The artists Daniel Gustav Cramer and Haris Epaminonda formed "The Infinite Library" as an archive for the books they make by splicing together parts of other already published volumes, re-binding the found images and texts. Far from a publishing house, the duo, inspired by a Jorge Luis Borges story, is at work on a stunning series of singular editions. Cramer and Epaminonda caught up with Modern Painters via email to explain why — in their practice at least — print is not dead.

Do you consider your work to be collage?

In the books we are juxtaposing images. So we are doing something close to collage. Though we are looking at books more as spaces and/or objects. We began thinking of this project as an analogy for the world, to leave things to chance and possibility. Each existing page of a book is taken out of context to form together — next to another — a new association, a new relationship. In a way, the original order, rhythm, and logic of the book is interrupted, broken, and reconfigured, and the pages, now freed from their binding, are ready to find themselves a new shelter. The decisions about how to continue each time with each book are usually inspired by the original book. In other words, the books 'speak' to us and so we know how to continue according to the possibilities of renewal that each book offers.

Where do you find your books?

In second-hand bookshops and sometimes book markets or auctions. When we travel, we always keep an eye out.

Is the cutting up of a text a transgressive act?

Perhaps, but as mentioned above, renewal can only take place when something is altered, reconfigured, removed, or replaced. A text in a book has continuity, from left to right, top to bottom, one page to the other. Images, on the other hand, function in themselves as entities with their own narratives. We are focusing on those visual readings. At times, text exists on a page next to the image, as a description or an essay running parallel. In those cases we allow the words to stand where they are — so the text and image together might or might not form a new meaning. Each image has a place it has been taken, a time, a person who held the camera, a printer in a darkroom, later in a printing house, someone who placed the image in the layout. By interfering with the book’s original order and pattern, these layers and origins become apparent. We have recently completed a series of text-books, collecting those books whose pages have never been fully read or opened, their pages still uncut. We are building out of them the series "#0." For us, it's fascinating to know that certain pages, words, or sentences have never been seen or read — an invisible universe.

Why is the book format important to what you do? Why, for instance, do you not display works as single images?

A book is an enclosed space, never revealing itself completely. One can only ever have one page open and this way is always 'inside' a book. A book can be a strict narrative — a line of thought with a beginning and an end — but just as often is a cosmos of things floating inside it, each page a fragment of the whole. The title for the project, "The Infinite Library," is inspired by a Borges short story, in which librarians enter a vast library to search for meaning amongst books supposedly carrying all answers; but all they find are mere books with text and images. The project is, in a sense, inverting this movement.We have exhibited individual books and extended their motives or content into the exhibition space.

Are your books, which are sometimes displayed in vitrines, ever accessible to be read or leafed through?

With each exhibition and presentation we are confronted with the question of how to show the books, and what to show of them. Each book exists as an edition of one, and many of them are very fragile, so we cannot have them openly displayed. If shown in a vitrine, one is able to get a sense of the content and look at the original book, yet no other page is accessible. We have shown video installations of each book filmed as someone leafs through, page by page. In these installations, one can see the complete content of the book, yet the original object itself is absent. In other cases we have asked a person to present the book, go through it page by page. In these instances a performative act is central to the presentation. Whatever we decide, one aspect of the book is always present: you cannot see the whole; it is impossible to look at the back of a page without losing the sight of its front.

How does putting a book in a museum change how we think about it?

It questions the book itself — what it is, where it comes from, its possibilities and limitations. It is about awareness.

Can you talk about the vocabulary of geometric shapes that is often employed in your books?

Whenever we introduce shapes into a book that are not connected to the visual or graphic nature of its pages, we draw them from the geometrics of a book: the rectangular shape or the circling movement of a page being turned.

Why don’t you reproduce your books?

Because the traces of time, the different journeys each of the books has taken, the little mistakes are all a part of each individual book.