The Serving Library: AUDIO ANNOTATIONS listening session + Dexter Sinister: YKSIHW KCALB book launch

Welcome to a listening session, book launch and conversation around how open-ended research, sideways thinking, feedback and further research incrementally shape a journal in terms of form and content. With Francesca and Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, introduction and moderation by Magnus Ericson.

Thirteen years ago, The Serving Library commissioned Junior Aspirin Records to make a series of ‘Audio Annotations’ – themed playlists of music stuck together with a narrative glue, designed to be played very loudly in the dark to a small group of people. This evening we will listen to the fourth and final chapter, ‘Notes on Community’. As blindingly obvious as it is to point out, sociability is fundamental to music’s creation and reception. Music translates communalism and collaboration into form.

Photo courtesy of The Serving Library

AUDIO ANNOTATION listening session

Thirteen years ago, two of The Serving Library’s editors, working under the name Dexter Sinister, began the production of a single-barrel single-malt whisky together with Stählemühle, a distillery set up by former publisher Christoph Keller. In a new book published by Sternberg Press, the story is told in reverse, starting with the delivery of 342 bottles to Berlin in 2022, and ending with an interview with Christoph for The Serving Library’s predecessor journal Dot Dot Dot in 2007, during which the idea began to germinate.

The events are presented in conjunction with The Serving Library’s participation in Konstfack Research Week 2024.

The Serving Library are here represented by the Torino-based half of their editorial team (the other half being David Reinfurt in New York City and Vincenzo Latronico in Milan). Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey is a curator, organiser and editor with a background in economics and cultural policy. She is a co-director of DRU+, a research agency working at the intersection of design, neuroscience, sustainability and health, and currently researching the history of alternative communities and co-living experiments. Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey is a graphic designer, writer and editor who works both independently and in collaboration with David Reinfurt as Dexter Sinister. Magnus Ericson is Head of Applied Arts at IASPIS.