IN|EX|change (2011)
Book was the US curator for new media works at Art Stays 9, an international festival of contemporary art in Ptuj, Slovenia. She designed a ‘respondent network of encounter, challenge and proposal’ between invited US artists, their invited collaborators and curator-selected Slovenian artists and culture workers. The resulting works of video, audio installations and performance took place in select sites in the medieval town core.
The borderlands condition of Slovenia along the east/west spine of Europe, as well as the threshold condition of 21st Century real/virtual experiences inspired the curatorial platform to examine flows of in-corporation and ex-corporation, from bodies to nation-states.
Having been occupied by shifting forces over the course of centuries, the push/pull of in/ex-corporation of language, identity and cultural production suggests an active agency has developed among its citizen makers to both preserve and conceal, to absorb and also to assert a hybrid present out of a past still in flux. The Slovenian individual is perhaps one of the more experienced IN | EX actors in changing world cultures, while the mix of the “American” artists in the exhibition promises to confront and confound any homogenous typecasting that might occur.
Artists/Collaborators included:
Lynn Book (USA) respondents, city of Ptuj
Shawn Decker (USA) in collaboration with Jan Tichy (Czech Republic/USA) with Slovenian respondent Ajda Maric, cultural biologist
Robin Starbuck (USA) with Slovenian respondent Barbara Stumberger, art historian
Nicolas Dumit Estevez (Domenican Republic/USA) in collaboration with Jonny Farrow (USA) with Ptuj respondent Robert Fegus, folk song steward
Lou Mallozzi (USA) in collaboration with Alessandro Bosetti (Italy/Germany) with Ptuj respondent, Christian Gaiser, teen organizer
Kristin Mariani (USA) in collaboration with Alex Inglesian (US) with Ptuj respondent Damjana, dressmaker
Jean Marie Casbarian (USA) in collaboration with Ptuj respondent, Boris Vogler, photographer
Sujin Lee (Korea/USA) in collaboration with Pedro Torres (Spain) and Ptuj respondent, Roszina, painter
Mary Ting (USA) with Ptuj responden, Majda Friedl, radio announcer and dancer