User:Simon/pre & post lockdown overview

state of the project before the lockdown

This summary provides an overview of the project as it was at lockdown on March 13th, 2020.

state of the project now

Currently, the focus is on documentation of the project. The primary activity is writing; both This has taken the form of writing, and prototyping index cards.

what were the next steps you were planning to take before the lockdown

The bootleg library was never intended to exist in perpetuity. Before lockdown, I had been invited to take part in several events as part of Onomatopee's Meeting Grounds project. This was to take place throughout March. I conducted one bootleg library session at Onomatopee on March 6th, before the entire public program (as a series of meetups) was postponed due to the lockdown. Meeting Grounds moved to an online series of events, and a publication to document the subsequent surge in use of online public spaces. I was invited to contribute to this publication, for which I wrote an essay, titled ["text, tbc"], that examines the editorial, technical and social perspectives on text, and Etherpad as an exemplar of these.

In May I had several events planned:

1) I was also invited to participate in an exhibition in Amsterdam, curated by a well-known curatorial institution. I had also been invited to participate in a media art festival in Austria.

My plan was to continue organising public events (mostly in the form of bootleg library sessions), at least one each month.

what are the next steps you need to take with the your project given the new situation

My plan was (and remains) to close the library. This gesture of "closure" and what the library can leave behind remains an interest and intention.