Beyond the Library – The Serial Experiences of LAb[au]

In Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel, the library is an infinite architecture of all possible books, a metaphor for knowledge and its abysses. The Belgian collective LAb[au] builds on this tension between order and meaninglessness, not by illustrating it but by infiltrating its generative rules—time, rhythm, sign, code, noise, disappearance.

Founded in 1997 by Manuel Abendroth and Jérôme Decock, LAb[au] transforms mathematical and logical structures into sensorial forms. Their work departs from modernist rationalism, replacing optimism with a poetic scepticism born from collapsing systems and uncertain meanings.

Pieces like Rule 06: 25 random triangles (2016) and Rule 07: 25 random filling following the Fibonacci sequence (2016) show how abstract rules generate visual compositions, echoing constructivism and conceptual art. Each framed page is autonomous yet part of a larger series, creating rhythm, variation, and open interpretations. Their modularity recalls Sol LeWitt’s conceptual systems and pioneers of generative art like Vera Molnár and Manfred Mohr.

Serialism, randomness, and order also drive their digital and kinetic works. In Untitled (2020), algorithmic words appear as excessive signals rather than messages. In Origami Jacquards (2019), weaving machines translate the alphabet into binary patterns, producing tapestries that are both code and fabric. In Origami Snubsquare (2018), triangular modules move unpredictably, forming an unstable, ever-changing system.

Presented at the Biblioteca Brasiliana, these works push Borges’s allegory further: from a universe of ordered combinations to an “anti-universe” of drift, mutation, and self-generated codes. The library ceases to be a repository of knowledge and becomes an organism of time, silence, and vertigo.

— Luiz Armando Bagolin

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