Jacqueline Baum und Ursula Jakob gewannen den von der SAM Foundation lancierten Black Box Award und haben Spreading the Word am St. Moritz Art Masters 2011 präsentiert.

Die visuelle und auditive Installation von Baum/Jakob fokussiert auf Fragen im Zusammenhang mit Sprache, Wurzeln und Identität. In diesem Kontext werden Personen unterschiedlicher Muttersprache und sozialer Herkunft in St.Moritz interviewt: Touristen, Bauern, EinwohnerInnen, Hotelangestellte usw. Die mehrteilige Installation ist auf verschiedenen Ebenen erfahrbar: Als persönliche Statements der Interviewten, wie auch als musikalischen Cluster oder als gedruckter Beitrag zu philosophischen Fragestellungen.

The visual and audio installation of Baum/Jakob is focusing on issues connected to people's territorial roots, identities and different
languages. In this context people of various social backgrounds and mother tongues are interviewed, including tourists, farmers, citizen,
staff of hotels and the like. The multi-part installation can be experienced on different levels: As personal statements of the interviewed, musical cluster or in a printed form including the philosophical level of thought.

PRESS:

Short curatorial description of the project "Spreading The Word"
The St. Moritz Art Foundation has contracted the artist:network, an independent arts organization based in New York and Beijing to facilitate the contextual and mechanical framework for this years SAM foundation black box competition. The:artist:network, under the curatorial supervision of Marc and Alexandra Hungerbuhler have conceived the "Lingua Franca" project for the St. Moritz Art Master 2011, and in this function chosen to integrate the swiss black box recipient into the group of six international positions represented in the "Lingua Franca" portion of this years festival.

The project is both conceptually enrolled in the discussion of "Lingua Franca" as an interpretive possibility through artistic process, and it engages the public space as integral part of the work-in-progress, and as final destination to interface the public. "Spreading The Word" follows a linear structure in the way it suggest the constructive building of the installation, the interviews, the layering of speech, the narrative, and ultimately presenting itself as an audio-intervention, less spectacle than open ended composition. The multi-layered perceptual experience of "Spreading The Word" hinges therefore on the integration of the viewer/public with the active participation from the outset in its construction, utilizing personal content, it propels the presentation contextually onto the site, where it serves as philosophical and tactical signifier. In addition, the artists will distribute a booklet containing key passages of the interviews, images etc. to find yet another mode of dissemination relevant to the poly-directional orientation of "Spreading The Word".

Marc Hungerbuhler New York 5/4/11