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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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?

Love is as strong as death

subRosa

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

Listen and Feel

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