Toast is an exhibition that deals with the extension of the book format. The book’s shape changes through history. It is therefore a reflection of institutional paradigms. Physical support interfaces with institutional archivation and distribution. We have passed through papyrus to pergamon to manuscript to type-set books and now have entered into the digital era. However, the majority of books are printed still and the majority of readers are still using paper books, we are in a transition period. We are questioning the shape, function, and changing impact of the book on our knowledge. We are ascertaining our relationship to information and to ourselves and the collectivity as “readers”. The agency of the reader lies in articulating a narrative. In the context of contemporary art, artist book, we are interrogating the function of books and how these books are in relationship to an audience. Is an art book an art piece or is an art book the sum of personal research or in an art book an evolving container for external inputs? All these questions deal with the transmediality of the book and the performativity of the reader.

Every book is the result of a full-spectrum process of witnessing experience becoming evidence becoming documents becoming artifacts. The construction of that process allowed and allows us to engage with traces of ourselves and the collectivity. The research behind the product which is an “art book” in this case, is the real content. Expanding the book, showing what is behind the book, and taking from the book an infinitude of references, image, items, human relationship, locations means not considering the art book just an art piece but as something else. The collaboration between the book as performer and reader as performer together making a third performance inhabiting the space in which meaning is creating, and is partially visible from the outside. Knowledge not performed will die.

Artists: Mehraneh Atashi (IR), The Cool Couple (IT), Sırma Doruk (TR), Pizzemblage a Ludovica Gioscia project for Droste Effect Magazine with: Jebila Okongwu (UK), Alessandro Roma (IT), Robert Melee (USA), Ludovica Gioscia (IT), Jesse Darling(AUS), Sarah Baker (USA), Gedske Ramløv (DK).

Toast is part of Kristallin a program held by Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz, Austria.