Mindmapping, Capital Library of Brussels / King Baudouin Foundation (BE)
Commissioning of the public art project Mindmapping for the Capital Public Library of Brussels. Made possible through the campaign "Contemporary Art at Public Request" of the King Baudouin Foundation.
On Mindmapping
Manon de Boer asked thirty people - partly friends, partly unknown users - to compile a top ten list of their favorite books, CD's and videos and to describe themselves briefly (e.g. as transparent woman, library Casanova, bum, etc.).
The artist distilled fictive portraits from these lists; they are "fictive", because these kinds of list are always only snapshots of a moment and the person portrayed is only described through key words, but not named.
All the books, CD's and videos that come up in the thirty lists and are also part of the library's collection, are labeled with stickers that in turn refer to the respective portrait and the project "Mind Mapping".
Through the integration of the individual memories of real but absent people, the library user is confronted with different portraits and thus with different cultural frames of reference and stories, which can be called up on computer terminals. The first fifteen are also furnished with text, image and sound fragments that in turn refer to other titles and portraits via links. The library and all its users thus become part of a meta-portrait of cultural references.
Installation shot of the public art intervention mindmapping at the public library of Brussels (B)
Portrait of a men who fell on the earth, part of the installation Mindmapping.
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