March 2014 

6018North presents five artists’ new installations and performances that involve the audience in the works’ creation and/or reception. The artists offer an intimate exchange and dissemination of ideas about the possibilities of risk in public encounters and social engagement. The various forms of risk taking not only stimulate ideas about physical and psychological risk but question how empathetic encounters in art and social practice can effect social and artistic change.

Encounters include various types of risk taking (those taken previously, in the moment, and those that involve the artist and/or the audience):

Kirsten Leenaars’ screening of her film NOT IN ANOTHER PLACE, BUT THIS PLACE… (HAPPINESS), 2013 is accompanied by a live performance by Leroy Bach, Dan Bitney, and Matthew Lux. The work was originally created in Edgewater as part of 6018North’s Happiness Project, where Leenaars asked 46 Edgewater residents what would make a more perfect society. These answers informed the film and many of the interviewees are the actors.

Murat Adash’s Body Building, 2013 is a durational work for multiple performers who observe the audience while the audience observes the performers.

Sanaz Sohrabi in As if they fall, 2013 performs under heavy stones suspended from 6018North’s walls. The audience is invited to move through the performance.

Alyssa Moxley’s Same Side of the Street, 2013 is a camera obscura installation that projects the images and sounds of people outside the front entrance of 6018North onto speakers made of translucent paper.

Michal Samama‘s Move Like A Body, 2013 is performed for two hours within a locker, which functions as a frame for her body. Moving throughout the evening within an institutional locker, while breathing through a whistle, her vulnerable body mediates between the dynamics of body, voice, power, and vulnerability.

Peter Ferry, Staying the Course, (ongoing) Each note in David Macbride’s score represents an American solider killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Joshua Kent’s The flowers in the field are free, 2013 is a subtle performance installation that is revealed at the end of the evening when the artist discusses the divisions between life and art, poverty and surplus, and invisibility and aesthetics.

Risky Encounters is created in collaboration with Columbia College’s RISK: Empathy, Art, and Social Practice exhibition, Feb. 10-April 26, at Columbia College Glass Curtain Gallery, curated by Amy Mooney and Neysa Page-Lieberman, with The Hyde Park Art Center, 6018North, and Rebuild Foundation. RISK: Empathy, Art, and Social Practice considers the interdependent role of empathy and risk in socially engaged art as practiced by Chicago contemporary artists. The exhibition focuses on artists who work in a public arena to foster connections between individuals and to activate communities. The work is divergent in medium, content and scope, but shares an interest in initiating and negotiating relationships through personal interaction. Working with cultural partners and sites across the city, RISK highlights some of the most exciting projects emerging in this field and explores artists’ motivations and viewers’ expectations of social art practice.

Generously supported by a grant from The Joyce Foundation.

Special thanks to: 
Amy Mooney and Neysa Page-Lieberman
Penelope and Robert Steiner
Columbia College
School of the Art Institute
Illinois Arts Council Agency
The Propeller Fund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Art