Added Value

Related Tactics collaboration with lead artist Stephanie Syjuco and Prelinger Library
a project of the Public Knowledge program of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in partnership with the Friends of the SF Public Library
custom categories and book bundles created for a used book sale
2018

Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nate Watson) were invited by Syjuco and the Public Knowledge team to work with them and Prelinger Library to design alternative and subversive categories of books to reframe and challenge systems of knowledge. The team presented a smaller offshoot of the FSFPL’s annual big used book sale, held in the lobby of SFMoMA, that still operated as a fully functional book sale and fundraiser while utilizing these revisioned taxonomies.

Related Tactics focused on creating categories that, wherever possible, acknowledged a subject position and welcomed in a particular audience, rather than operating from a universal, authoritative voice. As a collective of artists of color, we also focused heavily on anti-colonial perspectives and categories that called out the championing of individual, especially male, genius as the backbone of Western narratives.

Our project, Shelf Life, was originally commissioned as an extension of this project. We later worked with Sming Sming Books to re-design and distribute the publication as a stand alone piece.

Added Value photographs by Beth LaBerge, courtesy of SFMoMA