This installation reconfigures 11 mulched encyclopedia volumes into evenly spaced rectangles along a wheelchair-access ramp at the North Carolina Museum of Art – Winston-Salem. Initially organized to echo the original form of the bound books, the mulch begins in precise, book-sized units. Over time, the clean logic of that system begins to dissolve—not through force, but through contact. Visitors’ footsteps, wind, and subtle environmental movements undo the taxonomy.
The work engages the architecture of knowledge and access simultaneously. By placing the installation along a ramp—an infrastructure of inclusion—the piece invites unpredictable interactions with bodies in motion. It uses decomposition not as destruction, but as redistribution. What was once alphabetized, bound, and canonized becomes porous, unstable, and networked.
As the volumes lose their individual edges, information cross-pollinates. Rectangles blur. Knowledge, once shaped by institutional order, drifts into emergent form—still present, but reorganized through use. The piece becomes not just about what we know, but how we move through it.
The work engages the architecture of knowledge and access simultaneously. By placing the installation along a ramp—an infrastructure of inclusion—the piece invites unpredictable interactions with bodies in motion. It uses decomposition not as destruction, but as redistribution. What was once alphabetized, bound, and canonized becomes porous, unstable, and networked.
As the volumes lose their individual edges, information cross-pollinates. Rectangles blur. Knowledge, once shaped by institutional order, drifts into emergent form—still present, but reorganized through use. The piece becomes not just about what we know, but how we move through it.