Savageness, or There are veins embraced in the property
Abraham Avnisan, Judd Morrissey, Jennifer Scappettone
September 30, 2017 // 6-9 PM
This collaborative performance and installation by Abraham Avnisan, Judd Morrissey, and Jennifer Scappettone will tap the sprawling veins of urban architecture, mining the material and telecommunications infrastructures within a house, while channeling the histories of its inhabitants and their spectral predecessors. Combining original and archival sources, and employing a custom augmented reality system, the artist's project high resolution Lidar scans of 6018North, to create an immersive yet otherworldly experience of the space.
Abraham Avnisan is an artist, technologist and educator whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text, and code. He holds M.F.A. in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.F.A in Poetry from Brooklyn College. Abraham works as a freelance computer programmer and lecturer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches courses on mobile app development and immersive virtual environments.
Judd Morrissey is a writer and code artist who creates poetic systems across a range of platforms incorporating electronic writing, internet art, live performance, and augmented reality. He is the creator of digital literary works including The Precession: An 80 Foot Long Internet Art Performance Poem, The Last Performance [dot org], and The Jew's Daughter. He is a recipient of a Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a Fulbright Scholar’s Award in Digital Culture, and a Mellon Foundation Collaborative Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship. Judd is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art and Technology Studies and Writing.
An artist, translator, and teacher, Jennifer Scappettone was born and raised in New York. The recipient of a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005, she has lived in Italy, Virginia, Japan, California, and Chicago. Her collections of poetry are the chapbooks Err-Residence (2007), Beauty (Is the New Absurdity) (2007), and Thing Ode / Ode oggettuale (2008), translated into Italian with Marco Giovenale, as well as the book-length From Dame Quickly (2009) and The Republic of Exit 43 (Atelos, 2016). Scappettone teaches at the University of Chicago.
Press
The Chicago Maroon Telephones Lines and Veins Intertwine at "Savageness"
You can’t help but wonder what the dilapidated walls of 6018North manor have seen as you weave through the wine-sipping and cheese-sampling crowd on its steps. Inside, unhinged doors and a wall traversed by a moss-like creature make you even more curious about the history of this manor-turned-contemporary-art-space that has become a performance venue for this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Scappettone, Morrissey, and Avnisan took turns articulating a prophecy dooming 6018North’s “image of immobility.” They spoke of the house as a “nexus” at the center of many worlds, with invisible sprawling veins connecting it to electricity generators, stamp mills, and mines. Their performative transmission of data paid tribute to the once-vital telegraph and telephone networks that contractors and miners far from home relied on to tell bureaucratic stories about this very house.
Just outside the wall was another work hosted by the Biennial: the Chapuisat brothers’ In Wood We Trust, a convoluted wooden structure with entrances on the second floor and through a window on the first floor. Scappettone entered the shadowy shaft while Morrissey took the stairs, leaving a befuddled crowd with a glitchy recording of Bing Crosby’s “Pennies from Heaven.” Half of them followed. For those who remained, live feeds from the different miners’ headsets were projected onto the building’s walls, allowing the audience to simultaneously crawl upwards through a dark labyrinth and stand upright at its summit.
Media
Chicago Magazine Art & culture Ten Things to Do in Chicago This Week
.Savageness, or There Are Veins Embraced in the Property
Art:A trio of artists will use three-dimensional, remote sensing images of 6018North—the Edgewater art venue housing this one-night installation—to create an augmented reality performance that reimagines the history and architecture of the building.
FREE 9/30 from 6–9 p.m. 6018North. 6018north.org
