Design: Tom Joyes
Onyeka Igwe’s play for libraries is informed by socialist-realist participatory theatre and educational plays to think through ways meaning is made collectively and how we tend to look upon the institutions we interact with in everyday life.
‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ is a short play set in the near future. The play follows two individuals who join forces in an attempt to resurrect the now-lost tradition of the public lending library. Working through their own indistinct, hazy childhood memories, and instructions from a zine, they start to assemble what they think might be the essentials of a community library, in an old, empty warehouse building.
Onyeka Igwe, ‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’, Hillhead Library, 2023. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Alan Dimmick.
Through dialogue and interaction with their new library visitors, the characters work through the assumptions, ideologies and complications of institutional formation. In enacting their new roles as librarians and custodians of an organisation, they call into question the ways institutions have developed and the structures and systems we have inherited in our own public spaces. Through a process of trial and error, they propose ways in which things might be different, and in turn speculate what is needed in society now and in an unknown future.
‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ points towards cycles of knowledge loss and reformation, and explores what is valued, inherited and saved for public use. The play highlights how information is accessed and exchanged, as well as changing notions of the civic, and habits of sharing in present times.
Igwe’s play was accompanied by a short piece of writing by the writer and researcher Lola Olufemi. Olufemi’s writing was available from Hillhead Library, Langside Library and Woodside Library, for the duration of the project.
Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, living and working in London, UK. Her work is animated by the question “how do we live together?” with a particular interest in sensorial, spatial, and non-canonical ways of knowing. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural “figure-of-eights”, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives.
Solo exhibitions and commissions include ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’, MoMA PS1, New York (2023) ; ‘The Miracle on George Green’, Highline, New York (2022); ‘a so-called archive’, LUX, London; ‘THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM’, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, (both 2021), ‘There Were Two Brothers’, Jerwood Arts, (2019), and ‘Corrections’ with Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada (2018).
In 2022 Igwe was nominated for the Jarman Award and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2022–2024. She was awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize; the 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film; and was the 2019 recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.
Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the feminist imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of ‘Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power’ (Pluto Press, 2020), ‘Experiments in Imagining Otherwise’ (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.
About the Libraries
Located in Battlefield in the southside of Glasgow, Langside Library was opened in 1915, the last of the Carnegie libraries to be built in the city. Built on the principle of open access, the library was designed by architect George Simpson. The library features a mural of the Battle of Langside, which was painted by staff and students at the Glasgow School of Art and completed in 1921.
One of the largest Carnegie libraries in Glasgow, Woodside Library was designed by J R Rhind and opened in 1905. A large, glazed dome on the roof is a distinctive feature, and sculpture on the front of the building is attributed to William Kellock Brown. After a refurbishment, the library reopened in 2022, and is now home to a flexible community space, new study areas and a colourful woodland-themed children’s area stocked with books chosen by pupils from local primary schools.
The most used branch library in Glasgow, Hillhead Library has been a fixture of Glasgow’s West End since opening in 1975. The building was designed in Modernist architectural style by architects Rogerson & Spence, and the library’s interior open plan arrangement with spiral staircases represents a shift towards fully open access libraries.
Project Details
‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ was performed in Langside Library, Woodside Library and Hillhead Library across three days.
Performed by Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Louis Pearson.
It is now available as an audio play - listen below.
Listen to ‘The Last Librarian in Glasgow’ –
Thanks
With thanks to staff at Glasgow Life.
Onyeka Igwe would like to thank Gordon Douglas; David Allan; Elly Goodman and Neil Packham at the Citizens Theatre; the Citizens Theatre Community Collective Group; February Workshop participants; and the Red Sunday School.
Thanks to the performers, Elicia Daly, Pauline Goldsmith and Louis Pearson, and to Chizu Anucha for the sound mix.
