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Come and Gone: Site Unseen 2008

After months of preparation by curators Julie Laffin and Dolores Wilber, six local artists, the staff of the Chicago Cultural Center, and countless others, the fifth-annual Site Unseen is now behind us.

The evening was fleeting, but magnificent--over 1,000 visitors to the Chicago Cultural Center enjoyed a range of performances and installations from Chris Sullivan’s quirky “passion play” in the Studio Theater to BJ Krivanek’s innovative sound and lighting installation in Sidney R. Yates Gallery. Visitors were also greeted by the mesmerizing puppetry and Celtic music of Matthew Owens in Preston Bradley Hall, hundreds of cardboard boxes that comprised Claire Ashley’s colorful “Fort” in the Randolph Cafe, and provocative video shorts by the likes of Wafaa Bilal and Catherine Sullivan. All pieces were centered loosely around the theme “occupation.”

Undoubtedly, the most ambitious piece was realized by philosopher-artist H. Peter’s Steeves. Housed in three major rooms on the second floor of the Cultural Center--GAR Hall, Rotunda and the Claudia Cassidy Theater--Steeves’ lecture/performance/installation entitled “You Are Here” explored, as he wrote, “the relationship between mapping and occupation [which mimics] the tone and context of an antiquated, traveling science sideshow and cartographic carnival of curiosities.” For the installation portion, Steeves incorporated such disparate materials as recycled barn wood, home-made robotics, a port-o-let ("Fountain II” he called it, after Duchamp), live satellite up-link, rotten fruit, kitchen knives, and mice made from maps to encourage the viewer to “think about the casual relationships that exist between mapping and colonialism, imperialism, war, greed, control and knowledge.” In his live lecture/performance he highlighted dance from Indonesia, India, Argentina, Turkey, Fance, and Spain.

As art historian Patricia Kelly wrote in her introduction to the program book, ”Site Unseen calls up many of the themes central to performance art from the late 1960s onwards, regarding specificity of place, the nature of embodiment, the terms of human experience, and the possibilities for individual interaction, yet in timely and unexpected ways.” This year’s timely theme “occupation” was explored through many different vehicles which resulted in an evening of interactive, thought-provoking, visually stunning, yet approachable art.

A tiny portion of the massive installation “You are Here” by H. Peter Steeves