• Participating collector’s library
• Books and light bulb
• 200 x 120 cm

A mountain of books surrounds a single point of light, books that bring to mind Truffaut’s film, Fahrenheit 451, that incites us to reflect upon the reality all around us, a way of thinking that seems to preoccupy the government. 451º is the temperature at which paper burns, paper which, on this occasion, the artist decided to leave intact (his famous burning libraries have travelled half way round the world).

It seems, however, that books are no longer engaged in dialogue with humanity, with society and its environment, although there are still some “book-people” who, like in the film, preserve wisdom by memorizing the knowledge in books, replacing their identity with the book’s and their names with its title and author.

And so it is that the way we accumulate and consume culture needs to be revised. The same way books and culture need to be constantly ‘on’; if they are switched off, culture will run dry, and a people without culture is a people that has ceased to think.

Blanca de la Torre