Friday, June 15, 2007

Festival of Political Emotion: Tomorrow!




Some additional events to be aware of for tomorrow's Festival of Political Emotion.

- Theaster Gates begins singing at 1 pm, but don't be surprised if the pottery-making part of the performance begins earlier!

- Carole Lung will demonstrate her Mobile Textile Reconstruction Unit and invite you to give it a try, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm

- Interested in wearing camouflage ElWear on the El? A group will meet at 4:30 pm at Left Luggage to try on the suits and take them out for a ride on the Blue Line. Suits are women's M and M/L, men's S/M and M/L and are designed to be worn over your clothing. Depending on numbers, there may be several different outings.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Now in the gallery, part 4



Members of Drawn Lots hang their work, Jerome Grand touches up a wall in the background, and paint dries on pedestals for Lydia Panas installation "Immanent Fear"

Now in the gallery, part 3


Institute for Infinitely Small Things Unmarked Packages; Lavie Raven's (and U of Chicago students') graffiti boards; and space where Raw Material will be

Now in the gallery, part 2



Left Luggage in progress

Now in the gallery






Laurie Palmer works on installing Cloud Cover while Rebecca takes a break from trying to get Katina Papson's (Father's Letters) package open

opening weekend (& note on s*m*a*s*h)






Pathogeographies opens this Friday!

Weekend events include "I Want To Know The Habits Of Other Girls," a queer opera by Dewayne Slightweight, at 7pm on Friday (during the opening, which is 5-8pm); the Festival of Political Emotion, with participatory events happening all afternoon Saturday (12-6); and Microcinema #1 Saturday evening at 7:30. All at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria.

PLEASE NOTE - because of lingering insurance issues, the s*m*a*s*h date has been changed from June 17 to JULY 8, but should still be happening then.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Re-Dressing NOLA - Customer


Following the first week of failed attempts to engage participants in the Gentilly neighborhood, who needed garments re-constructed, I began the second week of the project setting up shops, in unoccupied commercial real estate. During these production performances I constructed TARP-WARE Domestic Linens, which consist of a set of 6 FEMA tarp/fabric place mattes and coordinating napkins. These NEW ORLEANS PROUD TO BE HOME items were then randomly left at FEMA trailers in Gentilly.

I have continued setting up shop for two weeks; the locations consisted of a Po-Boy shop, a restaurant, a gas station, a Billiard house and a boy’s home, where Louis Armstrong learned how to play the trumpet.

Friday June 8, I had my first customer! She needed to have two pieces of fabric sewn together to use as a throw to recover her couch and chair. When she stopped three other people stopped and each had a different story of seeing “the sewing lady” around the neighborhood, and each also had something for me to do. Looks like I’m going to be busy until Wednesday when I head back up to Chicago. I feel like I’m running out of time, and the project is just getting off the ground. Which means I will have to come back to New Orleans.

The polaroid image was taken by one of the visitors.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

ElWear in Chicago



You too can try on Gretchen Vitamvas's "ElWear" and wear it on the El. Check it out at Left Luggage at Pathogeographies, starting June 15!

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Squashwalkblog




Andi Sutton's Crosspollennation project now has its own blog: squashwalkblog.blogspot.com

Check in for news of her walks!

Friday, June 1, 2007

Triage Takes on the Loop




Sara and Julie take the cots out for a spin, outside of Macy's and inside the First National Plaza on Dearborn and Monroe. We find that the cots do, indeed, induce relaxation and unhurried conversation.

We are recruiting participants to check out our cots during the Pathogeographies exhibition, and we're looking forward to hearing all about their time with the cots- and yours too.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Re-Dressing, again

It's been an intense couple of weeks. It's hard to get people talking. My first tactic of going FEMA trailer to FEMA trailer, didn't work too well. People thought the idea sounded good and were grateful for the offer, but were not interested in taking me up on a sewing project. So starting this week, i have staked out a site, in front of an abandoned strip mall, made a sign that says free sewing service and am going about constructing tablecloths and napkins, which i randomly leave at a FEMA trailer. I am taking pictures of each house i am leaving an item at.

-Carole Lung

Thursday, May 24, 2007

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things in Chicago



Transporting unmarked packages to insecure locations in Chicago

On May 18 and 19, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things tested for insecurity in Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Little Village, and Millennium Park. Results will be available in the exhibition at Gallery 400.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Re-Dressing New Orleans



In front of a house on Venus St.

After a week of prepping the machine and getting my stuff together I hit Gentilly Terrace neighborhood seeking clients who are willing to use my services. No takers yet. The few people i spoke with seemed curious, but couldn't think of anything for me to do. so i left a flyer and moved onto the next trailer. Im sure once folks get used to seeing me ride around, they will realise im not going anywhere so they might as well take me up on my offer of free textile worker services.

-Carole Lung

Monday, May 21, 2007

Loomed



Anya Liftig

Loomed

Performed at Mess Hall, 5/13/07

I use my body as a loom to weave environments together using movement. Each performance is as attempt to incorporate the artist and the viewer into the fabric of the moment. Working like a photograph, I use the knotting motion of textile production to capture a moment in time.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Lian Sifuentes, Corpus Projecti



Performed at Midway Studios at the University of Chicago, May 11

Psychological Prosthetics

In May Psychological Prosthetics launched a redesigned website, conducted training sessions, and took trainees out with them to test new products and services on the streets of Chicago. These included two new objects: the 30 Second Rant Recorder, an electronic hand-made device to activate outrage, and the PP Band Aid device to bandage shame and soothe apathy. They also offered to custom design suitcases to house strangers’ emotional baggage.

Graffiti Workshop









University of Chicago students participated in a graffiti workshop with Lavie Raven, Prime Minister of Education of the University of Hip Hop, on May 5.

Participants:

Neal Curley
D A Doering
Owen Kohl
Mia Ruyter
Bethany Strout
Jadine Collingwood
Janet Hong
Sofia Narvaez Gete
Alta Buden
Joe Miller
Lucy Chang
Rose Schapiro
Meredith Haggerty

The workshop was followed by another one led by Raven on hip hop education, urban farming and political activism.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

WEEDS: Political Emotion Leads to the Resurrection of War


travis

Every time I see you naked I offer my death bed but you won’t take it. Strange, my flower bed cannot hold you. In my prime I tried to burn away my winter weeds but I breed and then I decay. Strange, my flower bed cannot hold you.

Pathogeographies Visiting Artist Series



Click on the image to see it at full scale

May 5-24, 2007, Feel Tank Chicago and collaborators hosted a visiting artist series at the University of Chicago and Mess Hall in May, 2007, organized together with “Pathogeographies: Or, Other People’s Baggage” at Gallery 400, June 15-July 7.

Events were co-sponsored by the Arts Planning Council, Division of the Humanities, Contemporary Art Workshop, Center for Gender Studies, Department of Visual Arts, Feel Tank Chicago, and Mess Hall.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

What did you bring me?


Jessica Findley

This DIY gift bearing and receiving suitcase lets you leave a gift, make a gift or take a gift. Art supplies, gifts and gift contents are included, but anyone is welcome to add to or take from the suitcase.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Free Samples

Sarah Kaiser

My suitcase was inspired by the pharmaceutical industry. I recall the day when my psychiatrist gave me some free samples of some SSRIs (Serotonin Selective Re-uptake Inhibitors) such as Paxil and Lamictal. Aside from side effects such as fatigue, weight loss, and minor electric zaps, they have been really great. (I hope that you can sense my sarcasm!) However, now that I'm hooked and don't have insurance, they are quite expensive. Would you like a free sample? (The samples I'll be handing out are only sugar pills, commonly known as "Smarties.")

Don’t be a bystander!

The Tamms Poetry Committee will be holding a letter-writing event for the 286 prisoners housed in the Tamms Supermax prison in Tamms, IL. These men are in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have no human contact. They have no library, no classes, no enrichment programs, no religious congregation, no group activities, no communal space. Food is served in the cell. They are not allowed phone calls. Visitation, which is done from behind glass, is rare or non-existent. Tamms is 250 miles from Chicago, with no access via public transportation, and it is generally prohibitive for families to make the journey. The inmates suffer from extreme sensory deprivation, loneliness, depression. These conditions constitute torture, a fact recognized by both the U.N. and by Amnesty International. In spite of their situation, the men are trying to hold up. It means a lot to them to know that people are concerned about their situation. Come, read some of their letters, meet members of their families, and be part of a group mailing experience.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

pretty, pretty... pretty over there too

Joan Dickinson

I was assigned a tiny office in a building on Michigan Avenue in the south loop two years ago. Although the office itself is small, there is a large, wall-sized window which opens the wall in an easterly direction, affording me a view of such magnificence as I have ever known in Chicago.

During the first year in my tiny office I stared: at Grant Park, its seasons, its usages, its statuary; at Lake Shore Drive, its poignancy, motion, the push and pull of it, the stops and starts; at our lake, our great lake, Lake Michigan, its weathers, flows, mists, the birds that blow atop it like paper, the sky above it, the paper in the sky above it.

During the second year I began to take pictures. Almost everyday. Almost everyday at the same time. I send them to my friends, colleagues, and students. Some send me messages in return in the form of e-mail and in the form of pictures. One friend sent me a picture of her child, a daughter.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Festival of Political Emotion

Feel Tank and others

On June 16, the first Saturday of the Pathogeographies exhibition, Feel Tank will host a Festival of Political Emotion at Gallery 400 including a chance to participate in George Bush's daily thoughts about Iraq. The festival embraces a variety of projects with artists on hand to elicit your participation and measure the emotional temperature of the body politic. How do you carry your pile of political feelings? How do you cope with Other People's Baggage? What is to be felt, and what is to be done?

Feel Kit

Feel Tank and others

Feel Tank Chicago presents the Feel Kit, a wiki of keywords on political emotion.

All are welcome to participate in writing the Feel Kit. To receive a registration passcode to participate in the site, send a request to bodypolitic@gmail.com.

Mapping the Body Politic

Feel Tank and others

A series of talks and performances by Pathogeographies participants
Saturday, June 30, 12-6

Micro-cinemas

Feel Tank and others

Feel Tank hosts multiple micro-cinemas between June 15 and July 7 as part of Pathogeographies

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Maldonado-Salcedo Baggage

Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo a.k.a “MalSal”


There is an inextricable relationship between guilt and migration. The sociopolitical implications intrinsic to the unpacking of this guilt becomes manifested and complicated within familial relationships. Within the volatile theater of being "here" but performing "over there," an enduring liminal identity and space is mapped. Displacement (social, political, spiritual, economic, physical and psychological) becomes generational, until becoming borderline criminal. Maldonado-Salcedo embodies the impossible truth and reconciliation attached to an exodus.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

This Dream, This Frequency










Mary Walling Blackburn

Dreams are a kind of suitcase. The historian Mechal Sobel claims that dreams provide an ethical reckoning ground where citizens work out potential reactions to political situations. Charlotte Beradt, in her collection of German dreaming during the Nazi era, found that those who resisted in dreams also resisted in waking life.

For the past year I have been collecting and recording fragments of dreams of soldiers stationed in Iraq. This Dream, This Frequency will use hand-built micro radio transmitters to send the recordings out into several different Chicago neighborhoods. As walkers or drivers navigate a pre-ordained route, they will be able to tune into the station and listen to the dream until they move out of range. What had previously coagulated in the dreaming mind of a soldier is mechanically fed into the ether, the causeway of the public consciousness.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Workshops

BLW

BLW develops public recitations (re-enactments) of significant recordings in the history of radical media – speeches, interviews and so on.

We consider the role of media in radical practices: how do video recordings, or other new media, act as repository for memory and/or vehicle for interjection? How does the act of re-playing activist video recordings both instill the current moment with the spirit of resistance and possibility while, simultaneously, elucidating the impossibility of such optimism now? Can we, through an embodied recitation of radical speech, give this act of “play back” a different outcome?

BLW will conduct workshops to re-enact the 1969 recording of the final interview of Fred Hampton, conducted by the Videofreex in his apartment in Chicago, where he was subsequently assassinated.

Friday, April 13, 2007

A Potter's Story



Theaster Gates

From the pottery wheel, I will sing 3 pieces, one of Dave the enslaved potter who, being shot in the leg, cannot run away from his enslavement. The second piece will be a response to surveillance cameras and third will be singing a series of city planning policies and land use ordinances that seem a direct response to eradicating the presence of non-conforming citizens from the public sphere.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Invitation to public movement


Meredith Haggerty

My work is an ongoing exploration of spaces, the way they affect my self and my own desire for alignment, self control and change that might be achieved through a kind of self consciousness. For Pathogeographies, I have proposed a troupe called Public Movement. Participants should bring habits or movements from structured events such as work or rush hour and recreate them in a new space. The goal is simply to reroute these activities as both internal and external events.

May 18, 5pm: Slow walking in downtown Chicago
June 30: Habit swap

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Corpus Projecti


Lián Sifuentes

An interactive performance installation for an audience of one. Users enter a small space one at a time and encounter the live, physically present body of a woman. They touch the performer's body on illuminated points and she tells them a short story inspired by that body part. To hear a story, a user must make continuous physical contact with the performing body; the performer only vocalizes while the user’s hand is touching her. The user sees animated cellular growth projected before him or her, directly caused by the transmission of the story.

A Case for Feeling Insecure

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, a performance research collaborative based in Cambridge, MA, will produce “Unmarked Package: A Case for Feeling Insecure” at locations in Chicago characterized by excessive security. Having observed that the Unmarked Package appears frequently in the literature on security and emergency preparedness and in actual reported events that evoke fear and insecurity around the nation, the Institute seeks to use “Unmarked Packages” to test for insecurity in Chicago's public places.

Graffiti workshop and Hip-Hop education

Lavie Raven

Two workshops with Lavie Raven, Prime Minister of Education of the University of Hip-Hop, at Midway Studios. The morning workshop introduces basic skills involved in graffiti writing for community murals; you will produce a mural by the end of the session. In the afternoon, an urban farmer and political organizer present strategies for incorporating the hip-hop arts into education and media production. Both events meet Saturday, May 5 at Midway Studios, 6016 Ingleside Ave., Chicago.

Left Luggage



Material Exchange
Left Luggage

For its proposed contribution to Pathogeographies, Material Exchange offers not an artwork, object, or display—but a service. Material Exchange’s baggage check will be a functioning facility within the space, operating without any intervention from, or dependence upon, the established structures of the gallery. It is our interest to provide an element to the Pathogeopraphies project that will contribute to the organization of a varying and diverse array of contributions (left luggage).

Monday, April 9, 2007

Solo Practice

Edra Soto Fernandez

Solo Practice encounters an open space for narratives by isolating a person playing drums. The drummer delivers a musical interpretation as if he were playing it with a band in real time, leaving silent spaces for an imagined and silent accompaniment. The incompleteness is presented as the subject of the piece. Excerpt: The Star-Spangled Banner (author: Francis Scott Key)

Radical Grandmothers

Bonnie Fortune, with illustrations by Becca Taylor

A new “Free Walking” zine, combining research from two projects, “Free Walking” and the Library of Radiant Optimism. The Library involves researching and collecting books which express an optimistic spirit of self-education and freedom. The Free Walking project (freewalking.org) is an ongoing series of peripatetic investigations and accompanying zine that contain writing about walks, walking, or time spent outside. Radical Grandmothers will feature the stories of, and walks with, Kirsten Dufour and Margit Czenki, both of whom were involved in optimistic self-education and self-publishing movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The zine will also contain interviews with various members of the Raging Grannies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raging_Grannies.

LAUGH

Mrs Rao’s Growl (Anuj Vaidya and Sheelah Murthy)

Laughter is a powerful disruptive tool. In difficult times like these, it reaffirms our connections and helps unite our voices, literally, into one loud and indignant guffaw against larger repressive forces. Reminiscent of the therapeutic goals of the Laughing Clubs in India and the children’s game HA HA HA, the public performance and spectacle of LAUGH embraces many aspects of laughter – release, healing, aerobic workout, community-building, and protest. LAUGH has been performed at the Federal Plaza and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; a backyard picnic; a wedding in Santa Fe, New Mexico; at the Washington Memorial in Washington, D.C.; and at the Haymarket Martyrs Monument in River Forest, Illinois. This iteration of LAUGH will be an extension of Feel Tank Chicago’s 5th International Parade for the Politically Depressed.

Economies of Touch

Sheelah Murthy

The problematic economic and affective exchanges between client and therapist, john and prostitute, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and their constituencies are all explored in this durational deep-tissue massage/performance piece. Clients will be solicited beforehand as well as “walk-ins.” The massages/performathon will take place in a small nomadic shelter inside the gallery, and will benefit the International Rescue Committee, specifically to support health services for sex workers in Southeast Asia.

s*m*a*s*h

Salem Collo-Julin

SMASH

(dollars up || motors down)

SUNDAY JUNE 17
time and location TBA

smash is a public service and a fundraiser for FeelTank Chicago's Pathogeographies events and exhibition.

Tools:

one junk vehicle (beater; drained of fluids and glass popped out. a shell of plastic and steel waiting for impact)
empty parking lot for a few hours
timer and whistle
goggles and gloves
tarps

The Plan:

$5 = thirty seconds. you and the decommissioned vehicle. what would your inner demon do?

$20 = 30 minutes

The public is invited one at a time to do damage
everyone feels better except for the vehicle

Cranky, the Person Lingering With AIDS



Cranky P.W.A.

Morbid queer thoughts of the Cranky P.W.A., who also shares meditations on radical frivolity, living (or dying) with liver cancer, remembering Michael Bumblebee, and much more. http://crankypwa.blogspot.com

Revolution is an eternal dream

Ferd Eggan

A series of interviews with people who are thinking about the implications of their work for radical transformation of global society: Hank Jones, one of the SF 8, the Black Panther veterans being charged with the killing of a police officer at Ingleside Station, SF, in 1971; gay activist Jeffrey Edwards on gentrification and LGBTQ issues in Chicago; video-bloggers extraordinaires, Ryanne Hodson & Jay Dedman; anarchist/artist/activists Dara Greenwald and Josh McPhee; artist, writer, educator, advocate of Puerto Rican independence and former political prisoner Elizam Escobar, and others. – Ferd Eggan, http://www.ferdeggan.net

Vietnamese Suitcase


Erin O'Brien

A Vietnamese suitcase is a cardboard box. The “suitcase” serves a temporary purpose, unlike the somewhat indestructible western version, made for on-going travel. As I position myself at locations around various cities (federal building, Vietnamese neighborhood and Vietnam memorial), I solicit people to write/reflect on what they think of Vietnam on Joss paper and put the paper in my “suitcase”. After sharing the thoughts/reflections on Vietnam that people record/write onto the Joss Paper, I will burn them on a lunar holiday.

http://www.erinobrien.org

Los Angeles performance: March 2, 2007
Chicago Performance: April 28, 2007
Seattle Performance: Late May, 2007
Washington DC Preformance: Late May, 2007
Burning of Joss Paper
Final performance Chicago: First Lunar Moon in August

Sunday, April 8, 2007

The New Yorkers’ Guide to Military Recruitment in the 5 Boroughs

The Friends of William Blake

As a counter argument to the grinding machine of military recruitment during the Iraq War, fighting in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, The Friends of William Blake, a small collective of artists, writers, and activists, has created “The New Yorkers’ Guide to Military Recruitment in the 5 Boroughs” – a pocket-sized, sixty-page, comprehensive guide to local military recruitment and resources for counter recruitment in NYC. Made in the spirit of The People's Guide to the RNC which they published in 2004, this book is a small part in the worldwide effort for peace & justice. It seeks to inspire hope while provoking conversation, informing potential recruits, and giving activists a new wrench in their toolbox. http://www.counterrecruitmentguide.org

Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed

Feel Tank and others

Feel Tank Chicago hosts the Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed, on July 4, 2007. Depressed? It Might Be Political!

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Cloud Cover

Laurie Palmer

Cloud cover reflects the modification of our environment from energetic sanctioning of coal power production, unrestricted industrial growth, a car and highway culture, and massive consumption. It also affects our emotional well-being directly -- people living with less light get SAD. But weather systems, like emotions, are unpredictable, and our weather's response to capitalism is not based on a one-to-one linear relation. In this project, the intensity of atmospheric lighting in a windowless room (powered by a photovoltaic array) is regulated by the intensity of available light outside, while data collects, comparing current temperatures with historic averages.

Jimmy Carter's solar panels on the west wing of the White House, 1980, removed by Reagan the day after he was inaugurated. (photo by Bill Fitzpatrick)

I Want to Know the Habits of Other Girls

Dewayne Slightweight

A twenty-minute opera, based on the comic of the same name, performed by Dewayne and four life-size sewn and stuffed “friends” – Gilda Radner, Limbo Tomboy, Gordon Gaskill, and The Great Auntie. At the center of this project is the longing for community, a family of lovers, each person attracted to the idea that one’s happiness depends on everyone else’s: an imagined queer community. How can we strongly imagine things we have never experienced, and use these yearnings, hopes, and desires as a political force?