How Libraries Think

  • with the Staff of Ngā Kete Wānanga-o-Ōtautahi Christchurch City Libraries

  • Performance Work
  • Ōtautahi Tiny Performance Festival
  • Tūranga | Central Library
  • Christchurch
  • May 2024

  • Images: Olivia Webb and Charlie Underhill

A composition for librarians, library collection, and library. A concert that employed library staff as performers to explore the multi-being relationships between the diverse staff of Ngā Kete Wānanga-o-Ōtautahi, their varied library collections, and the central building they work from, Tūranga.

Drawing on contemporary cosmological theories, How Libraries Think took Eduardo Kohn's 2013 book on multi-being interactions in the Amazon, How Forests Think, as a starting point for exploring complex ecologies in a large urban library system. The composition asked amateur (and some professional) musicians in the library network to develop a piece of music with the composer that would reflect the cultural importance of libraries and perhaps find new relationships with their collections and architecture that might reflect thinking about multi-being relationships that was indigenous to Aotearoa.

Performed by Charlotte Dowle, Lyn Malakou, Moata Tamaira (Ngāti Tūwharetoa), Justice-Manawanui Arahanga-Pryor (Ngāi Tahu, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Awa ki Rangitaiki, Ngā Puhi), Malcolm Riddoch, Jill Larking, Helen Mepham, Hamish Campbell, Roberto Dazzaro, Mik Clapson, and Nicole Reddington.

Artist Q&A:  https://sounz.org.nz/articles/2024-sounz-community-commission

Commissioned by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music