Instructions for Deranging (2022)
For the 20th anniversary of the Art Stays Festival of Contemporary Art, Ptuj, Slovenia, U.S. artist Lynn Book was in residence, showing a new multimedia installation, “Instructions for Deranging” in the Ptuj City Gallery, located in an 18th Century building in the medieval core of the city. Book’s installation for the exhibition included a large-scale, single channel video projection; a sculpture; and wall pieces that include photographs, drawings and mixed media panels. The artist performed in the installation and for the opening events July 7th – 10th.
Book has been creating works in response to her research and experimentation with the Chimaera figure for more than a decade. The impossible, but already lived, condition of human-animal-machine entanglements, is where Book proposes ideas of ‘derangement’ as survival tactic in a challenging world and threatened planet. She does this by way of ‘becoming Chimaera’ herself so that she may instigate multimodal transformation at the deepest level. In this set of related works, the artist explores fluid identities, shapeshifting, material and physical alchemy to demonstrate, critique and imagine livable futures.
Individual works in the gallery installation include:
“Unresolved Evidence”, 2014-2022, color photographs printed on board,21.0 x 29.7cm / 8.27 x 11.69 in
“Foresting”, 2022, ink and marker with stamped paper on archival cotton duck, 40.64 x 50.8cm / 16 x 20 in
“Lit”, 2014-22, color photographic triptych, 84.1 x 118.9cm / 33.11 x 46.81 in
“Derangements – a sense experiment”, 2014-22, video installation, 243.84 x 324.916cm / 8 x 10.6 ft
“The Last Tree”, 2022, sculpture, dimensions variable
“Tree, Trees”, 2022, color photograph, 71.21 x 84.8cm / 28 x 34in
“Trees,Tree”, 2022, coniferous tree cutoff, 71.21 x 84.8cm / 28 x 34in
See an extended interview with Lynn Book about this project and other artworks published in the Italian art journal, Espoarte: https://www.espoarte.net/arte/lynn-book-lartista-transmediale/
“Instructions for Deranging” relates to Lynn Book’s “Unreading for Future Bodies”, a long-scale, transmedia project that launched in 2012 with an interactive online digital video work, titled, “Escapes”. “Derangements” is the second video feature (in progress), with several art works that have emerged from it, including: video screenings of shorts in the London Biennale in 2016 and Women Cinemakers Biennale in 2018, live performance at Arena in Brooklyn New York and a published video study for the journal ELSE, Transart Institute, and a published print work translated into Portuguese for Abrigo Portatil, a Brazilian art journal (in print and online) in 2015-16.