dOCUMENTA(13): Bibliophilia and Libricide


More Archive/Library/Book works at dOCUMENTA (13):

Michael Rakowitz What dust will rise? (2012)

Commissioned and produced for dOCUMENTA(13)



From the exhibit info:

What Dust Will Rise? recreates selections from the library of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel that were destroyed in a fire in the Fridericianum during a bombing by the British Royal Airforce on September 9 1941.With the help of stone carvers from Afganistan, Michael Rakowitz remade these lost volumes out of travertine quarried in the hills of Bamiyan, where two monumental sixth-century sandstone Buddhas were dynamited by the Taliban. The undertaking conjures tombstones and recalls the tradition of stone books serving as surrogates for the illiterate. One sculpture has been donated to the National Museum of Kabul, which was also severely damaged under the Taliban.