Squashwalkblog

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

Check in for news of her walks!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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)

Cheap Art For Freedom

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

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.

Ritual Guerilla Mummification

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

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