Cultural Exchange Rate (Austin)

Cultural Exchange Rate is an interactive live art project in which artist Tania El Khoury shares her family memoirs of life in a border village between Lebanon and Syria. One marked by war survival, valueless currency collection, brief migration to Mexico, and a river that disregards the colonial and national borders. The audience is invited to immerse themselves into one family’s secret boxes to explore sounds, images, and textures of traces of more than a century of border crossings. Cultural Exchange Rate is based on the artist’s recorded interviews with her late grandmother, oral histories collected in her village in Akkar, the discovery of lost relatives in Mexico City, and the family’s attempt to secure dual citizenship. This one-of-a-kind performance demonstrates that the cruelest of borders are invisible to the eye and present in everyday life. “El Khoury’s gift for world-building captures her family members’ legends and secrets, the inheritance offered by those whose roots have been involuntarily severed.” – Cultured Magazine -Texas Premiere-