Screens as Sanctuary

The exhibition’s third part, Autoformation (Self Education), claims the library’s former role as a place of learning but twists it into something more fractured and urgent. Here, dozens of isolated computer terminals stand arranged in a strict grid, each a separate portal into Tillmans’ multimedia universe. Each screen presents a unique piece of work — a film, an audio narrative, a podcast, or a sonic experiment — inviting the visitor into a solitary, immersive experience. The installation dismantles passive consumption, making education an active, even disjointed, process. You cannot simply drift through these stations; you must focus, listen, absorb fragments of information that resist neat storytelling. The installation stages continuous education as a survival tactic, pushing back against the chaos of misinformation and the erosion of public discourse. It foregrounds the necessity of ongoing learning across all ages, confronting the fractured ways knowledge circulates in a digital world saturated with noise.

Printed Traces

In the section Shelves, Tillmans brings the physicality that is inherent of his photographic work back into the frame with a dense collection of printed materials — posters, zines, artist books — that bleed history, ideology and rebellion from their surfaces. These objects anchor his sprawling work in the tactile world, insisting on a slow, deliberate engagement that defies the fleeting nature of digital consumption. His printed ephemera carry scars, stains, and marks of repeated handling, as if they have lived through the social and political upheavals they document. The presence of these materials speaks to the persistence of countercultural networks — communities of resistance that thrive in the margins, fueled by words and images spread through clandestine channels. Tillmans frames these printed relics as weapons in the struggle against erasure and complacency, reminding us the importance of knowledge building especially in an historical time in which anti-intellectualism has become synonymous with fascism.

Leaf-Through Archives

A striking feature of the exhibition is the cluster of four large library tables repurposed as dynamic hubs for Tillmans’ archival publications . These tables, once grey and anonymous, now bear the weight of diverse thematic currents that pulse through his work. Each table cradles a distinct cluster of catalogs and volumes from abstract visual experiments to pointed political critiques, from sociological inquiry to raw portraits of rebellious youth. The visitor becomes a participant in an unfolding dialogue, flipping pages, tracing the web of ideas, and confronting the restless intersections of art and activism. These tactile archives refuse neat categorisation or passive consumption; instead, they encourage a messy, open-ended exploration that mirrors the complexity of Tillmans’ vision. At its core, Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us redefines photography not as documentation but as confrontation. Tillmans pulls images from the realm of passive observation into the space of active reckoning. He strips away the easy consumption of the image and exposes its power to shape belief, stir memory and demand response. This exhibition is not a retreat but a call to arms, an invitation to face the fractured world with eyes open wide, aware of the dangers and the possibilities held within the photograph’s frame. It is a dark reckoning, but one necessary for any hope of change.