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INVENTORY OF LOST BOOKS

What is lost when books are silenced?

Inventory of Lost Books is a series of five immersive, participatory audio-visual installations exploring the ongoing history of book suppression, with a particular focus on contemporary threats to intellectual freedom in the United States..

Created and conceived by Ohio-based book artist Amanda Love, the project is developed in partnership with sound composer Christophe Preissing and video artist Liviu Pasare. Together, the artists examine our complex relationship with knowledge, tracing the evolution of documentation and its significance across historical and contemporary contexts.

Through video, sound, lighting, and sculptural elements, Inventory of Lost Books raises awareness of the precariousness of books, memory, and free thought. Each installation can stand independently or function as part of the larger series, allowing flexibility across a range of presentation environments while contributing to a broader reflection on knowledge, identity, censorship, and cultural heritage.

At once immersive and urgent, Inventory of Lost Books invites visitors to consider their own relationship with books, the power structures that shape access to information, and the ongoing struggle for intellectual freedom. Each chapter serves not only as a standalone experience, but also as part of a larger call to action against the erasure of ideas, histories, and cultural memory.

Inventory of Lost Books asks what is lost when books are silenced — and what responsibility we share in preserving access to stories, histories, and ideas.

Chapter 1: STACKS

Visitors enter a dark corridor of library shelves where the history
of the book emerges through shadow, projection, sound, and dance
movement. From carved stones and scrolls to fractured books and empty shelves, STACKS evokes the presence of lost knowledge and the stories that flicker in and out of collective memory.

Chapter 2: WITHDRAWN

THEATRE Y CHICAGO  AUGUST  2026

In a red, claustrophobic room filled with towering stacks of books, visitors encounter the machinery of suppression. Books are stamped WITHDRAWN, sorted, lifted, and removed, inviting participants to confront the moral weight of censorship and the authority to silence.

Chapter 3: CIRCULATION

THEATRE Y CHICAGO  AUGUST  2026

An expansive room engulfed by projections of fire and water
becomes a landscape of destruction. Burnt, drenched, suspended, and shredded books surround the viewer, confronting the natural, political, and cultural forces that erase knowledge from public life.

Chapter 4: RENEW

CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY MARCH 2027

A forest of translucent paper sculptures surrounds an illuminated schoolhouse-like structure filled with banned books. Through public acts of tearing, returning, and re-shelving pages, RENEW transforms erasure into witness and invites reflection on loss, repair, and collective responsibility.

Epilogue: READING ROOM

In the final space, books become both objects and screens. Projected images fall onto open pages as audiences are invited to turn them, blurring the line between reading, viewing, preservation, and digitization. The Reading Room asks what is saved — and what is lost — when books become data, leaving audiences with a final
question: what does it truly mean to preserve a book?