Since the early 1990s the artist collective Clegg & Guttmann has been concerned with concepts such as history writing, structures of the public, and the generation of historical and social spaces. For their project The Open History Library the artists drew on their concept of the “Open Library,” realizing it as an alternative way of taking stock of categories of knowledge in the research of contemporary history.
For this temporary shelving system Clegg & Guttmann initiated a process of collective (re-)organization and (re-)categorization relying on scientific publications. With institutional, public and historic spaces overlapping, the research into contemporary history turned into a subject of artistic research. It was only logical that the audience – as the true actors in the project – were called upon to participate in creating the design of this alternative view.