Look Closely. Cataloguebusting

Look Closely is one of the strands that makes up the Almost Books. mediation programme, a line focused on training users around the artistic and documentary holdings of the Museo Reina Sofía Library, as well as disseminating different specialist tools for art research and contemporary creation via a series of formats, courses and themed guided tours to take place throughout the year.

Following on from two previous editions focused on the photobook and artist’s book, Colectivo HUL, in a collaboration with the Museo’s Library and Documentation Centre, puts forward a new mediation device around the Library’s information tools, which guide and facilitate users in accessing collections. In a session set up as half workshop, half relational theatre and a ghostly escape room, the activity becomes an immersive experience encompassing teaching, play and popular culture. All starting from the premise: If there’s something strange in your library, who’re you going to call?

Colectivo HUL came into being in 2014 in its association with the Damn, A Book! micropublishing and face-slap festival. Under the tag “cultural loutishness” it has carried out every kind of curatorial, artistic, editorial and education activity for institutions such as Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Sport, Madrid City Council’s public libraries, M21 Radio, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, and the Art Thinking School of Pedagogías Invisibles. Since 2019, they have developed the mediation project CMYB alongside the Museo Reina Sofía’s Library and Documentation Centre.