The artist Beatrice Glow created an ephemeral utopia on an old steamship in New York in September. She called her piece “The Floating Library” and filled the steamship with donated books. She asked visitors to turn off their phones, bind books and build furniture. She invited avant garde artists to lead workshops on identity and transformation such as one titled, “Talking about art and life while eating PB + J while applying eye shadow.”
I’ve never set up this ship prior to opening and seen people waiting outside to get in, asking when can they come in. Ding.
Hi there welcome to the Floating Library.
Beatrice: So as you’ll notice as we climb up around the space, we have ladders.
Volunteer: All of our reading material is downstairs. We also have got some fun stuff going on. So there is a sound art installation with some of the books.
Review: I hesitated for a moment feeling like I was intruding on an intimate discussion even though I knew the spirit of the floating library was to invite stranger to engaged with each other.
Review: I rummaged through my bag, looking for a pen and by the time I looked up, the woman next to me was already offering a cup of tea made with ingredients sitting before me.
Beatrice: Because I have people who are just jogging who come on the ship, oh what’s this, oh cool. Can I use your bathroom? And I would say, Oh yes. And they would say, Oh I have a blister do you have a bandaid for me…
I’ve had curators tell me things like, you’re a little young to be doing this project. They tend to be surprised because they think I must be my own intern.
Volunteer Coordinator: I’m not really sure what she intended. Her prose is very poetic, let’s say.
Beatrice: That lack of respect for younger woman. I think if I were in a suit and I were a man and taller it might be different.
A librarian who was a traditional one, was a little frustrated when she came on board but I think the library is a space of ideas, of nourishment, of finding points that spark another interest in you. So I think this is a library. It’s not just the books…
I went into this project in the beginning with a lot of anxiety, not knowing what would happen, if things would work out, if people would enjoy it, wanting to take care of everyone.
But suddenly realizing that the place came to life on its own, it grew into its own project. People had their own interpretations that they projected on it. They came with their own agenda. And that’s like a snake, like art is, that kind of sort of slithers through between cracks, like water, finds its way into our sub consciousness, seeping in. So yeah, the floating library is in your mind.
That was really frightening that whole month. And suddenly we’re sitting here and it seems kind of distant.
Woman: You’re not going to let us come look at it.
Beatrice: She kind of did leave a bad taste.
Woman: Well, we’re local, we’re so local, we used to teach children here.
Beatrice: an email two days before the end of the show at night saying she wanted to collaborate.
Woman: And you don’t have to call me ma’am even though I’m old enough to be your grandmother or whatever.
Beatrice: It was actually kind of traumatizing because it was my last evening and I really just needed to eat and rest.
Woman: I don’t need to be treated in an ageist way. I’m in the high-rises right over there.
Beatrice: You just can’t make everybody happy. You just can’t.
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The workshops would be conducted in circles, to avoid hierarchy, and they would drink organic teas with special properties. In short, Glow created an artisanal dreamscape that is a microcosm of the politically concerned, artistically engaged and technologically ambivalent youth culture.
She gathered volunteers from all corners and ran frantically about to make sure it all came off. She fussed at some visitors, for climbing on the old boat, and looked askance at people who took out their phones. Some said she was too young, too short or maybe too Asian to be the person in charge.
The work of being the God and dictator, craftsman and boss, of this mini-topia proved difficult. The people who entered into her art project played an integral role in its expression and yet some of them, she thought, were foreigners to its spirit and didn’t belong. But she increased traffic on the historic boat by more than 100 percent. Some people traveled hundreds and even thousands of miles to participate. She created spontaneous moments of community and artistic transcendence
