And it’s the earth that moves

A conversational and performative project with John James and Robert (Bob) Bain discussing the Reader’s Digest Building in Sydney. Dialogue draws on their roles as architect and system accountant there, respectively. This series of interviews was re-enacted by David Anderson and Bindy Cummings, and transposed into subtitled video compositions for presentation at the Rules of play exhibition at Tin Sheds.

Over several years we’ve been talking about this building* and the world, rules for forging spaces and prosperity in it, and endings. This open research around Reader’s Digest has been interpreted - loosely and without polish - as if a choreography of expertise across time.

This project started with negotiating space and fulfillment. It traces arcs of modern architecture, global communications and business, as they wax and wane. It follows personal accounts of labour, principals and planning, and streamlining operations and personnel to secure finances. The building and business are complex entities, informed by pragmatic as well as transpersonal principals, and shifting processes of distributing knowledge and making profits. The actors and artists staging questions are each part of resaying lessons, shifting meanings, and muting verbatim authority via written words.

The Reader’s Digest building has some fame, as an idiosyncratic and innovative architectural space in central Sydney. This magazine is also broadly known as a global entity and something you might read in a waiting room, with general news, jokes, handy advice and chances to win things. The end of the world is a popular theme these days across many disciplines and generations; a sense of unease and precarity is palpable. The subjects are bleak about our future, even as they articulate humour and curiosity.

The conversations, constructions and demise continue, and the earth moves.

*Designed in 1963 by John James, who led the holistic design and construction process to completion in 1967, the Reader’s Digest building stands on the corner of Waterloo and Cooper Streets in Surry Hills. You may be familiar with the portentous concrete and exterior, or have heard tell of its interior designed around a 1960’s supercomputer and its heritage-listed rooftop garden. Reader’s Digest Australia and New Zealand occupied this building from 1967 to 2004, producing magazines and books for widespread national distribution. From 2007 the Meridian International Hospitality School operated here, until this business folded and closed doors on students and staff in 2009. The building stood empty until opening for lease and refurbishment in 2010, and it now hosts several businesses.

The Reader’s Digest story begins:

As De Witt Wallace lay in bed recovering from injuries sustained in World War I, he found there was a wealth of interesting information to read and absorb. Realising few people would have the time to get through all this information, he knew exactly what to do. In 1920, the entrepreneurial young American submitted a sample magazine containing condensed articles to publishers across America. All turned him down.

Undeterred, De Witt and his new bride Lila Bell Acheson published the first issue of Reader's Digest in February 1922. Working from home, the Wallaces printed 5000 copies, which were sold exclusively by mail to 1500 subscribers and priced at 25 cents. From these humble beginnings grew the world's most widely read magazine…

...read more at the Readers Digest website and view the building