LOS ANGELES — Imagine that your local public library is inhabited by an undiscovered race of tiny people. They’ve hidden themselves in the racks, tucked behind books and magazines, amidst history and fiction, new media and old. If you’re lucky, you might spy them — or at least their tiny homes, which are filled with minuscule beds, microscopic stools, itty-bitty flowers and furniture fashioned out of found objects such as board game pieces and one-use spice bottles.
And these little folks need help. You have been cast as a “Teeny Tiny Beings Residential Specialist,” charged with finding the micro-humans new homes. It appears the librarians — giants, like us, at least to the microscopic persons — have been moving things around.
Welcome to the Bureau of Nooks and Crannies, a new exploration-focused, play-inspired experience found inside the Lincoln Heights branch of the Los Angeles Public Library system. It is but one of many, as the Bureau of Nooks and Crannies soon will be found in libraries in Atwater Village, Baldwin Hills, Chatsworth, Pacoima and Vernon, each location home to a different game-like endeavor designed to get guests to view their local libraries — and the world outside of them — a little more imaginatively.
If in Lincoln Heights we’re tasked with lending a hand to hidden, fictional mini-humans, in Atwater Village we’re asked to fantasize that we’re ghosts, friendly haunts who treat books as entryways for thoughtful, personal reflections.
As I moved through the Atwater branch pretending to be a spirit, I was instructed to shut my eyes and trace my fingers along a shelf. Then, I was to open a random book and let my fingers land on a page. Without looking at the cover, I found I settled on a passage about finding emotional balance. I wrote it down, knowing I would need it later.
All Bureau of Nooks and Crannies experiences spring from the mind of Andy Crocker, an L.A.-based artist who specializes in theatrical, experience-driven entertainment, having previously collaborated with the likes of Walt Disney Imagineering and Cedar Fair’s theme parks. Beginning this week, guests will be able to check out a box filled with instructions and ephemera, such as magnifying glasses, and explore a fanciful tale.
While the boxes can’t leave the library, the quests, geared for all reading ages, can be completed in less than an hour. None are difficult; we’re simply tasked with being creative.
Some ask us to find books and passages that can inspire us. Others lead us to hollowed-out encyclopedias, home to ghostly index cards full of contemplative prompts that compel us to compose a life’s story in a few sentences. That’s where that passage I jotted down came in handy. To Crocker, each is an individual art piece, and each aims to place us into a meditative state.
“I love puzzles and I love games,” Crocker said. “But this, in particular, I was really trying to design an experience as art. The world is very stressful. The library makes me feel at peace and curious and in control of my time. I love that it’s a public space where I can also have a private moment. We can be alone together. To me, that is sacred.”
They’re games — mostly. But we’re more like mischievous researchers rather than puzzle solvers, tasked to wander a library and hunt for camouflaged narratives, each one prodding us to pause, ponder and pretend. Some branches tackle big-picture themes — looking decades into the future or grappling with lost loves. Moments will delight us, such as finding a not-so-hidden illuminated mail drop. Others inspire introspection.
We may be prompted, for instance, to consider what makes a good home or challenged to imagine how we may perish. In Lincoln Heights, I suggested a residence be hidden behind a section on Eastern philosophy — dreaming the pocket-sized humans would find the history gratifying, and sensing the thick I Ching book could hide a fancy mini-pad. In Atwater, my ghost in its mortal form had a melancholic ending, dying of a broken heart but finding solace in the wonder of thousands of books.
I was out in the world and among company, but with a chill and inventive task, especially one with an invented history, I felt a calming sense of community. This is the power of play.
“It’s guided meditation through play,” Crocker said. “I can’t meditate, but I can find a sense of serenity and presence when I’m in a playful state. It’s a guided meditation through imagination. I really believe that play is one of the most accessible entry points to presence, and I believe that presence is important to caring about the world.”
The Bureau of Nooks and Crannies is part of a residency program the library established in partnership with the nonprofit Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Participants receive a $20,000 honorarium. Crocker’s work is guaranteed to run at least through early December, although Todd Lerew, the foundation’s director of special projects, said branches are free to leave the experiences up longer.
Crocker also has created two audio installations, one dedicated to downtown’s Central Library and another that works with all 72 branches. The audio portion is a soothing, slow guided walk through the libraries, a meditation that asks us to look and touch rather than breathe deeply. Her projects, said Lerew, are designed for guests to rediscover a “sense of wonder.”
Completionists will discover that Crocker’s six installations are a connected world. The imagined Bureau is dedicated simply to items — or emotions or creatures — that hide in plain sight, be it a small unseen population, a ghost or a lost love. The tiny folks of Lincoln Heights, for instance, send letters to the itty-bitty residences of the Pacoima branch. Crocker notes some during playtesting have gone deep when analyzing her hidden dioramas.
“It’s very whimsical and sweet, but folks who have played it have asked if it’s asking questions about gentrification or who is invisible in the world or how we use our privilege to help others,” Crocker said. “Some people are just like, ‘Whee! Tiny things!’ Both are 100 percent acceptable.”
The beauty of Crocker’s installations is their open-ended nature, which comes from centering them around prompts rather than puzzles. Her inspiration was twofold. One, watching her young daughter wander the library with wide eyes and wanting adults to remember that surprise. And two, as she was creating the experiences she was reading the work of author and professor Ruha Benjamin, specifically the recent “Imagination: A Manifesto.”
“She talks about how if you can’t imagine a better world, we’re in big trouble,” Crocker said. “Working your imagination muscles in a comforting, energizing way, I think, is important. One of the threads among all my work, whether it’s for thousands of people at a time at a theme park, or one person at a time at a library, my goal is to offer imagination assistance.”
Crocker’s Bureau of Nooks and Crannies is a reminder that such aid is freely available. One needs only a library card.
