design ----> curation
Image credit: Janna Tew, courtesy curator.
Oscar Salguero is an archivist, independent curator, and researcher based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2021, Salguero curated ”“Interspecies Futures [IF]" at Center for Book Arts in NY, the show marked the first survey of artists’ books at the intersection of speculative fiction and new interspecies research. In 2023, he curated NEO MINERALIA at Center for Craft, NC, an exhibition that proposed considering synthetic and digital rocks as new geological specimens. Since 2019, Salguero runs Interspecies Library, the first archive dedicated to the study and advancement of artists' books exploring alternative interspecies futures.
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: Your background is in industrial design - how did you shift towards art curating?
OSCAR SALGUERO: I got into industrial design because I was curious about objects and how they can influence people’s everyday lives and behaviors. Design in the broadest sense is a very technical field—a marriage of aesthetics and engineering. What I wanted to explore within design was its ability to deal with an intimate scale - hands, body, and mind - but also its capacity to expose us to more complex subjects at a global scale (consumerism, politics, aesthetic movements, ecology). I figured the best way to immerse myself into this world was through books.
During design school, as many of my classmates can attest (laugh), I was the only person with several stacks of books on his desk. I came to design as someone who wasn’t so interested in drawing or building things (as was the case of a number of classmates who grew up with woodshops in their garage). I was just this guy who really loved books (laugh). In fact most of my memories of those days involve going to the library and engaging with the architecture section, its various conceptual and experimental books.
The methods I eventually created for my design research work, and later for curatorial projects, were always developed intuitively. I don’t believe in overly strategizing or programming research, I simply operate in a “rabbit hole” modality, letting curiosity lead the way. These imaginary associative “trips” push me into different directions (the study of insects, poetry, minerals, etc), allowing my mind to fill in the gaps among them.
Books are a barometer of culture, signals of change and shifts in consciousness. Just by seeing what's being published, you get an understanding of what humans are searching for.
What was really strange for me back at university is that we were often exposed to specific methods such as ‘human-centric’ design. That's an approach that was popular at a lot of design schools at the time (ideas such as ‘design thinking’ or ‘design for the other 99%’). In response to this sort of corporate modality of thinking, I started looking at the 'weird' things students were doing in other universities or programs (mostly by following their websites or social media).
Image credit: Janna Tew, courtesy curator.
In the next few years, I worked for design studios and startups, while I continued to cultivate an appreciation for books as vessels of possibilities and challenge. Thus, I kept going to bookstores and connecting with artists or researchers, slowly gathering a collection of books that grew organically, and on different alternative subjects. One area that kept getting my attention was the “nonhuman,” a fascination that ultimately led to my curatorial project Interspecies Library.
Part of the origin of this archive has to do with me living with a cat since 2019 for the first time in my life. The cat was a request from my wife, who is a lifelong cat mother. When she asked me to get a pet, I will admit I was very nervous (laugh). It took me a while to adjust. This new experience, eventually, opened up my perception to other ways of being and also of understanding my own space - its verticality and dimensions. It altered my perspective. It felt natural to just say “why shouldn’t this be an exhibition venue?” My wife suggested that I put together a little presentation of some of the books, and that would become my first apartment-curated exhibition, which I called Human Nonhuman: 10 Books on Interspecies Interactions (January 2020).
Willow the cat. Images by Sean Davidson, images courtesy curator.
LŠ: And is your wife also a curator or an artist?
OS: My wife, Bénédicte Thoraval, is an artist. She studied Fine Arts and Book Publishing in France, and has experience working with both small galleries and artist-run spaces (such as metaxu in the south of France). She's been very supportive and her input has been very important in all my curatorial projects. She is the person I always rely on to refine ideas. “Do you think this approach is strong? How does the space feel?" (laugh). I really trust her opinion!
LŠ: And the name of the curatorial project: [Antilibrary] / Interspecies Library?
OS: There is this wonderful book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, on uncertainty and the arrival of seemingly out-of-the-blue situations that can completely impact lives and history. The opening essay of the book is a story about Italian philosopher and historian Umberto Eco, who had a famous personal library of more than 30,000 volumes. The anecdote starts with someone walking into the library and asking Mr. Eco: “How many of these books have you read?” It is a funny question (laugh) - it would be impossible to read them all in a lifetime! So the author, Taleb, suggests that a “library” is the books you have read or interacted with, and the “antilibrary” is the books you have yet to completely open or absorb. And those are the ones that have the most potential to change you - because their effects are unknown. So, I originally called my project the Antilibrary because I like the idea of books being a portal to directions or perceptions of ideas that can change you. The Interspecies Library is an offshoot or branch of this overarching concept.
Images by Sean Davidson, courtesy curator.
LŠ: When did your interest in the complex relationships between humans and non-humans start?
OS: It had always been in the back of my mind, but I never really addressed it directly. I never had a pet but I do remember a very strange episode, when my sister’s friend gave her a small chick as a gift. Back then, we lived in Lima, the largest metropolitan city in Peru. As this chick started growing into a rooster, having him in our apartment in the city became very awkward (laugh) as he would crow loudly every morning at 6am. It was an extraordinary experience. We only had him for a few weeks. Eventually, as he grew larger and more aggressive, my mother decided to give it to a farm outside the city. This brief interaction with the rooster left a strong impression on me.
Fast forward to 2019, I am living in New York, collecting books, many of them increasingly on the subject of animals. The recent adoption of a cat re-introduced this memory of living with another species, or rather ‘coexisting’ with someone else, a creature who is deeply affectionate and intelligent.
Also, in this early book collection, one of the most special books I had was Pig 05049 (2007) by Dutch designer and researcher Christien Meindertsma. Only recently I started to consider that book as an important bridge between my interests in design and critical animal studies. The publication adopts the format of an encyclopedia of industrially manufactured objects and materials that have a component that comes from a single pig, including its organs, bones, tissue, skin fat, and so on. This was a pivotal book for me.
Simultaneously, a series of related concepts were floating around from academia, such as non-human, more-than-human, interspecies, multi-species, etc. I realized that I did already have some books exploring these terms. It felt as if a new type of consciousness was emerging among artists: one that involved our relationship with other species. An interesting example is Arachnid Orchestra.Jam Sessions (2017) by Tomás Saraceno. I remember when I first bought it at Printed Matter, the oldest artists’ bookstore in NY. Flipping through the book and seeing all these diagrams and studies on ways of collaborating with spiders to create new sonic experiences, that was very exciting to me. I had never seen a book in which an artist was deliberately trying to co-create with another species, especially one that can be so alien to us, to our morphology and way of being. An interesting note is that Saraceno, the author, credited the spiders as musicians, first, followed by the “anthropos” (humans, including the musicians, technicians and himself).
LŠ: The first exhibition Human Nonhuman took place in your NYC apartment - which was repurposed as a gallery.
OS: Yes, it was developed in 2019, and originally was meant to happen in November, to coincide with the first year anniversary of Willow, our cat. The experience came together naturally.
This first exhibition presented a series of ten books on the subject of interspecies thinking, including photobooks, historical documents, children’s books and artists’ books. The idea was to introduce them within the context of a library, encouraging visitors to interact, observe, browse, and even grab books beyond the ones presented. At first, I invited friends to join, but as I also showed the exhibition online on Instagram, a lot of people I didn’t know also came - which was even better.
I always felt the book format is such a powerful tool for attuning people to other realities. As a cultural artifact it’s been around for an important part of human history. It is straightforward and intuitive yet it can contain so much.
One thing I wanted to experiment with was incorporating books by artists that don’t quite fit the category of book designers, book artists, or authors. Since my design school days, I have followed and established intellectual exchanges with different university programmes and students around the globe - specifically with those whose experimental or cutting-edge research is represented in book format. So, for this exhibition I contacted Vienna-based artist Ege Kökel, whose book project focused on the idea of resurrecting the dodo bird. The book she sent me was the only second copy that existed. It was important for me to show that, to bring attention to works that are neither available in bookstores nor as deliberate artists’ books.
The event happened at our apartment, under the name Antilibrary. I consider Antilibrary as a sort of an umbrella term for all my book-related explorations. “Antilibrary identifies unconventional trends and predicts future attitudes by studying independent artists' books. It goes beyond, it is an experiment in cultural pattern recognition and culture alteration. It believes the book remains the most advanced information technology ever devised by humans for other humans.” This was my original statement for the library, and it still stands.
Detail of Interspecies Library at NARS Foundation, New York (2022). Image by Rachel Liu with courtesy curator.
Interspecies Library installation view at NARS Foundation (2022). Image by Rachel Liu with courtesy curator.
Images by Sean Davidson, courtesy curator.
Image by Janna Tew, courtesy Oscar Salguero.
LŠ: Could we revisit your recent exhibition and publication that focuses on contemporary practitioners in bio art and speculative design - Interspecies Futures [IF]. As you mentioned, both the show at the Center for Book Arts and the catalogue focus on the state of anthropocentric fantasies and manipulations.
OS: Center for Book Arts here in New York is an incredible space. I believe they're the closest in the United States to the ideal of an open-minded, experimental space for artists, books, and book arts. Interspecies Futures [IF], the show I curated there in 2021, focused only on artists' books that were produced in the last five years, works that explored speculation and conceptual frameworks around possibilities of coexistence with other organisms. I even took this as an opportunity to commission 5 new books by artists I had met in the past and that I knew wanted to develop a book at some point. I was also super happy to work with Claudia de la Torre, an amazing Berlin-based artist and book designer whose beautiful and conceptual works I first encountered at the New York Book Fair in 2018.
I wanted to highlight how recent and present these works were.
Together we came up with the idea of creating the catalog as a sort of a sci-fi anthology. We began by researching a lot of different, older sci-fi anthologies, their aesthetics and conventions. The idea became: a catalog of 17 books presented as micro-stories. Towards the end of the book, I also incorporated original interviews that allowed me to build a bridge between different generations of speculative thinkers. So I have an interview with Dougal Dixon, Scottish paleontologist and geologist who published the book After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981). This is an incredible book that kick-started the whole speculative zoology genre, where Dixon imagines what creatures will look like on Earth, 50 million years into the future, after humans go extinct. At the same time, I had an interview with Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, a British researcher and designer who originally focused on synthetic and biodesign and who, more recently, has been exploring the concept of interspecies design.
Interspecies Library at Center for Book Arts, 2021. Image by Sean Davidson, courtesy curator.
Installation view of Interspecies Futures [IF] at Center for Book Arts, 2021. Image by Sean Davidson, courtesy curator.
LŠ: You also mentioned that a lot of your work comes from your trips to bookstores and, so I was wondering which ones do you visit?
OS: Yes! (laugh) It's true! Most of my research comes from going to bookstores. Also, I get a lot of clues on current trends from visiting fairs like Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair, which I think is the largest and most comprehensive in the world. On the other hand, I learn a lot from going to the Antiquarian Book Fair in New York. While the former focuses more on artists’ books, zines, by active publishers and artists (at accessible prices), the latter deals more with rare, historical materials. In terms of independent bookstores, I am still an avid Strand bookstore patron.
LŠ: Or exhibition platforms that you avidly follow/ visit?
OS: Actually, a lot of my research comes from browsing the internet. Looking at different biennials and getting their catalogues. That's one thing I do. (laugh)
LŠ: Same. (laugh)
OS: It's funny because most of these exhibitions, programs, and platforms end up as books. In a way, a book is the end goal (laugh) - a permanent record, in an accessible format. Beyond how fancy or elaborate the project originally was, it will still be accessed as a book in the future. So I'm almost more interested in the catalogues they produce and how these encapsulate the complex threads and thesis of the shows.
LŠ: Same again!
OS: Yeah, another source of inspiration for me as a curator is science. Scientists are constantly pushing boundaries of what we know and what we understand. And they do this without having to stop and explain it in plain terms to anyone outside their fields. I kind of admire that. For example, I follow certain instagram accounts such as Fermat’s Library (@fermatslibrary). From their description: “a platform for illuminating academic papers. We publish an annotated paper every week.” Their content is full of contemporary mind blowing explorations. I also follow a lot of science-related podcasts. For example, I like a number of Lex Friedman’s episodes, in particular the one where he talks to Michael Levin about biology, evolution, and xenobots. It's interesting to hear these very sophisticated and specialized minds talk for three hours and try to make their subjects more digestible - from minerals and AI to different topics.
LŠ: Speaking of minerals, your interest in rocks also fueled your latest exhibition: NEO MINERALIA. The latter challenges the current rock formations as out of date through the inclusion of, in your words, two post-natural rocks: Synthetic and Digital. Could we revisit the exhibition concept - the research behind it?
OS: I always felt that I would do a show around minerals at some point. It is a subject I’ve been interested in since my childhood. I grew up in Peru, a country that is extremely rich in minerals - gold, silver, etc. I remember at some point, my dad had a small studio at home where he liked to draw blueprints and keep boxes with books and tools. I remember finding a small box with samples of different minerals and getting very interested in them. This is perhaps part of the origin of my fascination with books too - my dad had hundreds of books in boxes everywhere (laugh). We never really went over them; he just had them laying around, and I would just sit down and read whenever he was not home.
Later in design school, I was intrigued by the work of Thomas Thwaites, a British designer whose thesis project was to fabricate a toaster from scratch. It was a bold and crazy idea which required him to go to actual mines in order to gather metals to build parts of a toaster. Yeah, it ends up looking like shit (laugh). But it was a signal to me that industrial designers, architects, and artists were looking at minerals and extractive industries from critical and creative perspectives. So, I started paying attention.
In recent years, I started gathering artists’ books exploring the topics of mineralogy and speculative geology. I noticed that many of these artists were trying to imagine how contemporary materials, such as plastic or electronic waste, would evolve dozens or hundreds of years into the future if they were left untouched. And so I started bookmarking specific projects that led to the concept of NEO MINERALIA. In terms of the name, I remember I was inspired by the incredible Neo Preistoria (New Prehistory: 100 Verbs) by Andrea Branzi and Kenya Hara in 2016; which, in my opinion, did not receive the attention it truly deserved at the time. I believe that show will firmly stand the test of time.
NEO MINERALIA became a curatorial experiment that allowed me to bring together different artists working with materiality and speculative thinking to reimagine the idea of an ‘anthropogenic’ rock. For example, one of the works, Post-Fordite, a project by Polish artist Agnieszka Kurant, suggests a new type of rock formation developed as a byproduct of car manufacturing. After decades of accumulation of layers upon layers of enamel paint on the grounds of car factories, a hardened and fossilized material forms. In fact, real owners of these old factories sell chunks of their floors as a material, which they call “Detroit agate” or “fordite.” Some artists buy this online and make jewelry out of them, given the beautiful colors that are revealed when you cut through these sedimentary artifacts.
The show allowed me to posit the idea of the emergence of two new types of rocks: digital and synthetic. Both have components of human-manufactured and human-manipulated materials. I think the digital ones are the least explored (laugh). Somehow, we find it normal to interact with artificially created digital worlds (via video games, or CGI). These worlds also present their own simulacrum of rocks. Their rendering and display, however, relies on crystals, metals, energy and matter extracted from Earth in order to allow them to manifest to us.
Image credit: Sae Honda.