Where Books Go To Die by Jackie Karuti - Review
Walking into the Goethe-Institut on a hot sunny day, the sun’s light suddenly shrinks out and there’s an eerie feel around you. “Silence!” the origins of the robotic admonition is not clear until you hear it again. There she is on stage, draped in black, a mannequin of a librarian with eyes shining like bulbs. On one hand she holds a library card and on the other an open book. This is definitely where books go to die. Behind the stern and ghoulish librarian are slides of images of people working to save the libraries. Artists, writers, students, filmmakers, lawyers and even a baker took part in a three day performance, In the Case of Books, organized by Jackie Karuti last year (May 2013). The diverse lot travelled all over Nairobi and dusted, cleaned, arranged and talked about the books encountered.
The library scene includes historic and contemporary acclaimed bestsellers affected by the elements; half burnt books whose titles are barely legible, burnt out matches standing guiltily on rows, bibles, dictionaries and notebooks hardened into concrete as if cementing their eternal significance on the earth, and a table of open books whose pages caused to blow furiously by a fan nearby. The trickling of a fountain installed at the back of the exhibition offers a calming effect amidst the librarian’s reminders. One chief element that inadvertently is a part of the exhibition and does affect the destruction of books is walking around the exhibition, we humans.
The message is profound. What is the state of our libraries today, but cemeteries of words and worlds gone by? Jackie’s exhibition brings out this pertinent issue impeccably.
Where Books Go To Die runs until April 11th 2014 from 1:00p.m. to 6:00pm at the Goethe Institut.
By Amal Mohamed
