Is looking back an act of necessity or just nostalgia in disguise? In a time oversaturated with images, references, and remakes, the impulse to return—to retrieve and to reframe—feels inevitable. But who’s hoping to find what? 

So what happens when three outsiders step into an institution’s archive—a space built, rearranged, and stolen from? They ask questions, some quiet, some loud: Who is this? Why do they keep this? They sift, select, document, and romanticize. But really, they wonder, how does an archive, dense with its own relevancies, make room for the new? 

For three weeks at W139, bring your own book presents Clearance, a display and auction where selected ‘valuables’ from the archive will be exhibited—and made available for purchase. Clearance is a temporary shift in ownership, a redistribution of institutional memory and an experiment in circulation. 

Para-siting is a new programme that runs parallel to our exhibition programme. During Para-siting, W139 will allow other organisms to take over, providing space for encounters and the exchange of ideas, allowing for a more flexible and rapid response to current or urgent developments.

Visual identity by Studio Buy My Talent.