In a conversation Anita Burato and Martino Morandi, walk us through Infrastructural Manoeuvres, a project they initiated at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2018. Infrastructural Manoeuvres provides an interface that makes the catalogue write-able. The library catalogue interface offers four types of operation for each book record: MODIFICATION, ADDITION, REMOVAL and BUT. These operations are not automated one-click solutions, instead, they raise an issue and start a conversation with the librarians and other library users about an existing element in the library record. These discussions on keywords, subject headings and authorities take place on the platform where they are also made visible, and lead to workshops and pedagogical interventions. It’s about instigating a practical discussion about the division between librarian and non-librarian, service provider and service user. Infrastructural Manoeuvres turn these normative roles upside down by making the library catalogue more porous. The conversation took place in the framework of the artistic research and education project «Teaching the Radical Catalogue: A Syllabus 2021–22», which investigates the process of information retrieval as a political project (syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net).
