Cabinet National Library

For its Spring 2003 issue on "Property" Cabinet Magazine, a non-profit Arts and Culture quarterly, purchased a 1/2 acre of land sight/site unseen for $300 on eBay. The land was part of a failed 1960's residential development called the "Sunshine Valley Ranchettes," now a desolate tract of desert scrubland outside of Deming, New Mexico.

The magazine immediately set upon the land a complex, non-traditional development scheme. The land was dubbed Cabinetlandia and divided into manageable sectors- Readerlandia, Editorlandia, Nepotismia, and so forth. Magazine-sized parcels were offered to readers for a song (a penny, actually, for a 99-year lease).

Upon reading the Cabinetlandia article, something immediately obvious occurred to us: Cabinetlandia would require a Cabinet National Library (i.e., a library containing all and only back issues of Cabinet magazine). What better way to establish your civilization than to create a repository for its organizing documents?

From the outset, it was paramount to us that the project be an actual, usable library, aside from (or in addition to) being an odd spectacle and a play on words. Moreover, it was crucial that the project express its "librariness" down to the last minute detail; this idea guided the project at every stage of its development.

The Cabinet National Library is built from a three-drawer file cabinet and is laid out thusly:

• Top Drawer –- the Card Catalog, Guestbook, and Guest Services.
• Middle Drawer –- the Collection: back issues of Cabinet.
• Bottom Drawer –- the Snack Bar.

The Cabinet National Library was funded by a generous grant from Immaterial Incorporated and by private donations.