1 - 50: CEC ArtsLink's 50 years of
opening doors and changing perspectives

Edited by Fritzie Brown and Zhenia Stadnik with assistance from Tamalyn Miller, Matthew Schantz, and Megan Snowe
Essays by Ljiljana Grubisic, Michael Brainerd, and Corina Suteu, and an excerpt from Richard Lasser's screenplay My Soviet Summer.

Limited edition © 2012
Design by Michael Bierman
50 pp, 6 x 8.5 inches
Price: free (plus tax and shipping)

CEC ArtsLink celebrates its 50th anniversary with the publication comprising the timelines of CEC and the world events, essays, images, and an excerpt from a screenplay. An excellent overview of the Cold War, it adds a strikingly human dimension to the era. "By putting thousands of Americans in the Soviet Union, and thousands of Soviets in America, it'll make nuclear war into... a mutual suicide pact!" These were the words of CEC's founder S. Dan James back in the sixties. The evolution of the Hostages for Peace thourgh Citizen Exchange Corps, Citizen Exchange Council, and CEC International Partners to CEC ArtsLink stands as a commentary on the geopolitical transformations of the past 50 years and is a proof of a growing significance of arts and culture in affecting them.

You can find a pdf version of the book here. For a free copy, please email Alisa Besher at abesher@cecartslink.org.

House Turned Inside Out

By Martin Papcun
With essays by Amei Wallach, Fritzie Brown and Theresa Schwarz

Limited edition © 2012
Sleeve jacket, unique binding
84 pp, 8.25 x 6.25 inches
Price: $50 (plus tax and shipping)

House Turned Inside Out intrigues the reader from page one which is numbered 37. Careful viewing of this photo book reveals a fascinating and arduous process of the actual turning inside out of an abandoned private home in Cleveland, Ohio. Czech artist Martin Papcun conceived of this project during his ArtsLink Residency at SPACES in Cleveland in the fall of 2008.

Even at the peak of the national housing crisis Cleveland stood out for the magnitude of its housing collapse and the resulting misery. House Turned Inside Out is a project deeply rooted in the community. It reflects on spaces we inhabit, boundaries, scarcity and wealth and much more. This inside out book with a secret cover hidden in the middle is a record of an amazing artistic transformation.

The Middles

By Marisa Jahn

© 2009 ISBN 978-0-9761920-1-5
50 pp, 4 x 6 inches
Price: $15 (plus tax and shipping)

This small volume is beautifully written and exquisitely drawn by the visual artist Marisa Jahn during a foray to Khojand in Tajikistan on CEC ArtsLink’s project Global Art Lab. The Middles is a collection of “what if?” tales about the ancient near-extinct ethnic group in modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Sogd. Once a thriving culture, the Sogd number only 13,000 today and most of them do not know the written form of their language. In 1907 archeologist Aurel Stein unearthed in China a postal bag with undelivered letters written in Sogd in the year 313 CE. The Middles is Ms. Jahn’s lyrical musings on what might have been if those epistles were delivered.

From Ives to Adams: American Music of the XX Century

By Olga Manulkina
In Russian
Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 2010 (St. Petersburg, Russia)
ISBN 978-5-89059-137-1
784 pp.

This handsome and well researched volume presents Russian readers for the first time with detailed and thoughtful history of American music of the last century. It cites plethora of archival documents previously unknown to Russian music lovers that were researched by Olga Manulkina with help of CEC ArtsLink’s Independent Projects Award. Weaving through the narrative is a thread of Russian connections with many American musicians. A chapter on Bang on a Can with interviews by the ensemble’s founders fittingly concludes the book with many open-ended questions about contemporary music.

Culture & Transition

An Evaluation Of International Professional Development Programs For Arts Managers In Russia

From 1995-2005 a wide range of international organizations offered programs to assist Russian cultural organizations in adjusting to post-Soviet economic and political reality. There is no doubt that such assistance was useful as Russian organizations struggled to create new strategies for survival in a market economy and to adopt new management practices. Until Culture & Transition, however, no substantive assessment of their impact had been available.

With support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding in 2003, CEC commissioned the St. Petersburg Center for Independent Social Research to evaluate the effectiveness of international professional development programs for arts managers in Russia.

The research and evaluation were completed in 2005. The published final report has been distributed to U.S. and Russian organizations working in the field of professional development for arts managers.

FLIPSIDE

Price: Free while supplies last (plus shipping)

The catalog of an exhibition of work by artists who have been supported by ArtsLink Awards, which ran from November 2004 to January 2005 at Artists Space, 38 Greene Street, in New York City.

FLIPSIDE investigated post-utopian artistic practice between the era of communism and the integration of many Central European countries into the European Union. Could one utopia be simply a flipside of the other? Critical to investigating this question and its implications for the future is the examination of art practice resulting from the generative force of the cultural exchange program ArtsLink, created in 1992, which itself can be viewed as a utopian construct.

This was a rare opportunity to see work by 34 artists from across Central Europe and the United States side by side. It provided information with which to investigate critical questions about international influence, cooperation and exchange in burgeoning cultural environments that are undergoing significant political and economic change.

My America T-shirts

Designed by artist Daniel Gallegos
Limited Edition © 2012
Available in White only, sizes Medium and Large.
Price: $20 (plus tax and shipping)

This t-shirt was created by New York artist Daniel Gallegos for the opening happening of Моя Америка (My America). This installation of video, drawings and food-related performance art took place at Museum of the Moving Image in NYC on May 24-June 7, 2012. The t-shirts feature Daniel’s drawing of a vintage Soviet motorcycle Izh Planeta from the collection of Gary Shikman, a car mechanic in NYC. Моя Америка (My America) is the inaugural project under the auspices of One Big City, a series of collaborative residencies and events produced by CEC ArtsLink to engage New York City’s diaspora communities through international arts partnerships.

Photo by Voice Of America