Gallery installation of the film ‘Lost Libraries’. Cabinet length 3200mm right 1700mm left x 670 (h) x 400 (d). Installation views: The Dream of the Library, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen 2017

Lost Libraries is a split screen film meditating on a solitary journey to fifteen sites of former libraries along the Silk Road. The libraries visited were lost between 251BCE and 2011 to political conflict, natural catastrophe, revolution, and war, following a line from China to Italy. The film is a montage of 16mm footage shot at the former library sites, interwoven with home movies and archive news reports. The narration, in three voices, considers what it means to be lost, and the many ways of looking. In a fuller installation, a lit cabinet leads the viewer into the world of the film. Here the film is made sculptural in an array of objects and books seen in the film along with other materials and surfaces that confuse sight, such as tinted and textured glass and mirror. The journey was the result of an award at Art Basel 2016: the BMW art journey.

A clip showing five minutes from the 19-minute film is viewable above.