What convictions, decisions, understandings, theoretical and intuitive backgrounds, political stances and issues of taste take part in shaping the curator’s decision to collaborate with an artist when the exhibition as a momentary or definitive manifestation of a particular process has no theme, its concept being that each of the curators, independent from one another, prepares a selection of artist/s i.e. artworks? LabSus Personally discloses and questions the notion of “personal”, first through the optics of selection as a significant and constitutive point of curatorial practice, along with a number of phenomena, symptoms and levels revealed through the title syntagm.

Through the exhibition LabSUs Personally, we curators reply to the question, which we have formulated as an impulse through our work in LabSUs, the Open platform for curators, artists, writers and theoreticians – a one-week dwelling that we have organised in the spaces of ŠKUC Gallery (June 23-29, 2007). That event was, in our view, a logical consequence of our collective way of working, conceived as a process of revealing and interweaving the personal and the public. The realisation that the creative collaborative processes are being triggered by the state of collective presence unfolding for a certain period of time was essential for our decision to act in the formation of individuals (under specific pre-conditions and in a certain context) alongside our individual work. LabSUs was an extreme situation of being in the personal, interpersonal and public. It was at once conceived as a discursive event with the possibility and stimulation of discussions with and among guests – artists, professional and general public – participants. The question that we were carrying around as a badge was: What is a curator? Although different readings are possible, we relinquish the rhetoric nature of the question as we think that it is of essential importance for us gathered in the WOA Laboratory. The process of WOA Laboratory (2006/07) began in November 2006 and became intensive through the working-socialising meeting in Labin, Istria in January 2007.

The organism of the exhibition LabSUs Personally is an interaction between artists, curators and the audience within the frame provided by the WOA Laboratory. It is constituted by the relations between personal, dual and collective.

The Laboratory participants are not a group with collective attitude; yet we advocate the decisions that were jointly made. This text is written (by Petra Kapš) from the viewpoint of the curators Ivana Bago, Petja Grafenauer Krnc, Petra Kapš, Vasja Nagy, Mojca Puncer and Jaka Železnikar, and is based on the public declaration of a consciously assembled subjective position committed to constant reflection. Each of the curators of the exhibition LabSUs Personally assumes responsibility and advocates her/his decisions on the selection of author/s and artworks. At the same time, we all participate in creating conditions for carrying out the exhibition.

LabSUs is a creative exploration and establishing of the balance between the participants, although it is also a struggle between different languages through the idiom of personal and public. It investigates the relations between the individuals and the institution. As we have conceived it and realised it, the WOA Laboratory (2006/07) is an experiment in the sense of testing various forms of collaboration between people. It is aimed towards the quest for a new shape of work and searching the possibility for collaboration/action and communication. The articulation of personal and collective interests and visions is a constant challenge.