What is the Sealed Library?

Broken Toys.
We make toys, mostly for grown ups. Like most of the best toys they’re not really functional without someone bringing their own ideas to them. These are not toys that you wind up and let go, they need you to decide what they are and how to use them. We aspire to make an empty cardboard box.

Unfinished Stories.
Stories that are complete are the purview ofauthors, and they’re all loathsome cowards / beacons of sprawling genius. There’s a feeling many of us know where you finish a novel where you ponder the events that take place after the novel where you come up with your own version of events. We make that. But not fan fiction, definitely not that. Mostly because we don’t really understand it.

Bad Art.
Most conceptions of art come attached to a technical discipline you can be better at. With practice, patience and talent you can become better at the technical aspects. This is an entirely separate attribute from what makes art art. We focus on the art part and reject the technical discipline. 

What a load of waffle.

 

Here’s a manifesto of sorts. It may shed some light on some poorly-illuminated thoughts.

  1. Art is something we do, not something we make.
  2. The order of these points probably matters.
  3. Reject technical skill as a characteristic of good art.
  4. Corrupt power structures deserve to be attacked.
  5. The concept of canon is a power structure.
  6. Much unknown is unknown, make the unknown unknown into known unknown.
  7. None of the above is always true.
  8. The order of these points is probably incorrect.
  9. Herein like only questions, answers are for charlatans.
  10. Firstly, thank you for reading this.
  11. Deconstruction and reconstruction are rebellion.

A library is a repository of knowledge of some kind. Most are in some way sealed. That is most are in some way inaccessible to specific groups of people. Not just from an access perspective but from a contribution perspective. Most of that knowledge is trapped in stasis. Most of that knowledge is unchanging or slowly going bad, like food kept in a sealed container.

Sealed Library is no different. It’s a place to put things and freeze them in time. It’s just a different gatekeeper at a different gate guarding a different pile of debatably valuable knowledge. You should build your own, and consider burning down someone else, or at least breaking in and leaving a few passive-aggressive marginalia for them to find later.

What is in it?