ISBN: 978-3868951387, Kontejner/Revolver, Croatia, 2010, 242 pages
If you don’t know Kontejner you’ve missed something important. This curatorial collective based in Zagreb has already a decade of history (celebrated in this book), running three different triennials about body, art, science and technology, while developing impressive relationships between the corporeal and the incorporeal. In the recurrent celebration of institutions’ existence in multiples of five, this is one worthy of checking out as it sums up curatorial challenges, new theoretical concepts and plenty of artworks one would have probably never heard of if it wasn’t for Kontejner. It’d be relatively easy to find the roots of all of the above in the strong (and still very active) tradition of performances in the Balkan area, and the recently rediscovered “New Tendencies” art and technology movement in early seventies in Zagreb. Nevertheless the value here also resides in having established dynamic connections between the contemporary ex-Yugoslavian scene and many international ones, without losing the initial focus. Their deep investigation into “what is human” is simultaneously provocative and potentially limitless, creating a new synthesis of interfaces both cultural and physical for people communicating with other people and with machines, at any permitted or prohibited level. The frequent instability inoculated in the viewer is then only added value. Finally, a laser cut cover in thick cardboard, a few essays, one hundred thirty pages of artworks and thirty pages of a useful glossary (all in full color), make this book a desirable object.