No works of art were hurt for this. Mass printed paperback spines being damaged doesn’t hurt the words inside or the hundreds of thousands of other copies. Everyone should feel free to write on, highlight, and cut apart mass printed books, because the actual object itself was never the point.
Yeah, rare, old, and otherwise inaccessible books should be protected from random destruction, but there’s a huge difference between destroying a copy of infinite jest and a copy of something that’s at risk of not being accessible to someone by that copy being destroyed. And destroying either for art is wildly different from destroying them to keep someone from accessing it.
I collect books in a category that are stigmatized and rare, specifically related to queer and kink topics. These are topics that have been mass burned before. But even better than getting into fetishizing the object made of paper is to help get books at risk of inaccessibility to be archived and spread.
No works of art were hurt for this. Mass printed paperback spines being damaged doesn’t hurt the words inside or the hundreds of thousands of other copies. Everyone should feel free to write on, highlight, and cut apart mass printed books, because the actual object itself was never the point.
Yeah, rare, old, and otherwise inaccessible books should be protected from random destruction, but there’s a huge difference between destroying a copy of infinite jest and a copy of something that’s at risk of not being accessible to someone by that copy being destroyed. And destroying either for art is wildly different from destroying them to keep someone from accessing it.
I collect books in a category that are stigmatized and rare, specifically related to queer and kink topics. These are topics that have been mass burned before. But even better than getting into fetishizing the object made of paper is to help get books at risk of inaccessibility to be archived and spread.
Also new, unsold books are frequently and in large amounts returned to the printer and recycled.