org.
Notes for the editors
NN Contemporary Art is a non-profit, contemporary art space, studio complex, project room & education programme in the Cultural Quarter of Northampton, UK. NN works with artists and creative practitioners at all stages of their careers to present an international programme of contemporary art and multi-disciplinary events. NNCA is currently undergoing a 4 mil GBP capital relocation and renovation project at 24 Guildhall Road, developed in partnership with West Northamptonshire Council as part of SEMLEP Getting Building Fund & Towns Plan regeneration schemes. NNCA is a registered charity supported by Arts Council England as part of their National Portfolio, alongside regular support from The University of Northampton, West Northamptonshire Council, Northamptonshire Community Foundation and SEMLEP.
Library Stack accessions born-digital objects from across the fields of art, design, architecture and theory, focusing on items that confound typical distinctions between disciplines and formats. It includes a public bibliographic catalog, a cloud-based file repository, a lending library for ebooks and software and a network of institutional partners. Library Stack has participated in exhibitions, authored essays, published new files and is developing a film based on the short story Eden Machine.
