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This week: The second installment of our pirate radio sessions, recorded live from NADA 2011! We are joined by local heroes The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago curators Michael Darling and Naomi Beckwith.

Naomi Beckwith is a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff in May 2011. A native Chicagoan, Beckwith grew up in Hyde Park and attended Lincoln Park High School, going on to receive a BA in history from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She completed an MA with Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, presenting her master’s thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems.

Afterward, she was a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Beckwith was a fall 2008 grantee of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and was named the 2011 Leader to Watch by ArtTable. She serves on the boards of the Laundromat Project (New York) and Res Artis (Amsterdam).

Prior to joining the MCA staff, Beckwith was associate curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Preceding her tenure at the Studio Museum, Beckwith was the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, where she worked on numerous exhibitions including Locally Localized Gravity (2007), an exhibition and program of events presented by more than 100 artists whose practices are social, participatory, and communal.

Beckwith has also been the BAMart project coordinator at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a guest blogger for Art21. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions at New York alternative spaces Recess Activities, Cuchifritos, and Artists Space.

Beckwith curated the exhibition 30 Seconds off an Inch, which was presented by the Studio Museum in Harlem November 12, 2009 – March 14, 2010. Exhibiting artworks by 42 artists of color or those inspired by black culture from more than 10 countries, the show asked viewers to think about ways in which social meaning is embedded formally within artworks.

Michael Darling (born 1968) is the James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA). Darling joined the MCA staff in July 2010.

Darling received his BA in art history from Stanford University, and he received his MA and PhD in art and architectural history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Darling has worked as an independent writer and curator, contributing essays on art, architecture, and design to publications including Frieze, Art Issues, Flash Art, and LA Weekly. Darling frequently serves as a panelist, lecturer, and guest curator on contemporary art and architecture.

Prior to joining the MCA, Darling was the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), where he was awarded SAM’s Patterson Sims Fellowship for 2009-10. In 2008, Darling began the program SAM Next, a series of contemporary art exhibitions presenting emerging or underappreciated artists from around the globe. Artist Enrico David, who exhibited as part of SAM Next, has since been nominated for the Turner Prize.

Darling curated the SAM exhibitions Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78 (June 25 – September 7, 2009), and Kurt (May 13 – September 16, 2010). Target Practice showcased the attacks painting underwent in the years following World War II. Kurt explored Kurt Cobain’s influence on contemporary artists.

Darling was associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, before joining SAM. He co-curated The Architecture of R.M. Schindler (2001), which won the International Association of Art Critics “Best Architecture or Design Exhibition” award. The exhibition also won merit awards for interior architecture from the Southern California American Institute of Architects and the California Council of the American Institute of Architects.

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Dieter Roelstraete

Riding the wave of ridiculously good buzz the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago has been receiving from the local press concerning all the big changes there as of late, the MCA today announced that it has named Dieter Roelstraete as its new Manilow Senior Curator. Roelstraete is currently the Curator of MuHKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst) in Antwerp, Belgium, and will join the MCA in February 2012. The MCA’s press release on the hiring follows:

Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, announced today that Dieter Roelstraete has been appointed the new Manilow Senior Curator at the MCA. Roelstraete is currently the Curator of MuHKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst) in Antwerp, Belgium, where he has organized large-scale group exhibitions and monographic shows. He will assume his new responsibilities at the MCA in February 2012.

“Dieter is a wildly productive and extraordinarily smart curator who has addressed a wide range of art — geographically, generationally, materially — in his writings and exhibitions over the past several years, says Darling. “We felt his range of knowledge and broad curiosity would be perfect for the MCA in our attempt to cast as wide a net as possible in seeking out the most compelling art from around the world. Importantly, I first started hearing about him from artists who found in him a sympathetic and intelligent translator of their projects, and that kind of endorsement is very important to us. He brings with him an international network of colleagues and collaborators which will extend the MCA’s reach far beyond Chicago; but at the end of the day, he is also a really charming person who we are all very much looking forward to working with.”

Originally trained as a philosopher at the University of Ghent, Belgian-born Roelstraete has worked at the MuHKA since 2003. His curatorial projects there include Emotion Pictures (2005); Intertidal, a survey show of contemporary art from Vancouver (2005); The Order of Things (2008); Auguste Orts: Correspondence (2010); Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner – A Syntax of Dependency (2011); A Rua: The Spirit of Rio de Janeiro (2011) and the collaborative projects Academy: Learning from Art (2006); The Projection Project (2007); and All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (2009). He is currently preparing a retrospective of Chantal Akerman, opening at MuHKA in February 2012.

In 2005, Roelstraete co-curated Honoré d’O: The Quest in the Belgian pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale. He has also organized solo exhibitions of Roy Arden (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2007), Steven Shearer (De Appel, Amsterdam, 2007), and Zin Taylor (Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal, 2011), as well as small-scale group shows in galleries and institutions in Belgium and Germany.

Roelstraete is an editor of Afterall and a contributing editor to A Prior Magazine, and has published extensively on contemporary art and philosophical issues in numerous catalogues and journals including Artforum, Frieze, and Mousse Magazine. He is one of the founders of the journal FR David and a tutor at De Appel in Amsterdam. In 2010, his book Richard Long: A Line Made By Walking was published by Afterall Books/The MIT Press, and a volume of his poetry will be published by ROMA in May 2012. He lives in Berlin with his wife Monika Szewczyk.

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Our latest “Centerfield” post is up on Art:21 blog today. This time, I write about the multiple presentations of Susan Philipsz’ works on view right now in Chicago at the MCA and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. An excerpt from the piece follows; click on over to read it in full.

…My husband and I realize that it’s kind of weird to sing our kid to sleep with a song about men dying of silicosis, but then again the lyrics to “Rock-a-Bye Baby” are pretty disturbing too. Still, the question of why someone would sing a protest song as if it were a lullaby was very much on my mind during several recent encounters with the work of Scottish artist Susan Philipsz. She has three installations on view right now in Chicago: We Shall Be All and Internationale at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Pledge at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum on the University of Illinois, Chicago campus. The winner of this year’s Turner Prize, Philipsz is widely acclaimed for her use of sound — and more specifically of voice — in works of art that engage the history and culture of protest. Almost all of Philipsz’s installations rely on her own, untrained vocals to weave densely allusive tapestries that commemorate the experiences of those struggling for a better world — something we don’t normally associate with the soothing nature of lullabies.

Commissioned by the MCA, Phillipsz’s We Shall Be All references Chicago’s labor movement and its legacy of social reform in the context of worldwide struggles for worker’s rights. I think it’s partly the fact that public-sector labor unions are so much in the news nowadays, due to the efforts of numerous GOP legislators to quash the collective bargaining power of those unions (or even its mere visual representation) that lends such a sharp sting to Philipsz’s Chicago presentations. Consisting of several speakers and a projection screen arranged within a completely darkened room, We Shall Be All takes its title from Melvyn Dubofsky’s We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. This book provides the definitive history of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Chicago-born labor association whose influence was especially strong during the years before World War I. In particular, Philipsz’s piece alludes to the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, whose anniversary is commemorated on May 1^st of each year in honor of International Workers Rights.

(Read more).

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Home Base: Michael Darling, Michelle Grabner, and Lane Relyea in Conversation
What does it mean to characterize an artist by where they live and work? And similarly, what does it mean for a collection to be of a place — to reflect a museum’s history and artistic community, to be shaped by the dynamics of a city, to be used by and be seen as part of the locale where it lives? The MCA’s new James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Michael Darling, artist and writer Michelle Grabner, and critic Lane Relyea delve into these questions, looking at examples from the United States and internationally.

The MCA just made it available on their “MCA Interactive” page (where–I love this–they provide a helpful answer to the question ‘What is a Podcast’?). The talk is available in two forms – MP3 download and/or streaming media. Click here to access the download. There are a ton of other MCA talks and walk-thru type discussions on the download/streams page for you to peruse, as well.

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Derek Chan and I have been friends for a little over four years. We both moved from Los Angeles to Chicago in the Fall of 2005. We had several mutual friends and emailed back and forth a few times but never met up. I spent that summer in Los Angeles and unknowingly started talking to Derek at a party. Inevitably, our conversation turned to Chicago and I laughed when I realized that this was the guy I’d had so much trouble making time for. Since then we’ve stayed close, meeting often to check in with each other, share food, and hang out.

One of Derek’s large abstract landscapes, Eclipse, was stored at my house for a year. I was happy to look at it every day. While works like Eclipse captured autobiographical moments with grand gestures, Derek has since focused his attention on the quotidian. During his residency at Theaster Gates’ Dorchester Project in South Chicago, Derek began making daily ink drawings to document his thoughts and share them with his fellow residents. All 260 images are available for download on Derek’s website. As part of the Whitney Biennial, Derek presented Being/Becoming, a durational performance that included ink drawings and temporary interventions to the Whitney’s courtyard. Derek developed a system of marks, influenced by Tibetan rituals, to record the passage of time and his interactions with museum visitors.

Derek Chan, “Being/Becoming” at the Whitney Biennial, 2010. Courtesy the artist.

Cries and Whispers from the Salt Song Trail is a continuation of this practice. This forthcoming book chronicles his recent journey to the Four Corners region of Arizona through drawings and writings about the sacred places he visited. Golden Age, the project space I run in Chicago, is publishing Cries and Whispers in conjunction with Derek’s upcoming exhibition Derek Chan: A Way of Life at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (November 6 – 28, 2010). Continue reading.

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The wall text for Lyons’ MCA show described him as a kind of Jack of All Trades, an artist whose practice “encompasses a diverse range of activities–gardening, DJing, and working collaboratively with other artists–reflecting his interest in the idea that ‘everyone is an artist’ and that everything can constitute an artwork.” Yet Lyons’ MCA show was called, somewhat ironically (and then again, somewhat not), “Abstraction in the 21st Century,” a title that was clearly designed to provoke a certain amount of bemusement and even incredulity on the part of viewers, given the relatively short history of 21st century painting in general. This provocative title was the first thing I asked Caleb about during our written exchange about his show, which was conducted several weeks ago while Lyons was on residency at The Philadelphia Art Hotel (Bad at Sports’ SF correspondent Patricia Maloney also happens to be on residency there this summer). I’m tremendously grateful to him for taking time out of his very busy schedule to answer my questions with such thoughtfulness and care.

Installation view of Caleb J. Lyons' exhibition at the MCA Chicago.

Claudine Ise: “Abstraction in the 21st Century” is a ballsy title for an exhibition – at least for an exhibition by an individual artist at a major contemporary art museum. I really like the way this title appropriates the language of the encyclopedic museum (more specifically, the language that this type of museum would use to introduce its gallery exemplifying Abstraction in art), but here it’s used to frame a solo show by an emerging artist. I am also intrigued by the fact that such a title implies the promise of a representative sampling of artists – which of course it doesn’t. So can you tell me a bit about why you chose this title for your MCA solo exhibition?

Caleb Lyons: Well I do have balls, or a pair of testicles–they were on exhibit in my nude video: The Artist Is The Model: Do It Yourself, Still Life, Amateur Hour, Idiot Box, which was riffing on the ego and vulnerability of the artist, as well as the idea that through our immediate technologies everyone has become a producer, the “artist” has become the “model citizen” for exploitation.

I am interested in the way museums and other institutions feel the need to categorize and define genres for the public. It becomes generic. I use the generic as a catalyst in my own work –– as in, ‘this is what an American abstract painting is supposed to look like’. I wonder why we feel like we need themes so badly. Will we really find it that hard to make connections otherwise? If museums didn’t try so hard to define things, would the public be confused or would the public figure it out for themselves?

The presumptuous title also suggests that the work will be heroic in scale and intention, and I find it funny that the work is very modest, handcrafted and is both abstract and representational. There is no abstraction without representation and no representation without abstraction.

Caleb Lyons. Untitled document, from "Real Pirates."

I think it is a symptom of our time (with best-of lists, and our need to categorize and rate the arts), the idea that abstraction would be surveyed only ten years into the century. The title also attempts to allude to our society’s growing disconnect with reality, and our increasing (as far as I can tell) loss of power and freedom. There is something attractive and deceptive about the anonymity of abstraction. Maybe in such an audacious title for a small solo exhibition some viewers will find the absurdity in genre-defining elsewhere, or maybe they will just think I am a pretentious asshole; either way, I’m happy.

Claudine: Your paintings on view in the MCA exhibition are given the title “Real Pirates.” Each painting within the series is referred to as “Untitled Document” from the Real Pirates series. In your abstract works I see references to, or inflections of, numerous abstract painters such as Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, even a bit of Jules Olitski and Mary Heilmann here and there. But I’m also interested in the relationship between the term ‘piracy’ as you employ it, and that of appropriation as a tool of aesthetic discourse. Appropriationist strategies are associated with multiple generations of artists in the 20th century alone, each of whom have approached the idea of “appropriation” in different ways. What’s the difference between appropriation and piracy? How do those acts differ and how do you approach the idea of piracy in your own paintings and in the other works in the show?

Caleb J. Lyons. Untitled, from "Real Pirates."

Caleb: When I started these paintings I did not not know I would call the series Real Pirates. I loved that title for something–it was stolen from an exhibition about the history of pirates at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History (which I did not see, but I am pretty sure they did not have any real pirates there). At the time I was making the paintings I was referring to them as “casualties”, both for their casual nature, destructiveness, or deadness, and their play on the word ‘causality’ –looking back at history, being surrounded by modernism. I had recently seen the exhibition Oranges and Sardines at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, a fantastic show curated by Gary Garrels wherein six contemporary “abstract painters”– Mark Grotjahn, Wade Guyton, Mary Heilmann, Amy Sillman, Charline von Heyl, and Christopher Wool each curated a room of work that was deeply influential to them. In Wool’s room he had a later Picasso painting of a pirate (funny enough, one that I can’t seem to find on the internet anywhere). Comparing it and the large abstract Wool painting, it seemed as if Wool was using nearly the same formal composition as the pirate, and it dawned on me, how perfect the content of a pirate was for abstract painting. So beyond stealing from other paintings or gestures, the look of much abstraction is wounded, slipshod, and jury-rigged (originally a nautical term), and you could look at each individual painting as a portrait of a pirate (if you wanted to, but I wouldn’t encourage it).

I do agree that piracy and appropriation have somewhat different uses or conjure different images, but they practically mean the same thing. I prefer the violent and illegal sound of piracy over appropriation, although what I am doing would probably be better understood these days as appropriation. By calling them Real Pirates however, I am pointing to the absurdity and subjectivity governing most copyright laws which use the word liberally. I am bootlegging the language most often used for “theft” of software, television, and film and am applying it to painting. I like to participate in the nonsense of language, and by calling them a real fake (or, because it’s not really piracy its a fake real fake), I get to play this game with language and meaning. I am pirating gestures and styles, not actual works of art (which would be boring and tedious). It is more like having a conversation with all these artists without them knowing about it. It is all intuitive; because of the internet, I am able to see more images in one day than some people will see in an entire lifetime, and as a result I have all these gestures in my mind when I am painting. I don’t sit with my laptop open in my studio, painting what I see. It is only afterwards that I realize some move reminds me of somebody, and I choose to commit to that content in my work instead of trying to ignore it or fight it.

Untitled document, from "Real Pirates," 2009.

Untitled document, from "Real Pirates," 2009.

The exhibition poster was printed (with the show information, and a story by Kathryn Scanlan describing a frustrating experience describing experience) on the MCA’s Felix Gonzalez Torres work, The End, which I collected over a period of time. In a way I pirated Torres’s work for my own advertising needs and gave life to The End. J. Patrick Walsh 3′s work: To My Enemies I Will Ruin You By Leaving My Fingerprints On All Of Your Crimes can be seen as a joke on piracy both for its title and placement atop my painting as well as for its form (a wooden cane).

Claudine: You’re an artist whose practice encompasses many different types of activities which, in turn, produce different results. Not everything you produce as an artist is necessarily an object to be contemplated in the traditional sense. But in the case of a work like “Landscaping (Canyons),” 2010, an installation which was placed in the center of the gallery, it did. This installation contained various ceramic pipes whose bowls were planted with different types of cacti – the type of plants that can survive with minimal care if given the proper conditions. I think this was my favorite piece in the show, because of the way it seemed to bring every other object on view in the gallery together in harmonious relationship. There’s an almost decorative aspect to the way that all of the different types of objects in your show “hung together.” The wall text discussed your interest in Abstract Expressionism’s “relationship to home decor and design” — can you flesh this idea out a bit more for me?

Caleb: Again, I think of the paintings as playing the role of a painting, as a prop-painting would fulfill its part in the background of a motion picture. I enjoy the tension of authenticity and artifice, balancing aesthetic “quality” with the function of decor or design.

There is an inherent censorship in abstraction that reduces content to its essential form, and as such it is a visual relief in our image-ridden world. An interesting thing happens when a stroke is just a stroke; it’s not something to look into anymore, it is something to live around. It becomes a prop for life and architecture. I understand this as one of art’s greatest functions.

Since I was a child I have been drawn to the contradictory cultural space of bad as good, wherein artists intentionally disappoint, baffle or alienate the viewer (not necessarily to shock), or don’t believe in failure, or believe in a conversation rather than a meter of quality.

I think that Landscaping (Canyons) pulls all of these generic and essential qualities together and interacts with the viewer in a familiar, decorative way that is wrongly poetic. The exhibition is a boutique of meaning.

Caleb Lyons. Landscaping (Canyons), 2010.

Claudine: Tell us about the residency you are participating in right now. Are you working on anything specific that you can talk about?

Caleb: The residency is called The Philadelphia Art Hotel and I am working on a few site-specific videos including a remake of Rear Window and a psychic/intuitive, flies-on-shit piece titled “The Source Of Life” for a Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In video screening we are presenting in an open lot near the hotel. Kathryn Scanlan is also here with me to work collaboratively on a sculpture project we are calling The Arrangement.

Thanks so much for this virtual chat, Caleb! Here’s the poster for Caleb’s MCA show, referred to above. (Sorry for the blurriness; I think the text is just about readable and my eyes aren’t great).

(Exhibition poster for Caleb J. Lyons, “Abstraction in the 21st Century,” at the MCA Chicago).

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Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, announced today that Michael Darling has been appointed the new James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, concluding a comprehensive international search. Darling is currently the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and plans to assume his new responsibilities at the MCA on July 12, 2010.

“Michael Darling is the perfect creative leader to evolve the MCA as a preeminent contemporary art destination in terms of reputation, influence, relevance, and visibility,” said Grynsztejn. “I am looking forward to joining with Michael to realize a compelling new vision for the MCA. We share the same goal to forge an artist-activated platform that engages audiences by producing art, ideas, community, and conversation around the creative process. His exhibitions and acquisitions are always innovative and relevant, yet grounded in a larger art historical framework, and fueled by his distinctive passion, knowledge and integrity.”

Darling said, “I am honored to lead the MCA’s curatorial team and to build on the museum’s momentum. I look forward to actively participating in the cultural community of Chicago — a world-class city with a long-standing appreciation for the vanguard — and balancing a local perspective with a global outlook. I am excited to advance the MCA’s tradition of groundbreaking exhibitions and programming into a 21st-century multidisciplinary museum model.”

And so on, blahbity blahbity press release so on. Although I think this is a fairly boring, business-as-usual kind of pick on the MCA’s part, my view was ameliorated somewhat by reading the glowing praise that respected arts writer Jen Graves of The Stranger has for Darling. She writes:

What distinguished Darling from the others was his genuine commitment to exploring and revealing the connections between here and abroad. He was seemingly at every opening, and his exhibitions and acquisitions reflect that he did not simply live and work here, he thought here.

Grave’s assessment strongly suggests that Darling will not be another “Chicago curator” in name only who dials it in from elsewhere. I’m sure he’ll be good at his job (what constitutes ‘failure’ when it comes to museum curation anyway?), but I find myself caring less and less about who holds what position at big institutions lately. In the three years that I’ve been living in Chicago, I’ve become way more interested in the curatorial programs of Chicago’s college and university spaces and nonprofit art centers, and in the plans and activities of the (relatively) unsung curators and administrators who work there. There’s just more room for interesting failures and fresh insights in those spaces (although they, like any organization, require increased funding, donations, membership and public support to keep doing good work). Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in but…my whole take on the “big news” of today is one big meh.

Michael Darling. Photo by Julian Calder.

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Photo by Greg Stimac

Tuesday April 20th (tomorrow!) at 6pm Bad at Sports hosts this month’s Cabinet of Curiosities at the MCA, an ongoing “grab bag of ‘un-lectures’” presented by different groups from around Chicago. Bad at Sports has curated an evening on the subject of Magic. Stephanie Brooks will speak on the Magic of Language and Love. Industry of the Ordinary (Mat Wilson and Adam Brooks) will explore the magical through an investigation of God, football, and extra-marital conduct. Elijah Burgher will give a talk on Sigil Magic, a system of spell-casting outlined by early 20th century occultist, Austin Osman Spare, and popularized more recently in occult movements such as Chaos Magick and Thee Temple of Psychic Youth. Ross Moreno will perform magic! And John Neff and Ivan Lozano will explicate the magic of materialist magic – presented immaterially.

Participant Bios:

Stephanie Brooks is a conceptual artist living in Chicago.  She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including exhibits in Berlin, Brooklyn, Chicago, Denmark, London, Los Angeles, New York, Vienna, and Phoenix, AZ.  She is an adjunct professor in the Sculpture department at The School of the Art Institute. Her work is included in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Microsoft Corporation, and Philip Morris/Altria. Her recent publication “Love is A Certain Kind of Flower” is published by Green Lantern Press; and upcoming exhibitions include Peter Blum, New York and Portable, Atlanta.

Industry of the Ordinary were formed in 2003. The two artists who make up this collaborative team, Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson, have long histories as visual and performative artists. They bring complementary sensibilities to their activities.Their projects exist in temporal terms but have also been conceived to function on the web site associated with the collaboration, www.industryoftheordinary.com. They have had solo shows at the MCA and NEIU Gallery and performed at the opening of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute, as well as making work for a wide variety of private, semi-private and public settings. They will have a survey of their practice at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2011.

Elijah Burgher is an artist and writer based in Chicago, IL.  He has most recently exhibited in a solo show at Shane Campbell Gallery in Oak Park, IL and a two-person exhibition at Peregrine Program in Chicago, IL.  He will exhibit work in group shows at Johalla Projects in Chicago and Envoy Enterprises in New York this summer.  He maintains a hybrid studio wall/magick diary blog at http://ghostvomit.blogspot.com/.  Burgher co-founded and co-edited the now-defunct art publication BAT.  He has written reviews and essays for ArtUS and several small art publications in Chicago, as well as contributed writing to Art:21′s guest blog.  He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence college in 2000, where he split his credits amongst Literature, Visual Art, and Cultural Anthropology.

Ross Moreno earned a master’s degree in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. It was during this time he developed a passion for hotdogs, and he has been living and working professionally in Chicago ever since. Ross’ is a member of the Chicago Chapter of the Society of American Magicians and recently completed the International House of Pancakes Balloon Twisting Training Program. Ross can be seen performing his unique blend of performance art, stand-up comedy, and magic at different venues all over the city. More information about Ross can be found by visiting his website at www.rossmoreno.com.

John Neff produces works of art, organizes exhibitions and practices critical writing. He lives and works in Chicago.

Ivan Lozano is a (mostly) video artist currently working on an MFA in Film/Video/New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In another life, while living in Austin TX, Ivan was the programming director for the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, and an arts writer for various publications.

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Irena Knezevic

Knezevic’s current solo show at threeewalls, titled Gesture Guild, closed last weekend. Since Knezevic’s installation had the (fairly unusual) ability to leave me at a loss for words, I’ll rely on the show’s press release to describe it:

FOLLOW ME SAILORS!

WHOEVER TOLD YOU THERE IS NO
TRUE,
FAITHFUL
AND ETERNAL SEA?

MAY HIS BLISTERING TONGUE BE CUT OUT

AND SEWN SHIT WITH SHIT!

FOLLOW ME, MY SAILORS, AND ONLY ME,
AND I WILL SHOW YOU SUCH A SEA! (2)

Friday, March 19th at 6 pm sharp, the Gesture Guild will open its doors at its new headquarters at 119 N Peoria in unit 2C. Join us at 8 pm for the commencement dirge, absinthe induced and sailor sung. (Ed. note: Sailor attire is strongly encouraged, those who do not arrive as sailors will be made into sailors.)

The League of Dark Departments have joined forces in the Gesture Guild, a bureau for the recovery and acquisition of lost gestures. The Gesture Guild aims to return and reinforce the primordial anxieties responsible for head-bending weight and other liquid spiraling disasters, topical and tropical.

The public, inflicted with involuntary movement, nervous twitches, and ticks, due to the loss of solid surfaces and time-space incongruity, can join various Guild programs in search of gravitational re-calibration.

Determined via a brief questionnaire, members of the public are initiated into the Guild, thus participating in prescribed Guild activities at individually appointed times.

Throughout the exhibition the Guild will change weekly – please return for:

- Duplicate Office of the Dead

- Department of Repetition

- Department of Manual Re-Education

- Department of Polychoral Antiphony

- Department of Trade Secrets

- Department of Denial Operations and Barriers

So, yeah.

On the night I went to see Knezevic give an artist’s talk at threewalls, held in conjunction with this exhibition, I was feeling especially lazy. I didn’t want to do much more than lean back on my wobbly wooden folding chair and let Ms. Knezevic do all the talking while my own mind drifted desultorily from one thought to another, as my mind is wont to do.

Alas, this was not meant to be. I should have known that Knezevic wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily, given her history of crafting installations and other situation-based events that challenge linear paths of understanding. There’s a strong sense of the cryptic and the mysterious and even at times the dangerous surrounding all of her projects–the secret society-like Gesture Guild, sponsored by something called “The League of Dark Departments”(3), being no exception. Since I’m a girl who likes a good mystery I set out to discover for myself what membership in The Guild would actually entail. Knezevic’s  talk seemed as good a place as any to start.

Knezevic, seated behind a big wooden kiosk of the sort you might encounter at the Department of Motor Vehicles or the post office, asked everyone arriving for the talk if they wanted to fill out a card (like this one) in order to be initiated into The Gesture Guild. Knezevic herself projected a warm and friendly persona which was not at all off-putting–the polar opposite of the type of bureaucratic interpersonal discourse that the desk kiosk signified. Knezevic directed me to the adjacent gallery space in the room next door where the talk would take place. Clutching my pen, clipboard and sign-up sheet, I was the first to head to the next room. Rounding the corner, I came face to face (give or take a couple of feet) with a man in a black ski mask who was bending over. He may have been tying his shoes. He was also wearing a sailor suit.

The sailor scared the crap out of me, just for a second.  I quickly regained my composure after realizing he was one of the performers, but what can I say? I walk into a darkened, nearly empty room by myself, I see a guy wearing a ski mask– yeah, I flinch!  I took my seat, and not too long after that the talk commenced. Two masked performers, one of which was the aforementioned sailor-suited man, seated themselves at a table in front of the audience. The performer designated as “The Scribe” wore the sailor suit, while Knezevic, who appeared here in the guise of an all-knowing Oracle, wore a glittery black ski mask and a nondescript outfit that may or may not have included black leggings.

The Oracle informed us that the talk would proceed in the form of a Q&A. (4) Audience members could ask any question they wanted to, and they could direct their questions to the Oracle or the Scribe or to both. We could ask as many questions as we liked but were required to ask at least one. The Scribe would select the next questioner by pointing at him or her with a long stick that had a small heart-shaped spear at the end (the stick reminded me of Satan’s tail, except that it was straight, not curved). It was also the Scribe’s job to record all of the questions and answers in a huge notebook resting between the two performers (5).

The Sailor/Scribe began by reading a quote from a notebook in front of him on the table (6), however, the subject of that quote I cannot for the life of me now recall. After this, the audience questions began. Here are some of the questions asked, and the answers given, during the event (please note: I am paraphrasing all of the below based on my notes and memory, and I make no guarantees of accuracy or authenticity):

Questioner: What is an appropriate gesture for expressing joy, thanks, and grief?

Oracle: Jumping up and down.

Questioner: For all three?

Oracle: Yes.

****

Questioner: Should I buy a banjo?

Oracle: Depends on what you want the banjo for. What do you want it for?

Questioner: To play it.

Oracle: Then no.

****

Questioner (to the Scribe): What happened to the decapitated head (lying on a chair in the next room)?

Scribe: Loss is something on which we fixate instead of what is happening now.

****

Questioner: What is the question that you cannot answer?

Oracle: One where I lose my hands.

Questioner: When will you lose your hands?

Oracle: With too much repetition.

****

Questioner: What can you make out of chaos?

Oracle: Feelings.

****

One of the questions whose answer I failed to write down was ‘Do you think the critique of instrumental reason has run its course?… Is it useful for us to spend our time still critiquing humanism?’ One of the answers whose question I failed to write down was delivered in the form of song sung by the Oracle:

“When you’re sad and feeling lonely, just remember my friend, that death is not the end…”

The scribe requested that The Oracle repeat her answer one more time so he could write it down. She obliged, and sung,

‘When you’re sad and feeling lonely, just remember my friend, that death is the end….”

It seemed clear that Knezevic was trying to provide answers to questions of Cosmic breadth and humanistic depth in as straightforward and genuine a fashion as possible, that this was indeed an attempt on the artist’s part to establish a meaningful channel of communication between herself and her audience. I don’t believe that it was performed ironically (which is why I myself cared enough to write about it) and yet, that being said, I must also admit that I wasn’t all that interested in what the Oracle had to say. After all, why should the Oracle/Artist’s answers to “the Big Questions” be any more interesting than anyone else’s? Nevertheless, as the talk progressed, the Oracle and the Scribe seemed to get into an almost magical sort of groove, hitting their marks with uncanny sharpness and accuracy.  I wouldn’t deny that there was something there, some type of knowledge (if not wisdom) in the process of being conjured. Maybe it was just the Magic 8 ball kind of knowledge, maybe it was something more, something having to do with human empathy and the ability of the Scribe and the Oracle to feed off the combined energies of the group.

And then there’s the matter of the masks. The masks hid the performers noses and cheeks and pretty much all of the face other than the eyes and mouth. But they highlighted each of the performers’ mouths in a manner that I found mesmerizing and strangely significant. Especially in the case of the Oracle/Artist. Knezevic’s lips kind of naturally turn up at the corners, which makes her look as if she’s always laughing just a teeny little bit. It is an extremely charming quality. Knezevic’s upturned mouth, which the ski mask neatly abstracted from the rest of her face in the manner of the Cheshire Cat’s bodiless grin, perfectly encapsulated the nonsensical logic of the evening’s event: You can find answers anywhere, anywhere…as long as you’re willing to look, listen, and consider everything surrounding you as a sign. (7)

Alice: Oh wait!
Cheshire Cat: [reappears] There you are! Third chorus…
Alice: Oh, no, no. I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn’t matter, as long as…
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn’t matter which way you go.

*****************************************************************

An interview with Irena Knezevic, by way of footnotes.

(1) Can you tell me about your experiences in the student protest movement? I organized the gymnasium students and did the pamphlet printing and dissemination, most days I would help keep the student radio broadcast station from being shut down by moving it around the city, and I marched daily.

(2) What is the source of this quote? Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, describing a love of a woman for a man.

(3) Who/what is the League of Dark Departments? League of Dark Departments is an overlord of secret Masonic organizations, it only knows all the lists of members and complete list of lodges. How many members, approximately? The Dark department can confirm that the Gesture guild has a 198 members.

(4) Why did you choose this format? See the question on the book; I chose the format because I wanted the talk to be in the pace of the scribe’s hand.  He was to write it all down in the Ledger, stopping and starting the talk in the speed of his pen.  I also employ the audience as the main protagonists during all my “art talks” because I am bored as well by silence, predictability and overall boredom of click, click, click, powerpoint, does anybody have any questions?

(5) Did the notebook have some kind of official name and/or function? The note book is the official Gesture Guild LEDGER, it lists all appointments, members, black lists, plans and programs, and corresponding scores including the talk, the Guild determined all the initiations in advance and the space in the ledger was allotted for every one.

What are the ‘black lists’ you refer to? You mean like, black-listed people? Or verboten subjects? Naturally this kind of work, like a manifesto, has supporters, soon to be supporters and enemies.  The black list is a collection of enemies.  People who have betrayed an oath, or who stand against the ideals of the Guild.  The list is secret, of course.

(6) Where did the scribe’s texts come from? The scribe holds the discretion of this answer.

(7) How can people find out more about The Guild? The guild endures online until it reconstitutes in 7 years.

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Andrea Zittel: artist

Monday, April 5, 6 pm
Co-presented with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in conjunction with the exhibition Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out

Special location: the MCA Theater, 220 East Chicago Avenue
General admission $10, MCA members $8, students with valid ID $6

“Internationally renowned artist Andrea Zittel speaks about her work and describes how her studio in the high desert of California serves both as a space for exploration and as a place for crafting and presenting objects, materials, spaces and ideas. Zittel’s sculptures and installations transform everything necessary for life — such as eating, sleeping, bathing, and socializing — into experiments in living.

Andrea Zittel is an assistant professor of the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, who has had many solo exhibitions worldwide. She has received a Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; a Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award; and an Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation catalogue support prize. Zittel has also organized the smockshop, “an artist run enterprise that generates income for artists whose work is either non-commercial, or not yet self sustaining” by selling smocks; and High Desert Test Sites, “a series of experimental art sites” which “provide alternative space for experimental works by both emerging and established artists.”

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