The Library Project and the Gift of Prankster Art

Abstract

I perform a critical assessment of Temporary Services' The Library Project through the analytical framework of dialogic art as described by Grant Kester in Conversation Pieces and Christine Harold's articulation of prankster art. Particularly, in my reading, I am interested in how Temporary Services reconciles the covert, tactical aspects of their art with the desire to promote more ethical relations. What are the advantages and disadvantages of art that creates temporary, tactical formations, like those found in The Library Project? I argue that The Library Project is productively ambiguous, situated somewhere between the dialogic art projects that Kester discusses and Harold's “prankster” art, and, as such, adds to our understanding of how artists can make use of “latitude allowed to art” (Kester 68) as a way to challenge rigid structures that limit interaction. Pranking in The Library Project is unique because it is performed not simply to avoid using the “proper” channels, but also to sculpt a more equal dialogic partnership than the pre-existing asymmetrical relations proposed by the library's strategies of control. Through the rhetorical hybrid of “pranking as gifting,” Temporary Services stages the possibility for unique interactions.