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May 2022

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Exhibition: Liberature in the Jagiellonian Library. A gift from Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer

Date: 10.05.2022 - 25.06.2022
Place: Jagiellonian Library exhibition room
Exhibition: <em>Liberature in the Jagiellonian Library. A gift from <span lang=”pl”>Katarzyna Bazarnik</span> and <span lang=”pl”>Zenon Fajfer</span></em>

The Jagiellonian Library is hosting an exhibition of more than 120 unique items gifted in 2021 by Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer. The full collection comprises 521 books and other written materials concerning the field of liberature. The exhibition is displayed as part of the Polish Library Week.

The collection comprises prints in Polish, English, German, French, Chinese, Belarusian, Czech, Esperanto, Dutch and Japanese, dated from 1802 to 2022. It features books that are highly unique in both in content and in form, made of unusual materials such as leather, fabric, wood, ceramics, kaolin clay, rope, hair, film stock, cardboard, foil and compact disc. Most of them could not be easily categorised using the rigid standards of bibliographic description. Every physical property of each book has its own meaning, understandable in its literary context, including torn pages and punctured covers. Even the number of pages, words or letters can hold special significance.

Liberature (Latin liber meaning both ‘free’ and ‘book’) is a literary genre in which both the outward appearance of the book and its contents form a cohesive and integral whole. It beginnings can be traced back to Zenon Fajfer’s manifesto ’Liberatura. Aneks do słownika terminów literackich’ [Liberature. An appendix to the dictionary of literary terms] published in Dekada Literacka in 1999. For a long time, Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer’s collection was moved from place to place, until they finally chose the Jagiellonian Library as its custodian.

The exhibition features a broad spectrum of works selected to work up an appetite for the entire collection, available in the Jagiellonian Library thanks to the generosity of the donators.

The exhibition is open to visitors from 11 May to 25 June 2022 from Monday to Friday (8.30 a.m.–20.30 p.m.) and on Saturdays (8.30 am.–15.30 p.m.). Admission is free.