Serenca Korda, Library Of Secrets, 2008. Image: Simon Steven

Serena Korda
The Library of Secrets

Saturday 5 April 2008

The Library of Secrets was conceived out of a desire to celebrate the value and function of libraries, placing an importance on the forgotten and overlooked.

It was a hand-built, olive and teak art deco library that maintained the institutional values of the beautiful Victorian buildings that housed slightly ailing book collections, but had skilled librarians with a genuine desire to assist in the dissemination of knowledge and information. The Library housed an eclectic collection of books that had experienced many different lives and finally found their resting place upon its shelves. The Library was a collection point for knowledge, thoughts and secrets, an archive, which accumulated ideas and information through its travels.

The Library of Secrets was stationed in Whitstable for the year preceeding the Biennale, with Head Librarian Serena Korda who organised a programme of events, including a book club which met each month to discuss a series of books that related to films starring Whitstable’s much loved and now deceased resident Peter Cushing, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.

The installation also included lost property found in books by Whitstable Library over the year, a sound work and a series of photographs.