Saturday, February 27

6018North ballroom

3:00 - 5:00pm

Following upon Eva Meyer-Keller’s Death is Certain performance at Links Hall, the Berlin-based artist joins two Chicago artists in a lecture-performance to discuss each of their process and to present excerpts of previous and upcoming works. Eva Meyer-Keller, whose practice intersects performance and the visual arts, joins Kirsten Leenaars, whose work is a hybrid between performance, social practice, and video, and Jennifer Reeder, a filmmaker and visual artist. Light food and drinks served in this intimate setting. 

BIOS

Eva Meyer-Keller (1972) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She works at the interface of performance and visual art. She has presented her work in 30 countries on 6 continents in a wide range of contexts and sites. Before studying for four years at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO), Amsterdam she studied Photography and visual art (HdK), Berlin and London (Central St. Martins and Kings College). Eva develops projects alone and in collaboration with other artists. She also lends herself as a devisor/performer to other choreographers and woks as a dramaturgical/mentor. Own work Her artwork is distinctive due to its meticulous attention to detail. Eva often uses everyday objects from her immediate surroundings, things that she finds at home, in the supermarket or in the tool shed. This inevitably lends the work an obsessive, domestic aesthetic Her working method always remains marked by the constructive disregard for maintaining any boundary between the visual and performing arts.

Kirsten Leenaars’ practice is a hybrid of social practice, video and performance based work. In her practice Leenaars engages with specific people and communities. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through staging, improvisation and play. She examines the very nature of our own constructed realities, the stories we tell our selves and the ones we identify with and explores the way we relate to others. In her work she brings to light a shared humanity, often through humor and play. Recent projects include producing a series of 3 performances Notes on Empty Chairs, about loss, community and empathy for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; creating the video #thisistomorrow with Washington DC based performers and musicians in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner; producing the science fiction film: The Invasion of the Hairy Blobs, currently edited at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; and Not In Another Place, But This Place… (Happiness) – a video project exploring notions of happiness, responsibility and policy focusing on the Edgewater community in Chicago. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, amongst others at: Museo Universitaro del Chopo, Mexico City, DCAC, Washington DC, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Glass Curtain Gallery, Threewalls, Gallery 400, 6018 North, and Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Detroit, Printed Matter, New York, the Wexner Center, Columbus, and at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Kunst Fabrik, Munchen. Leenaars is an Assistant Professor at the Contemporary Practices department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jennifer Reeder constructs personal fiction films about relationships, trauma and coping. Her award-winning narratives are innovative and borrow from a range of forms including after school specials, amateur music videos and magical realism. These films have shown consistently around the world, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, The Venice Biennale and The Whitney Biennial. She won a Creative Capital Grant in Moving Image in 2015 and short film funding from the Adrienne Shelly Foundation in 2016.

Lecture - Performance in Three Acts is a collaboration with Institut Goethe and IN>TIME 2016 Performance Festival

Credits:

Death is Certain by Eva Meyer-Keller

Image of Jennifer Reeder

Kirsten Leenaars' The Imaginary Center of Perception, 2015

Photo credit: Clare Britt