AFTERWORD

In his art John Latham cut books, stacked books, glued books, he even ate and burned books. He named some of those works “skooB”, reversing the letters of “Books”. He questioned the institution of the book; as container and archive of human knowledge, as space for art, as commodity, as material.

When Annika Kahr’s performances are printed in books they feel much like Matryoshka dolls: a live audio performance, that is captured on video, which is then reproduced as film stills in the silent pages of a book. Instead of sharing her work with new audiences, the book conceals it.

SKOOBEEE — the publication you are looking at — overcame the physical limitations of a book and exist as mere content online. It can not be owned and yet it manages to give a sense of Kahr’s work to an audience beyond the gallery space. Namely her performance STRINGS, in which members of a professional string quartet exchange their instruments after each act. Act by act the composition falls apart and makes tangible how fragile traditional conceptions of skill, control and beauty are.

That’s how SKOOBEEE is a key to Annika’s musical work.