Pathogeographies

Festival of Political Emotion: Tomorrow!

2007-06-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Now in the gallery, part 4

2007-06-12T17:56:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-12T17:53:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

Left Luggage in progress

Now in the gallery

2007-06-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

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 smash)

2007-06-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Re-Dressing NOLA - Customer

2007-06-10T11:42:00.001-07:00

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.

ElWear in Chicago

2007-06-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

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!

Squashwalkblog

2007-06-03T14:51:00.001-07:00

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

Check in for news of her walks!

Triage Takes on the Loop

2007-06-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Re-Dressing, again

2007-05-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

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

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things in Chicago

2007-05-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Re-Dressing New Orleans

2007-05-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

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

Loomed

2007-05-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Lian Sifuentes, Corpus Projecti

2007-05-20T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

Psychological Prosthetics

2007-05-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

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.

WEEDS: Political Emotion Leads to the Resurrection of War

2007-05-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-19T01:50:00.000-07:00

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.

What did you bring me?

2007-05-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Free Samples

2007-05-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-05-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

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.

pretty, pretty... pretty over there too

2007-05-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Festival of Political Emotion

2007-04-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Feel Tank and others

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

Micro-cinemas

2007-04-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Feel Tank and others

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

Maldonado-Salcedo Baggage

2007-04-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

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.

This Dream, This Frequency

2007-04-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Workshops

2007-04-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

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.

A Potter's Story

2007-04-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Invitation to public movement

2007-04-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

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

Corpus Projecti

2007-04-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

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).

Solo Practice

2007-04-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

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.

smash

2007-04-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

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

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

2007-04-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

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!

Cloud Cover

2007-04-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-07T20:08:00.001-07:00

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?

a beautifully trial and error life

2007-04-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

Claire Pentecost

A project that begins with an interesting story, generates an interview, becomes a drawing based on listening, a diagram of empathic reflexivity... not a series of portraits, but a search for pleasurable and non-linear ways of knowing a life, of re-telling someone's story, finding other routes to unfold a case study of desires. How do people determine their own paths of learning, create form from circumstance, end up surpassing themselves? What makes someone care about those things we call political?

Cheap Art For Freedom

2007-04-07T17:14:00.001-07:00

CAFF Collective

We intend to investigate the production of bad feelings by "misusing" public spaces (for example, loitering, carrying boomboxes around, etc). We will make maps and objects that will allow others to participate in these activities and solicit others to make maps of their own; maps will be posted and solicited in a variety of media. Our initial solicitation, or "suitcase," will be "worry lines": clothes lines erected in public places that invite people to air their dirty laundry by writing down worries and pinning them to the lines.

A number of events invite participation. First: Sat. April 21 outside McCormick Center on the lakeshore path in the p.m. (during Green festival) Others: TBD

Suitcase Project: ORD-BEY-ORD

2007-04-07T16:12:00.001-07:00

Charlotte Sáenz

This Suitcase Project arose out of my intense sadness and anger during last summer's war in Lebanon, as I wondered whether bombed bridges & roads could lead my loved ones to safety. It is an attempt to connect my communities here with my communities there--a simple idea that led to many unexpected connections, emotions, and challenges. For some of the participants it was just an exchange, for others a fragile and momentary connection, yet others took it as an opportunity to express their own emotions, in letters and packages prepared with much thought and care for a stranger over there.

Love is as strong as death

2007-04-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

subRosa

A participatory feast with the theme of Love is Strong as Death, addressing the concept of "political love."

Theodoreau

2007-04-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

Andrew Dodds

Part of an ongoing series of works exploring the links between Henry 'Walden' Thoreau and Theodore 'Unabomber' Kaczynski, two 'historical' figures who loom large over America's understanding of itself. Their lifestyle choices in remote, cabin home is mirrored in the political acts that both expounded, though for very contrasting reasons. For Pathogeographies a 'discursive', relational space is to be created in which group participation will be encouraged.

www.andrewdodds.com/artwork/lifeinthewoods.html

Listen and Feel

2007-04-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

Dan Wang

As a return of the long dormant Selections series, I will be playing and speaking about songs having to do with politics and feelings, including feelings of Anxiety, Depression, Apathy, Impatience, Irritation, Sorrow, Paranoia, Righteousness, Confusion, Inspiration, Ecstasy, and maybe even a little Outrage. This will be a listening party/presentation of recorded music presented in two sets: Part 1 will be about twenty songs, maybe more, mixed in with my commentary; Part 2 will be just music for the rest of the evening without commentary. The presentation will include a mini-set of songs from artists who came out of Chicago's South Side. A free pamphlet text assembled to accompany the event will be made available.

Hyde Park Art Center
Monday, July 2, 2007
6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Ritual Guerilla Mummification

2007-04-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

Kali

The Guerilla Mummification Kit is a variation on our Home Mummification Kit.
While the latter features everything needed for a traditional approach, the former provides only wrapping materials such that it is better suited to extemporaneous freeform mummifications. The wrapping materials are quite varied: aluminum foil, string, tapes of various kinds, festive wrapping papers and ribbon, cellophane, etc. We will seek out subjects for mummification such as fried chicken, gas pumps, and furniture. The process will be recorded by a before and after photo, as well as by brief musings in a diary/sketchbook.

please see: http://www.kaliartifacts.com

Carried Baggage

2007-04-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Hines

I am interested in the idea of the figurative baggage we carry with us when we leave home. Our "suitcase" can carry physical items, but also sentimental, emotional, and psychological items as well. I would like to collect responses from passerby in various places in Chicago and ask what they feel they always carry with them when they travel away from home. The responses will be written by the passerby on a piece of paper, then collected in a vintage suitcase. After collecting the responses, the suitcase will be available for others to read the reponses, thereby allowing people the opportunity to glimpse how others feel, creating a more intimate connection between people.

Data collection occurs on Memorial Day weekend, May 26-28

Drawn Lots

2007-04-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Drawn Lots is:
Regan Golden-McNerney
Juan Juarez
Michael K. Julian
Jeremy Lundquist

Drawn Lots is interested in starting a dialogue concerning how people feel about their hopes for owning land and/or a house/home.

We will be interacting with a variety of communities to gauge personal responses to property.

Our research will feed into Google image searches which will in turn serve as a resource for drawn versions of these attitudes towards ownership.

drawnlots.blogspot.com

Singing Melancholia

2007-04-05T19:54:00.001-07:00

Megan Ransmeier

You say: I feel like there is no hope.
We sing: I feel like there is no hope,
IIIIIIIII feel liiiiiiiike there is noooooo hoope.
I feeeeeel liiiiiike theeeeeeere iiiiiiiiiis
nooooooo hooooope. Ifeellikehereisnohope.
You: Make sound on our arms with whatever you have.
We: Make sound on eachothers arms with whatever we have.

This group activation of object, phrase, and each other will be taking place in multiple public spaces and invites all who are interested.

First public version of project occurred April 14th at 2pm at the Water Tower in downtown Chicago.
Tentative future dates: April 28th and May 12th

Re-Dressing New Orleans

2007-04-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Carole Frances Lung

After my most recent stay in post-Katrina New Orleans, I realized a tool for rebuilding everyday life in the city of New Orleans is commemorating the loss. With this in mind I will implement the portable garment reconstruction unit (a bike powered portable sewing machine) and ride from FEMA trailer to FEMA trailer in Gentilly neighborhood, asking residents to describe a lost garment, then I will rebuild the garment and leave it with them. The artifacts of the project: portable garment reconstruction unit, fabric remnants, patterns and suitcase with blue tarp reproductions of the garments will available for engagement during the exhibition.

The project takes place May 15-June 13, New Orleans, LA in the Gentilly neighborhood/8th ward.

CrossPollinNation

2007-04-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

Andi Sutton

In CrossPollinNation, I will conduct two city walks, from 6 - 10 miles, one in Boston and one in Chicago, both reflecting the race and class changes of the city neighborhoods that the routes pass through. I will carry 2 suitcases filled with heirloom squash seeds and planting materials (squash are notorious for their cross-pollinating tendencies.) When someone on the street offers to help me carry the suitcases, I will plant a squash seed for her/him to cultivate. The suitcases will lighten as more people offer to help. Both walks end when I reach a cultivation site where people I encounter along the way will be able to plant and tend to their seeds together for the rest of the growing season.

Boston dates: Sunday, May 20th, starting at 11AM in Harvard Sq., Cambridge and ending whenever I reach the end of the bus route in Dudley Square, Roxbury.

Chicago dates: ca. June 21-25

URL: http://www.bittermelon.org
(The National Bitter Melon Council)

Launch 2007

2007-04-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Maria Perkovic
Derek Erdman
Launch 2007

Launch 2007 is a quiet, public intervention that involves inserting messages attached to objects into the everyday experience of Chicagoans. The collaboration involves the participation of people we have yet to meet, in and around Chicago, through personalized messages attached to hundreds of helium filled balloons, business cards and mini parachutes. An archive of responses will be created to form an invisible solidarity.

Renaming Bush Street

2007-04-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

Amber Hasselbring, Jerome Grand

Renaming BUSH Street
is a survey that will take place on Bush Street in San Francisco. Playing on the mistaken association of the name Bush Street with our 41st and 43rd Presidents, the survey will record how passersby feel about the nomenclature of this street. The survey is purposely framed on highly contested presidencies to elicit affected responses, which indicate how we define and construct our shared political and cultural ideologies in the urban environment.

Wednesday May 2, 7-9 a.m. Bush & Battery

Tuesday May 8, 3-5 p.m. Bush & Powell

Saturday May 19, 5-7 p.m. Bush & Fillmore

Friday May 25, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Bush & Presidio

http://art-eco.org/renamingbushstreet/

Once a Day

2007-04-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

Rachele Riley
Once a day

Once a day is a web-based artwork that maps an online landscape of concepts associated with stylized violence. Automated searches are carried out daily. At the intersection of six searches, the collected images, text and video will be recontextualized. New narratives of text and moving images will build each day to tell the story of a shifting landscape of caution, hope, silence and sensibility.

http://www.racheleriley.com

In Search of Lost Memory

2007-04-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

Kristoffer Ardena
In Search of Lost Memory

This public intervention consists of found photos (mainly dating around the civil war till the fall of the Franco dictatorship - the time of Spanish Diaspora) that I found in dumpsites, flea markets in Madrid, Spain. At the time these photos were made Spain had a considerable emigrant population, as a recent immigrant to Spain I wanted to somehow link the experience of displacement by searching for clues as to the whereabouts of the people and places in each photo. The project consists of making flyers in the typical Lost-and-Found style to search for people in the photos or anyone that have any relationship to it.

Operation Red Tape

2007-03-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

Dustin McGahan

Dustin McGahan explores overtones of frustration, antipathy, and ambivalence within American social attitudes through the construction of a futile devices. The "Red Tape Machine", a symbol of the average attitude toward large corporate and governmental systems, seeks to remind us of our distaste for obfuscation, complexity and inefficiency by warning you of impending "BUREAUHAZARD".

Timed Change

2007-03-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

Matthew Slaats

Timed Change is a game about making small differences. Participants are asked to go out in the city and make a positive change to their environment. This is timed using a stop watch and documented using a polaroid camera. After returning to the gallery, you will write your name, the change and time on the photo before placing it in the suitcase. The fastest time and best change will be the winner. I bet that I can beat you? http://www.matthewslaats.com

Psychological Prosthetics

2007-03-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman

Psychological Prosthetics provides a range of services to discretely handle your emotional baggage in political times. From our 30 second Rant Recorder™ and instant PP Band-aid relief™, to our custom designed suitcases, we explore relationships between emotional health, happiness, consumption and the political state.

Join our team, design your own suitcase & take street surveys.
Each trainee gets a free ‘start up' pack!
To check out our website:
http://www.psychologicalprosthetics.com

Security Devices

2007-03-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

Sara Dierck

Tools provide safety and a feeling of well-being. Sara Dierck creates interactive sculptures in the shape of tools, specifically concerning fear and security. Sara gives spectators the chance to use the objects she makes, and, as part of Left Luggage, the opportunity to take some home. http://saradierck.com

Carrier

2007-03-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

Paul Hazelton
Carrier

A transparent suitcase containing shadowy objects of dust, how one might expect to see a suitcase through an x-ray security screening system at the airport. It’s as though the x-rays, leaving only the coatings of dust, had completely disintegrated the actual objects. With the ever-increasing invasiveness of technology, you wonder from where the threat will come.

Transit Camouflage

2007-03-28T14:59:00.001-07:00

Gretchen Vitamvas

Gallery visitors will be able to check out briefcases containing L Wear: coveralls printed with a graphic camouflage design inspired by the interior of L train cars and also military camouflage. Participants will simply ride the train and “blend in” to the car’s confined space –the suit a visual representation of a desire for security, both physical and emotional. The literal blending of the L Wear suit, and also its stand-out oddity are meant to encourage the captive audience to consider their own personal presentation, the uniforms they wear to blend in and be accepted, and how they read others based on appearance. visit subwearnyc.com

Travel Case for Lost Maples

2007-03-27T17:58:00.001-07:00

Mark Schatz

In an otherwise dry and rocky region in Texas there exists an isolated forest of Maple Trees surviving in a moist micro-climate. Mark Schatz, a midwesterner now living in Texas, too, is meticulously crafting custom travel cases for these trees to raise the idea of displacement and the connections felt between individuals and regional landscapes.

www.markandheather.com
www.UnorganizedTerritories.blogspot.com

With Love, Dad

2007-03-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Katina Papson

"...the general condition of archives involves the subordination of use to the logic of exchange." - Allan Sekula

A collection of letters I have received from my father will be sent to the gallery for analytical, emotional and psychological "unpacking." Chicago is the mediating state between New York City (where my father lives) and San Francisco (where I live.) By inviting multiple voices to the interaction, there is a distribution and distillation of power in the search for truth, neutrality and love.

Triage

2007-03-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

Julie Boyer and Sara Rabinowitz

Julie Boyer and Sara Rabinowitz use two hand-made woven cots to intervene in public spaces, giving passers-by an opportunity to hang out and appreciate the company of others. Our purpose is to facilitate connection and pause in our increasingly technologically mediated world.

Immanent Fear

2007-03-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Lydia Panas

In the summer and fall preceding the 2004 presidential election, I interviewed fifty people about their fears. I asked them nineteen questions on the nature of fear. The questions were open-ended to allow individuals to answer them as they wished. The questions were both personal and universal. They touched upon people’s beliefs about themselves and how they see the world.

A Journey around my suitcase

2007-03-14T02:50:00.000-07:00

Paul Matosic
A journey around my suitcase

This film is part of ongoing work retracing a journey taken through Europe between 1942 and 1949, reconstructed through a study of old photographs and inscriptions scratched onto the actual case. The journey started in Zagreb and ended in Lancashire UK.

Example of thumbnail

2007-03-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Artist
Title
Descriptive text [different from original or revised proposal: this should be 2-4 sentences, a BRIEF description for the website]
URL of your own website if you have one

Pathogeographies

Festival of Political Emotion: Tomorrow!

Now in the gallery, part 4

Now in the gallery, part 3

Now in the gallery, part 2

Now in the gallery

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

Re-Dressing NOLA - Customer

ElWear in Chicago

Squashwalkblog

Triage Takes on the Loop

Re-Dressing, again

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things in Chicago

Re-Dressing New Orleans

Loomed

Lian Sifuentes, Corpus Projecti

Psychological Prosthetics

Graffiti Workshop

WEEDS: Political Emotion Leads to the Resurrection of War

Pathogeographies Visiting Artist Series

What did you bring me?

Free Samples

Don’t be a bystander!

pretty, pretty... pretty over there too

Festival of Political Emotion

Feel Kit

Mapping the Body Politic

Micro-cinemas

Maldonado-Salcedo Baggage

This Dream, This Frequency

Workshops

A Potter's Story

Invitation to public movement

Corpus Projecti

A Case for Feeling Insecure

Graffiti workshop and Hip-Hop education

Left Luggage

Solo Practice

Radical Grandmothers

LAUGH

Economies of Touch

s*m*a*s*h

Cranky, the Person Lingering With AIDS

Revolution is an eternal dream

Vietnamese Suitcase

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

Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed

Cloud Cover

I Want to Know the Habits of Other Girls

a beautifully trial and error life

Cheap Art For Freedom

Suitcase Project: ORD-BEY-ORD

Love is as strong as death

Theodoreau

Listen and Feel

Ritual Guerilla Mummification

Carried Baggage

Drawn Lots

Singing Melancholia

Re-Dressing New Orleans

CrossPollinNation

Launch 2007

Renaming Bush Street

Once a Day

In Search of Lost Memory

Operation Red Tape

Timed Change

Psychological Prosthetics

Security Devices

Carrier

Transit Camouflage

Travel Case for Lost Maples

With Love, Dad

Triage

Immanent Fear

A Journey around my suitcase

Example of thumbnail

opening weekend (& note on smash)

smash