A New Catalogue
Piece: “Eidetic”
SHoP, 2012
Show: Strategies for Preservation
Description: “When visiting the Fenn House for the first time, I was struck by the many layers of history visible within the space in the form of objects and marks left behind by previous occupants and previous shows. When contemplating SHoP’s move, I kept returning to these layers of history and the thought that multiple moments, each experienced in their own times, can co-exist. Although SHoP, with all its energy, is currently occupying the house, there is the knowledge that soon it will have left. Shot on Tuesday, May 15th, the photographs in “Eidetic” (the vivid recall of mental images), are meant to draw attention to this double experience of time. How long ago is the past? How is a moment chosen to be the one that is remembered? Is SHoP the space or the activities? I hope that coming across these remembered views scattered throughout the house might force a moment of looking forward toward looking backward while the photographs are not yet all that remains.”
“Push the Envelope”
Dynamo Project Space, Thessaloniki, Greece
Spoke Gallery, Chicago, 2010
Piece: Correspondence Piece
Description: ‘Push the Envelope’ (a project by Rachel Moore) brought together a group of artists working in Chicago, Thessaloniki, and Athens, for an intensive collaboration in Spring 2010. The three weeks began with an opening exhibit at Dynamo Project Space in Thessaloniki, Greece, and evolved through a series of discussions held via Skype between the artists in Greece and those meeting at Spoke Gallery in Chicago. The majority of the project, however, lived in the spirited discussions and exchange on the project’s blog where we struggled with issues of communication, political and social upheaval during the Greek economic crisis, and general questions of how to span cultural and geographic differences to find a collaborative meeting ground.
For the closing exhibit, we interspersed the new work generated during the three weeks with the original work from the opening.
Piece: “Penpal”
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, 2011
Show: The Space Between
Description: “The artists from ‘Push the Envelope’ reunited to make new work for a show at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art. We chose to create a video installation focusing on some of the most common refrains uttered during our original video conferences, “Are you still there? Can you hear us?” which came to act as a metaphor for the collaboration as a whole.”
“A Place in the Story (or how to get from my house to being an insider)”
Exhibited at: Gallery 2, Chicago, 2005
Published in: Entelechy
I interviewed a dozen people across the city, asking them a series of questions concluding with where within the city they feel to be an insider. As they spoke, I transcribed their stories and, at the end, had them read the transcription of the final question back to a recorder, along with directions on how to get there from my house. I followed their directions as if following a guidebook, and went alone, repeatedly, to visit and photograph their locations. When displayed, the photographs are accompanied by a video in which I mapped the route from my house to their locations with their stories providing the directions and narrative voice over.
"All places exist somewhere between the inside and outside views of them, the ways in which they compare, and contrast, with other places ... Finding a fitting place for oneself in the world is finding a fitting place for oneself in a story." -- Lucy Lippard, Lure of the Local
