TOOLSHED #3 - After Library

TOOLSHED is a residency and research initiative by Kunstinstituut Melly that explores the tools we use today to build, question, and transform cultural institutions. The programme invites artists, cultural practitioners, researchers, and collectives to critically reflect on conventional institutional frameworks while developing interdisciplinary practices that expand the capacity of art spaces to engage meaningfully with their surroundings.

For its third edition, TOOLSHED welcomes the After Library (2025-), a tiny, experimental library of clothes and books, blending collective reading with speculative design and the wear of clothing, initiated by Thulile Gamedze and here in collaboration with Tlotliso Skefu.

The Library's garments are designed and produced in response to texts chosen by friends, and then the garment-book combos are loaned out for short periods to a small but growing network of friends and collaborators (and their friends and collaborators, etc). The After Library’s purpose is for its materials to be worn and read, and to document these loaning processes as social histories of wear, embodied and dialogic reading experiences — and stylish moments.

As part of the third edition of TOOLSHED, Melly’s research and residency program, Thulile and Tlotliso will translate the After Library processes within the Rotterdam context, conduct experimental audiobook work, and produce a new mini collection together, responding to site-specific history readings and engagements in the city. The After Library will also go live for the first time in wearing-and-reading sessions, accompanied by sonic interpretations of its materials.