About

Mondotheque.be is a platform for experiments with the legacy of the universalist and documentalist Paul Otlet: drawings, images, systems, ideas.

The site is hosted by the Brussels association for arts and media Constant, and named after Le Mondothèque, Otlet's design for an imaginary device that could be at the same time archive, instrument, workstation, catalog and broadcasting machine.

Mondotheque.be is inspired by the spirit of Paul Otlet, and wants to look at the way knowledge today is managed and distributed in a way that allows us other futures and different narrations of the past.

This site will host poetic experiments with the 20th century Universal Decimal System in the context of the Semantic Web, a walk through Brussels where we follow The Mundaneum's wandering archive on foot and an exploration of the extensive and important collection of digital documents published on a commercial site plus a tracing of the messy entanglements between corporate patronage and faltering local governments.

With contributions by: Nicolas Malevé, Michael Murtaugh, Dick Reckard, Natacha Roussel, Alexia De Visscher, Femke Snelting, Dusan Barok, Marcell Mars and many others.

contact: femke at constantvzw.org