Setting the stage

In their initial proposal to the Webster Library, Kinner and Willes described MANUAL as follows:

MANUAL is a one-to-one performance that lasts between 40 and 45 minutes. It takes place in several stages and in numerous locations within a host library. A participant is initially greeted by a stage manager near the entrance of the library; they then listen to a short poetic recording before the two begin a walk-through of the library together. They take time to observe several architectural spaces and features and listen to obscure, naturally occurring sounds over the normal ambient noise of the library. Eventually, the stage manager asks the participant to close their eyes, to imagine that a distant sound is actually a river, and then to take ten deep breaths before reopening their eyes. By the time the participant opens their eyes again the stage manager has been replaced by a performer, and it’s at this moment that MANUAL really begins. Participants have often reported that they felt disorientated by this prologue: in her review of MANUAL at the 2023 Take Me Somewhere festival in Glasgow, Elspeth Wilson noted that

MANUAL

For most of the performance of MANUAL, the performer communicates with the participant solely through a series of messages written in a notebook. MANUAL is structured around several performer-led activities that are based on pre-arranged visual and auditory cues. (fig. 2) The visual prompts are drawn from photography books selected from the library’s own collection and the auditory cues from immersive recordings which the participant listens to on headphones.

Fig. 2.

Adam Kinner and Christopher Willes. Documentation of the performance work MANUAL (video still). Videography by Albédo (OFFTA, Montreal) and Sam Scrivener (Take Me Somewhere Festival, Glasgow). Performer: Hanna Sybille Müller. Vimeo, uploaded on August 18, 2022, https://vimeo.com/740785851/909564ff09. Courtesy of the artists.

(fig. 3) What begins as a thought-provoking combination of familiar images and sounds eventually gives way to unexpected and incongruous juxtapositions of abstract photographs and audio material. Towards the end of MANUAL, the performance moves to a different area of the library, where the participant is invited to take part in an unscripted word association game based on an abstract image from a library book. This is the first and only time the performer and participant speak to each other – and even then, it’s in whispered tones. As MANUAL comes to an end, the performer leaves while the participant listens to an ‘epilogue’ recording, in which the performer invites the participant to continue wandering, and to think about the library as a social space where people come and go, and where books reflect shared experiences. The stage manager waits for the participant near the library entrance to collect the headphones, to offer the participant a list of references consulted in the performance, and to invite them to leave comments in a guest book.

Fig. 3.

Adam Kinner and Christopher Willes. MANUAL performance. Photo credit: Manuel Vason, n.d. Performer: Adam Kinner. Courtesy of the artists.

The theatre scholar Jenn Stephenson participated in MANUAL when it was presented at the Webster Library, noting, in her article “Games with Ghosts in the Library”, that

Manual [sic] largely presented a familiar dramaturgy of participation as we are directed to look, really look. A gift from early twentieth century Russian formalism, this is the ostranenie of the art frame that uses participation to displace the ordinariness of life […] but as an academic who spends a lot of mundane time in libraries, the experience of aesthetic defamiliarization blossoms into affection and I am reminded by Manual [sic] that a library truly is an everyday miracle in action.^{Reference Stephenson6}

MANUAL has a dreamlike quality that can be both calming and unsettling. In Sam Moore’s frieze magazine review of the performance at the Library of Birmingham, part of the Fierce Festival, they observed that it ‘rendered the institutional building simultaneously a profoundly intimate and overwhelming space, full of strange sounds and free associations’, and that ‘it was a profound experience, felt within the body yet ephemeral all at once’.^{Reference Moore7} David Stokes also had the chance to participate in MANUAL during the Fierce Festival. Despite his years of work at the Library of Birmingham and his familiarity with its spaces, Stokes was not prepared for such a striking experience, and it left him feeling transported. Stokes said he needed a few minutes to reorient himself to the day-to-day reality of the library once the performance had ended, echoing my own response to MANUAL when I had experienced it at the Webster Library two years earlier.^{Reference Stokes8}

From my interview with Kinner and Willes, I learned that MANUAL was conceived in 2019 during an OFFTA-supported residency at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland.^{Reference Kinner and Willes9} While it was being developed, over the following few years, they brought in the choreographer Hanna Sybille Müller as dramaturg.¹⁰ Müller helped to transform some of Kinner and Willes’s ideas into embodied, library-based actions, and she performed MANUAL with them and other artists at the Webster Library in 2022.

Some responses

In her review of MANUAL, Stephenson deftly described the project by what it is not – it is not ‘exploratory’ in nature, as participants are constantly being guided through the library; it is not ‘an encounter’ in the traditional sense, in which individuals come together to meet and to learn about each other; there is no ‘mutual gaze’ between performers and participants, and ‘the focus of the work is not autobiographical’. Stephenson does, however, argue that the project can be understood through the multiple meanings inherent in its title, that refers to the performer’s hands manually manipulating the notebook and library books; their use of gestures throughout the performance, and the idea of a ‘manual’ as a book of instructions.¹¹

MANUAL has evolved since it was presented at the Webster Library, but in some ways it remains unchanged. The artists’ proposal (cited earlier), clearly indicates that the project was originally conceived for a public library, rather than an academic library. Similarly, early ideations involving a ‘home-made book’ and listening to music were replaced by multiple library books and binaural recordings of library-sourced sounds and recordings from nature. Since 2022, MANUAL has been performed in many cities internationally, and in countries where English is not the national language. Kinner and Willes train local artists and non-artists as performers when they bring the performance to a new city or country. These performers speak the local language and can contribute their own selection of books to create individualised performances.

Stephenson argues that MANUAL is not exploratory in nature, but this does not apply to the practice of the artists: Kinner and Willes carry out original, on-site research into the unique spaces and collections of each new venue prior to performing their work. Although MANUAL evolves each time it is presented, the artists’ interest in exploring complex relationships with images, texts, sounds and library spaces remains constant. Writing about artistic practices within library spaces, the architecture librarian E. Patelos notes that

Institutional frameworks

MANUAL asks its audience to reflect upon how they relate to libraries, but it also holds up a mirror to library workers and shows us the boundaries of our own institutional frameworks. When Kinner and Willes’s project was first proposed to the Webster Library, many concerns were expressed: it might disturb our users, and there were security and privacy issues – especially if there were plans to film in the library. Questions about reserving library tables, taking books out of circulation, storage, and who the participants would be were also raised. For example, it was unclear whether the participants of MANUAL at the Webster Library would include students – and if not, how would this project enrich student learning? To their credit, Kinner and Willes were very attentive to these issues and were keen to understand them, and I believe their experience at the Webster Library informed them of their future work. MANUAL is an iterative process for the artists – they learn from each venue and refine their future proposals accordingly. Stokes mentioned to me that the artists had anticipated many of his libraries’ concerns and questions.¹³

Kinner and Willes recognise that it’s helpful when the institutions they approach are curious about their project, and especially so when there’s an advocate for it within the library. Exhibition coordinators, colleagues and administrators at both the Library of Birmingham and the Webster Library tried to adhere to the spirit of the libraries’ rules while recognising the importance of being flexible and making exceptions in order to accommodate the project.