borrowed, 2025

In borrowed, Selina Zürrer investigates the infrastructures of libraries and the handling of the books stored within them. The work focuses on sites of storage, practices of collection preservation, and the technical and organisational processes that structure access to knowledge. It examines how books are moved, stored, and made available within library systems, and how these processes are changing in the context of digitalisation.

The installation consists of video works, bound book objects, a publication, and transport boxes containing borrowed library books. Each video work presents one shelving system within a specific library. manual shelves documents manually operated rolling shelves in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. mediated shelves shows shelving systems in the Medien- und Informationszentrum of the Zurich University of the Arts. automated shelves documents the automated conveyor system of the Kooperative Speicherbibliothek Büron.
The book objects were created from books collected by Zürrer from paper bundles placed on the streets for recycling. The books were rebound by the artist herself in the Buchbinderei Reinauer in Zumikon according to library binding standards. Zürrer developed and assigned her own archival numbering system to these books.
The publication borrowed brings together smartphone photographs taken during the research and production process of the work.
In addition, Schlagwort: Bibliothek Bibliothek presents transport boxes from the Kooperative Speicherbibliothek Büron containing a total of 84 books from the collection of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, which are stored off site in the Kooperative Speicherbibliothek Büron and catalogued in the system under the tagword “Bibliothek”.

borrowed draws attention to existing library infrastructures and raises questions about the future role of physical book collections between materiality, preservation, and digital organisation and access.