A book about books that have already passed through hands, shelves, structures. Müde Bücher gathers photographs of worn volumes, bent covers, curved spines, surfaces marked by use. These are not pristine objects but bodies under pressure, shaped by reading, handling, storage.

Originally part of Coers’ installation I SOLITI TITOLI, the books once functioned as elements within a larger “book architecture.” Here they reappear individually, detached from structure yet still carrying its memory. Each image isolates a single volume, but what emerges is collective, a cross-section of a mid-20th-century intellectual library already slipping out of circulation.

The publication operates quietly but decisively, less about content than about fatigue, use, and the slow deformation of knowledge as material.

Details

2012, Salon Verlag, Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin
48 pages, 40 colour images, hardbound
24 × 16 cm
German English
ISBN 978-3-89770-412-1

Note (DE)

Deutsch Englisch. Fotografien gebrauchter Bücher aus einer Installation. Ein Querschnitt durch eine bildungsbürgerliche Bibliothek der 1950er bis 1980er Jahre.

See also

For a wider reflection on books as physical objects shaped by use, circulation and decay, see this essay on the material life of books beyond reading.