BOOKSHELVES is a collaborative literary residency program in the storefront of 3307 W Washington Blvd. The program centers on a sculpture of moveable shelves that contain the personal library collection of artist and 3307 director Amanda Martin Katz. Katz invites other artists, writers, and curators to rearrange the collection’s ontology and structural design for two-month collaborative “thought residencies.” During these residencies, each guest loans books from her home library as the basis for thematic, socially engaged inquiry. Katz works with each guest resident to design an immersive “reading environment” installation that embodies the aesthetics and concerns of the resident’s practice at-large, and concludes the residency by creating a public program that translates the ideas represented textually on the shelves into a somatic format. Public programs have included performances, discussions, panels, a radio series, and dinners, and often feature additional collaborators.

These online project pages contain documentation of residency installations, reading environments, and public programs, as well as texts written by each resident to accompany the titles they loaned to the 3307 collection during their residency.

Visitors are invited to explore the collection during each resident’s open library hours and by appointment.