For her new project, artist Trinn Tamm investigates the “Bücher-
katalogtest” (bookcatalogtest), a personality test developed by
swiss psychologist Moritz Tramer in the middle of the last cen-
tury. In his book “Der Bücherkatalogtest als charakteristisches
Prüfmittel - Theorie und Praxis” (Zürich, 1953), Tramer proposes
to establish a library catalog consisting of 430 titles which base
the foundation of his test. He elaborates a key according to which
these books need to be chosen.
The books thereby become representatives of certain fields (moral-
ity, religion, adventure, sexuality, etc.). contestants need to
choose 10 books from the catalog and make remarks about the importance of the work. The resulting values are processed according to
given parameters. This formula produces spider diagrams, outlining
the contestants personality.
By re-appropriating this historical document, Triin Tamm follows a
line that she started with “a stack of Books”, a calvino-ish col-
lection of excerpts, ranging from existing and semi-existing books
to non-at-all-existing or soon-to-be-existing ones. The play with
potentialities and make-belief has been a prominent part of her
practice, since she started her career with a book called “Retro-
spective” back in 2009.