HISTORY + PAST PROJECTS

 

de-canon library installation view, 2018-19, APANO x Milepost 5 Community Space, Portland, OR.

 

Launched in August 2017 via a Precipice Fund grant (with funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Calligram Foundation), de-canon initiated as a month-long “pop-up library” + literary art installation (of 200 books, plus image-text artworks) at UNA Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Within this physical space de-canon hosted weekly events featuring Portland writers and artists performing readings, music, poetry performance, discussion groups, film screenings, and more. 

In May 2018 de-canon launched its second “pop-up library” installation at Milepost 5, supported by an APANO Creative Place-Making Grant. During a three-month residency period, de-canon hosted a photography exhibit, multiple readings and workshops, and expanded our library collection to 500 books. After the initial three-month residency, the de-canon library was invited to remain in the Milepost 5/APANO event space, where it resided as a reading resource and community space until October 2019. 

With the advent of Covid-19 in 2020 and the pandemic, de-canon shifted toward contemplating how to create “literary space” asynchronously and nonphysically. In 2022, de-canon held an open submissions call for works for an anthology of hybrid-literary writing and art by women and nonbinary BIPOC writers. The resulting collection, A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid-Lit Anthology, co-edited and curated by Dao Strom and Jyothi Natarajan, will be published in partnership with Fonograf Editions in Spring 2024. A group exhibition of hybrid-literary artworks will follow the book release in Summer 2024, hosted at Stelo Arts.

This project features 36 writers and artists who explore multimodal forms that navigate the restless intersections of poetry, prose, visual art, and other media, and that innovate in their contemplations - and complications - of language and form.

De-Canon Library (at home, 2020; book boxes by Kyle Macdonald)

THE “LIBRARY”

A list of the books in our collection is here.

The de-canon collection includes poetry, prose, hybrid forms, theory, criticism, and texts of literary-visual nature. All books in our collection are by writers or artists of color.

Library Statement:
The de-canon, in truth, is made up of multiple “mini-canons” with no central reference point. The works in our collection were crowdsourced via other writers, artists, and readers, locally and nationally, and through donations from various presses and individuals, as well compiled by ourselves (fallible cultural beings: we acknowledge). However, unlike the dominant concept of a literature canon, the de-canon does not seek to present a comprehensive inventory of books by writers of color, nor invoke an absolute hierarchy of cultural knowledge or merit; rather, we seek to posit the “de-canon” as an ever-evolving, continually changing “living” canon of lists and ideas, intended to spark dialogue and encourage further questioning and dimensionalizing of individuals’ and communities’ reading and library lists. Our goal here is simply to emphasize, and illustrate, the need and potential of forums in which many voices contribute to the defining—and/or un-defining—of *the* literary canon: this is our de-canonizing experiment. 

We invite you to join us by using our resources to inform your own de-canonizing searches and endeavors, whether for individual/personal study or for community sharing. We are also happy to provide guidelines for creating your own “de-canon” library spaces and/or collections in your own communities. Please contact decanonproject@gmail.com for more information.