Alterlibrary. A regenerative online library.

Meike Gleim

We propose to present the Alterlibrary, an experimental digital and life library that conceives knowledge as Renewable Sources—i.e. as an imaginative and transformative knowledge—with the aim to explore possibilities of fostering knowledge's practical role as an enabler of social and political agency (Arendt, The human condition 1958). Against the impact of today's communication technologies and AI that have turned the public sphere into a fragmented space where polarized discourses, fake news, and consumer-driven narratives thrive (Zumboff 2019), we claim that knowledge production needs to be reframed. While the mentioned contemporary productions of “knowledge” come along with manipulative content, encourage a consumerist, i.e. passive, mindset, and blur the boundaries between reality and fiction in a hyperreal scenario (Baudrillard 1994), the Alterlibrary experiments with the continuous critical regeneration of knowledge. The following shifts in knowledge production by the Alterlibrary will be explained through its practical translating of the formats on the website: Transformative: Instead of conceiving knowledge as static, it is continuously reassessed and renegotiated through comments and questions. Collaborative: Instead of a focus on the individual, the Alterlibrary emphasises the relational and collaborative dimension of knowledge production. Active: Instead of producing consumers, it requires active engagement. Ecosystemic: Instead of locating knowledge in the mind, it locates it in an ecosystemic approach to it that focuses on the interrelations between human and non-human actors (Latour 2005). These shifts are achieved through a display of the Alterlibrary’s collections - textual and visual - that creates a relational, lateral and rhizomatique environment, generating new reading paths between the sources and revealing the inexhaustible potential of recreation, as well as offering the “users” space to rethink and interact with the sources.

The Alterlibrary is an experimental digital library that conceives knowledge as Renewable Sources—i.e. as an imaginative and transformative knowledge—with the aim to explore possibilities of fostering knowledge's practical role as an enabler of social and political agency (Arendt, The human condition 1958).

Against the impact of today's communication technologies and AI that have turned the public sphere into a fragmented space where polarized discourses, fake news, and consumer-driven narratives thrive (Zumboff 2019), we claim that knowledge production needs to be reframed.

While the mentioned contemporary productions of “knowledge” come along with manipulative content, encourage a consumerist, i.e. passive, mindset, and blur the boundaries between reality and fiction in a hyperreal scenario (Baudrillard 1994), the Alterlibrary experiments with the continuous critical regeneration of knowledge. The following shifts in knowledge production by the Alterlibrary will be explained through its practical translating of the formats on the website:

Transformative: Instead of conceiving knowledge as static, it is continuously reassessed and renegotiated through comments and questions.

Collaborative: Instead of a focus on the individual, the Alterlibrary emphasises the relational and collaborative dimension of knowledge production.

Active: Instead of producing consumers, it requires active engagement.

Ecosystemic: Instead of locating knowledge in the mind, it locates it in an ecosystemic approach to it that focuses on the interrelations between human and non-human actors (Latour 2005).

These shifts are achieved through a display of the Alterlibrary’s collections - textual and visual - that creates a relational, lateral and rhizomatique environment, generating new reading paths between the sources and revealing the inexhaustible potential of recreation, as well as offering the “users” space to rethink and interact with the sources.

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Meike Gleim - Alterlibrary. A regenerative online library. - 2024