Tales of Time and Space: Part-home, part-library and a fully functioning escape vehicle

Abstract

For the 2008 Folkestone Triennial artists Heather and Ivan Morsion developed the work Tales of Time and Space, transforming a 1954 Green Goddess fire engine into a self-sufficient house truck and library. The library was comprised entirely of apocalypse-themed fiction with the interior’s soft furnishings fashioned from atomic era fabric. Housing a library that contained various visions of the future, the fictional accounts served as handbooks for the occupant—presenting a playful take on how to survive the coming apocalypse. Throughout the duration of the Triennial, the mobile library parked at different sites across Folkstone, inviting local residents to spend time inside, browsing through the collection of dystopian science-fiction whilst enjoying a nice cup of tea brewed on the truck's wood burning stove. The artwork draws on both a tradition of West Coast American house trucks, in particular the Californian New American Gypsy Movement, which sought to escape modern society and a history of mobile libraries. Reflecting upon the Morison’s work the essay discusses a notion of the library as a space of both escape and home.