Baldner and Krondorfer have known one another for years but did not begin working together artistically until recently. In separate interviews, both attribute the delay between their meeting and their collaboration to Baldner’s reluctance; she needed to know why he was “so invested in Holocaust issues as a [non-Jewish] German.”

Baldner warmed to the idea of working with Krondorfer after having a positive experience with artistic collaboration on Bloomington Breast Project, and also after she began to deal more honestly with her own feelings of having been affected by the Holocaust—or rather the Holocaust as it was transmitted to her by her parents, who were young adults during the Holocaust.

She also began to learn more about Krondorfer’s work, which includes the book Remembrance and Reconciliation: Encounters Between Young Jews and Germans (Yale University Press, 1995). The book chronicles some of Krondorfer’s extensive efforts to bring Germans and Jews together for direct, productive and communal dialogue about the Holocaust.

The “conversation” with Krondorfer, says Baldner, really started when they began to discuss their families. Family is the lens through which the artists approach one another’s experiences of Germany, especially in pieces such as “Obituaries,” in which Krondorfer and Baldner contributed their grandfathers’ actual obituaries.

Just as the panels of “Obituaries” fold and unfold, layer and delayer, Baldner and Krondorfer have to piece together and pull apart history and what they were told about it in order to have a clearer dialogue. Krondorfer explains an important component of his collaboration with Baldner was her willingness to listen to him tell his family’s stories, even though he didn’t “censor” the stories or “clean them up” for her; Krondorfer says that he and Baldner realized these family stories “defined us up to a certain point; we grew up with them. But they don’t define us as who we are today… and we don’t have to deny [the stories], we can still be present to each other and be honest.”

The exhibit fuses Baldner’s expertise in various visual artistic media, especially bookmaking, and Krondorfer’s extensive experience trying to help Jews and Germans have fruitful dialogue about the Holocaust. Although both grew up in Germany, they both feel, as Baldner describes it, “ambivalence” about their homeland; nowhere is this more apparent than in the exhibit piece “Heimat.” Those who don’t speak German will have to make use of materials nearby to help them understand some of the text (though some is also in English), but picking up the book and leafing through it gives you insight into both the uneasiness and the longing for home that Germany elicits in Krondorfer and Baldner. Baldner put the small book together using medieval book-binding techniques, and infused the pages with bits of maps and different versions of photographs from both her and Krondorfer’s families. They sent the book back and forth in the mail (she lives and teaches here in Indiana; he is a Religious Studies professor at St. Mary’s College, Maryland) over many months, each one adding text to the pages in response to the other’s entries. Home, it turns out, is both homey and eerie.

Ultimately, the exhibit tells an intricate and nuanced story about two people, their conversations about painful topics, and how their complex feelings about national identity and their families interweave, and, at times, speak through them. Visitors need not speak German in order to understand the exhibit pieces. Visitors should also feel free to handle and move all of the exhibit pieces; some (such as “Where Are Thou,” a sort of an interactive map) are only comprehensible when viewed in multiple positions. Visit web.me.com/j.g.dialogueproject for more information.

You can also meet Karen Baldner and Bjorn Krondorfer in person on October 5, at a Symposium at the Museum (from 1 to 7pm).

Dramatically performed by Patsy Rahn (IU Art Museum) and Eric Bartheld (IU Libraries) wearing fancy epoch costumes, the reading represents a history lesson missing from many textbooks: the history of the everyday life, with its joys and sorrows, of an affectionate family.

Their letters are meant to show how similar their lives were to our own. Louisa, Maggie, Samuel and their parents, Theophilus and Rebecca, shared the same interests, concerns and passions about politics, family, and friends, food and fashion as we do. They loved to go parties, they had ham for breakfast. They fought.  They gossiped.  Still, the letters don’t let us forget harsh times when public health services did not exist as they do today; a simple pneumonia could easily escalate and separate you from loved ones forever; death was a day-to-day reality. War is a distant subject for the Wylies, but President Lincoln’s death was hard endured by Theophilus’s family, as long fragments from letters and diaries prove.

The excerpts, arranged and read by Patsy and Eric, focus only on a decade of the Wylies’ lives, representing a small piece of the thousands of letters written by the family. Miraculously saved generation after generation, the letters were donated in 2004 to the Wylie House Museum by Morton Bradley, Jr., great-grandson of Theophilus. It took four years for Jo Burgess (Wylie House director) to transcribe them all, but she doesn’t regret any second spent. I envied her for such devotion though she confessed she couldn’t help it: she was interested in any information that would help her interpret and understand the Wylies’ lives and their love for the house that had been their home for nearly 80 years.

If you missed the first meeting with the Wylies, there’s still plenty of time for you to catch up with them. On October 18 and November 8, the doors of Wylie House will be opened again at 3:30pm. waiting for chatty friends to join “Talk of the Times”. While seating might be limited, the stories never seem to be.

6/10

When Justin Vernon decided to pack up his belongings and spend the winter alone, he did not intend to record a debut album under the Bon Iver moniker. Fortunately, music became the outlet for Vernon’s moments of personal emotional confrontation and catharsis. By the time Jagjaguwar released the album in February 2008, For Emma, Forever Ago had already earned an almost mythical status.  This was most likely due to early artist pressed CDs and word of mouth following some exceptional live shows, not to mention the vivid story accompanying the music’s creation.

Since almost every article or review concerning Bon Iver seems to mention Henry David Thoreau’s self-imposed seclusion near Walden Pond, I will forsake any efforts at originality and make the same comparison. The similarities are just too striking. But while Thoreau’s hermetic sojourn has become more a product of perpetuated exaggeration than reality, Justin Vernon’s stint in the Wisconsin wilderness apparently lives up to the press releases. And regardless of whether or not Vernon subsisted on a steady diet of wild Wisconsin chicken* for three months, he managed to create some incredible music (*author’s speculation).

One could imagine For Emma, Forever Ago as a product of some wintry seclusion in the wilderness without knowing the details of Vernon’s recording process. It actually sounds like it was recorded in a cabin. And this aesthetic translates surprisingly well to his live shows. But more importantly so does the music, including the moments of unexpectedly lush instrumentation amid the spare arrangements (courtesy of Vernon’s usual live band mates: Michael Noyce and Sean Carey) and what is arguably Bon Iver’s most impressive attribute - Vernon’s vocal harmonies and singular voice. If Tunde Adebimpe of TV On the Radio ever records a chant album with some folk-influenced Appalachian monks, the similarities between vocal harmonies could potentially be overwhelming.

Like Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse or the late Elliott Smith, Vernon is capable of effortlessly infusing hope and beauty into songs often concerned with loss, anxiety and loneliness. So while there may not be many face-melting guitar solos or numerous opportunities to publicly participate in the old bump-and-grind dance step, this a chance to see an emotionally powerful performance by a unique and talented artist.

Bon Iver will be performing at the Waldron Arts Center Auditorium in Bloomington on August 12, 2008, and tickets can be purchased for a mere $8. The doors open at 8:00 PM and the music starts at 9:00 PM with A.A. Bondy providing the opening set.