Panic! At The Biblio

Panic! @ the Biblio

     Panic! @ the Biblio was F.O.U.R.’s relational remix to Group 3’s The Flash Mob. F.O.U.R. collectively arranged to meet in the Hazel McCallion Academic Centre where a study room was booked as a general meeting place. While brainstorming ideas for the relational remix, F.O.U.R. was inspired by the interior architecture of the Academic Centre; particularly the quiet study rooms on the third level that are designed in a way that call for spectacle on their own with their out facing glass walls and central alignment. The idea to transform the architecture of the building arose from concepts drawn from Guy Debord and the Situationist International. The Situationists worked towards establishing a break in daily life by creating moments of disruption and spectacle. As Gerald Raunig describes the concepts behind the Situationists’ actions

          “[…] ‘Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality’” (Raunig 171-172)1.

F.O.U.R. decided to use the idea of constructed situations to re-interpret the common use of the library study rooms on the third level. Traditionally the study rooms were designed to facilitate collaborative studying between students. The rooms can be booked via the Internet by University student user names, and are made available for 2-hour increments. The rules for the use of the study rooms are posted online in detail, and briefly stated on the doors to each study room. These rules primarily stipulate that a minimum of three people be in a room, that there be no eating, and an emphasis on quietness was strongly enforced.

     Keeping with these rules, along with the ones outlined on the website, F.O.U.R. created a new set of rules that turned the original ones on its head. F.O.U.R. transformed the study rooms into “No Study Zones,” where the rules outlined by F.O.U.R. stipulate that absolutely no studying was allowed within the rooms. Instead a series of events were constructed within the themed rooms that involved both social interactions and methods of relaxation. Some of the rooms involved were titled “The Refreshment Room,” “The Balloon Room,” “The Bubble Room,” and “The Screening Room” which would have been the rooms geared primarily towards relaxation and escapism; while “The Camera Room” and “The Drawing Room” provided a service that also allowed for artistic collaboration through traditional art forms like drawing and photography. Although before anyone could begin moving or spreading throughout the area they first had to take part in “The Briefing Room” in which the participants were informed of the new rules and regulations as they applied to the event, which feed off the original library code of conduct only with the alteration of no studying allowed. It was at this point that the concepts of relaxation and enjoyment were stressed as well as F.O.U.R.’s attempts to temporarily alter the structure internally without actually destroying the entire mechanism. Every event was designed in a way that may have taken hold of structure but did not primarily alter it in a way that would be evident once the take over was done. It was important that the event itself be the thing of value (if value must be placed) and not whatever physical trace is left. As Bourriaud points out in book on Relational Aesthetics:

          “Once the performance is over, all that remains is documentation that should not be confused with the work itself. This type of activity presupposes a contract with the viewer, an ‘arrangement’ whose clauses have tended to become diversified since the 1960s” (Bourriaud 29).

     Adapting the parasitical approach the group infiltrated the library a few hours before the scheduled event and began organizing the final stages of the event within one of the study rooms under the radar of the library staff. Soon enough, like a virus, the event would start growing internally until it eventually took over the entire third floor.

          "Even from a biological standpoint this is what happens with a virus; it derails a mechanism of the communicational type, its coding and decoding. On the other hand, it is something that is neither living nor nonliving; the virus is not a microbe" (Fuery 66)2.

The event fed off of the location and in doing so it had to exist within a state of being both visible and invisible. In that the event was located in a library, which had its own social rules of order and behavior, F.O.U.R. was disturbing these rules without actually breaking the constructed guidelines made by the library; the event had to be invisible enough to stay within the library code of conduct but visible enough to break the socially constructed ones. In the end it is these socially constructed modes of behavior that gets in the way of grand social interaction. So having an event like this, that was open to the greater university public helps move towards breaking down the effects of alienating, social constructs, and opens up better forms of collective communication.

F.O.U.R.

SOURCES
1. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon : Les Presse du Reel, 2002.
2. Raunig, Gerald. Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007.
3. Fuery, Patrick, and Kelli Fuery. Visual Culture and Critical Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.