Lately, we have been a lot in touch with the Spanish writer Jorge Carrión, who has published several books and articles in defence of bookshops as cultural spaces that create contexts for the books. In his latest article called “AMAZON, DESTROYER OF CONTEXTS”, he claims that what an art gallery, a museum, a library or a bookshop, or really any other cultural space have in common is the powerful force of context:
The etymology of the word “context” takes us back to the Latin “contextus”, which is composed of “con” (“together”) and “textus” (“weave” or “fabric”). Etymologically, therefore, context means something woven together with others, a framework, what surrounds an element, its links and hyperlinks, everything that is both its network of relationships and its safety net (because all beings and things are, after all, tightrope walkers). Books only make full sense when they are part of a series or a set: in company. Context creates links and constellations. And it helps memory decisively. In Amazon’s warehouses, books are not in cultural frameworks, but in object frameworks, ordered according to criteria that, instead of relating to intellectual tradition and reading, relate to logistics and robotics. Alongside electrical appliances, trinkets and clothing, they are isolated, unloaded and forgotten.
Carrión claims that Amazon has robbed us of broad contexts, and important narratives:
By removing books from their natural context, where they have been for centuries, the American corporation has contributed to a serious void. It has also deprived many human beings of an environment for encountering literature that is radically opposed to that of instinctive purchasing after a direct search, whether recommended by an algorithm or not, at ultra-fast speed. Bookshops foster bonds of cooperation, solidarity, knowledge and resistance. A neighbourhood without bookshops is a breeding ground for individualism and loneliness.
BLIK! subscribes to his point of view that there are many arguments in favour of bookshops. Some are romantic, others symbolic, but the irrefutable ones are practical. Thus, let’s stope the decontextualisation! Laws must protect bookshops. As an investment in the present, which is the future. A patrimonial and symbolic investment in our need for critical rigour and imaginary horizons. A practical, economic investment, too, in safety nets in a world with ever more sharp edges and abysses.
What is true for text books, is just as well the case for visual storytelling, design and photobooks!
See you at BLIK! 2025.
Moritz Neumüller
Artistic Director, BLIK!
