Site Unseen
Elevator Music in progress
For Site Unseen 2009 artists Annette Barbier and Drew Browning (Unreal-estates) will create a sound installation in the Randolph Street elevator. They’ll use writings, interviews, and documentary sounds of disabled rights activists on one hand and the medical/media community on the other to clarify the differences between these groups’ differing approaches to disability. Quotes fall into categories such as History, Fiction, Self-Help, Law and Order, referencing the original function of the Cultural Center as the Main Branch of the Chicago Public Library. Spoken words are processed so that, while understandable, they become musical as well, cloaking what may for some be an uncomfortable message in an aesthetically pleasing form.
The duo is chronicling the development of Elevator Music on their blog. Click here to follow their progress.
See their work realized at the 6th annual Site Unseen Monday, November 9.
shared body
Submitted by Marissa Perel, Site Unseen 2009 artist
Coming from Perel’s struggle with injury and chronic pain, her vision with multi-disciplinary artist Madeleine Bailey is to create shared body; a physically restrictive performance-installation that will challenge her desire for interaction with the audience.
“Probably the biggest struggle,” Perel says, “is that feeling of being trapped in your own skin. Wanting to escape, but having to accept that you can’t. So what’s there in acceptance? How can we surrender to our limitations and let that take us beyond what we’ve known?”
Visit her blog for insight into her work and process.
Perel lies in box with her body still and receptive, she is covered except for an arm or leg that might stick out of the box. Superimposed is a sketch for trying to disappear into the box; Houdini moment?
May I have … your attention?
Submitted by Judith Harding, Site Unseen 2009 artist
May I Have by Judith Harding in collaboration with Still Point Theatre Collective features an integrated ensemble of eleven performers with and without developmental disabilities in a movement-centered work that addresses issues of inclusion and transparent barriers faced by adults with developmental disabilities.
May I have …
… your attention?
Thank you!
I’m as abled as you are; you’re as challenged as me.
We love playing with people.
We love using our bodies.
We love looking at the person.
We love being seen.
We love Dancing Bear from Captain Kangaroo.
We like the Chicken Dance too.
The best thing about performance is feeling great together.
Carole McCurdy and Jeff Aiken from May I Have
Julie and her environment
Written by Clare Tallon Ruen for www.PlanetThrive.com
Julie and her environment: a sad and poetic dance with the polluting world and friends
I “met” Julie via email. I saw her name on the program of Site Unseen, a site-specific performance art and media installation exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. She curated the event. I decided to attend the event because it seemed a good place to experience some avant-garde art. I was right. I also experienced art that seemed to speak certain themes. My impression of this night was strong. I was inspired, moved, and most of all hopeful. Hopeful that important themes such as war, pollution, loss of things precious, are being represented; and hopeful because that important work is being sought and supported. I wanted to meet the person doing the supporting and representing.
By email, we agreed to set up a phone interview. I had wondered if she would be back in the city soon, in case we could meet in person. She said, no, she had a health condition that prevented her from being in the city much. Ok, I thought. I also realized how “health conditions” are on my mind right now. I am mid thirty and know a few people with various diseases and have a greater respect? Fear? Awareness? Whatever it is, it points to frailty, finitude, vulnerability.
I congratulated her on the exhibition and mentioned liking her “red dresses” that I had seen on her website. She sent back a link to a recent dress installation. I flipped when I saw that it had taken place in Prague, capitol city of my adopted homeland. The photos were of a woman in a red dress in various poses of prayer, hope, looking up, down, and her dress-train was suspended from a clock tower or somewhere very high. It was so dramatic and serene at once. I told her she looked beautiful.
Shield (performance piece) © 2007 by Julie Laffin and Clover Morell. Photos by Elizabeth Czekner.
She replied that the woman in the pictures was her friend and collaborator, Clover Morell; that she could not go because of her illness. What illness could keep someone out of the Czech Republic, I wondered?
When we finally talked, I was hesitant to ask her about her illness, but, as she hadn’t so far hidden its fact from me, when it came up again I decided to ask her. I found out that Julie had been present at Site Unseen, behind a charcoal mask obscured further by a head scarf that covered most of her face. She suffers from an environmental illness so acute that being in the company of others, their dyes perfumes wafting about; that being in the city with its innumerable pollutants makes her sick, flu sick—for days. How did her immune system get such a blow from which it can scarcely recover? Well, it was for art. She was poisoned during a process of washing and drying army blankets for a project. She suspects the blankets may have been treated with pesticide in addition to being laced with moth balls. When she laundered them in preparation for the showing of her work, the chemicals volatilized in her studio. Breathing that stuff in that concentration, and for that duration was too much for her body to successfully eliminate. She is now diagnosed with chemical injury and is being treated by several doctors. Her best way to cope seems to simply remove herself from triggers but the list is long and includes all synthetic fragrances, even minute amounts of residue on other people’s hair and clothing. Soon after her diagnosis, she and her husband moved from the city to a country house northwest of the fray. Unfortunately, there seems to be no perfect place. Not only do the farms spray pesticide, but her neighbors use it on their lawns.
Digital Stream by Mike McGowan
A poem by Site Unseen 2009 artist Mike McGowan:
Click “Read more” to view Mr. McGowan’s biography and join us at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday, November 9 to view more of his work.
CURRENT SHOWS
