Pathogeographies (Or, Other People's Baggage)
an At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago project organized by Feel Tank Chicago.

June 15- July 7, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, June 15, 5-8 pm

How do you carry your political feelings, and how do you want others to carry theirs? Feel Tank and its collaborators map the affective expressions of various publics to reveal hidden histories and create new ones. Feel Tank Chicago, a collective, acts as a counterpart to think tanks. Through objects, performances and activities, organizers Lauren Berlant, Debbie Gould, Mary Patten and Rebecca Zorach describe the landscape of political emotion and ask viewers to discuss their feelings, big and small, about politics. Feel Tank Chicago shines a spotlight on emotions big and small—depression, anxiety, rage, numbness, fear, and many others – that people sometimes think of as purely personal, not political. Feel Tank suggests, in contrast, that daily life is full of politics—politics that take place in many different sites and situations (school, meetings, the street corner, the city and the nation). Those politics produce emotions, and are also fueled by them. At Pathogeographies, you can listen to dreams of soldiers stationed in Iraq, speak Bush-ese and see how that feels, loiter for freedom, investigate the relationship between geo-political policy makers, the weather, and our feelings, vent your rage and tap your jouissance by beating the hell out of an old car.

http://pathogeographies.net/

Feel Tank Chicago Event Calendar

Past Events

Fri. June 15 At Gallery 400

7 pm I Want to Know the Habits of Other Girls. Dewayne Slightweight performs a twenty-minute opera, based on the comic of the same name, performed by Dewayne and four life-size sewn and stuffed “friends” – Gilda Radner, Limbo Tomboy, Gordon Gaskill, and The Great Auntie. At the center of this project is the longing for community, a family of lovers, each person attracted to the idea that one’s happiness depends on everyone else’s: an imagined queer community. How can we strongly imagine things we have never experienced, and use these yearnings, hopes, and desires as a political force?

Sat. June 16 At Gallery 400

12-6 Sheelah Murthy, Economies of Touch
The problematic economic and affective exchanges between client and therapist, john and prostitute, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and their constituencies are all explored in this durational deep-tissue massage/performance piece. The massages/performathon will take place in the gallery library and will benefit the International Rescue Committee, specifically to support health services for sex workers in Southeast Asia.

12-2 Jen Hines, Carried Baggage.
Jen Hines collects responses from gallery visitors and asks what they feel they always carry with them when they travel away from home. The responses will be written on a piece of paper, then collected in a vintage suitcase, which will be available for others to read the reponses, thereby allowing people the opportunity to glimpse how others feel.

1-2pm Theaster Gates, A Potter’s Story
Theaster Gates sings 3 pieces from the pottery wheel: of Dave the enslaved potter who, being shot in the leg, cannot run away from his enslavement; a response to surveillance cameras; and a series of city planning policies and land use ordinances that seem a direct response to eradicating the presence of non-conforming citizens from the public sphere.

2-4 Megan Ransmeier, Singing Melancholia
You: Make sound on our arms with whatever you have.
We: Make sound on each other’s arms with whatever we have.
This group activation of object, phrase, and each other will be taking place in multiple public spaces and invites all who are interested.

2:30-4:30 Lauren Berlant, I think about Iraq every day
The director Peter Watkins claims that one can occupy the subjectivity of big Others by saying their words and, having said them, viscerally understanding something of what a person like that feels like in the world. A performance piece in which viewers listen to or watch speeches of George W. Bush for 5 minutes, and then speak his words into a camera. The camera operator will then ask you, the performer, what you've learned from talking the talk.

3:30-5:30 Sarah Kaiser facilitates art making in Raw Material

Also Saturday June 16 At Gallery 400

7:30pm Microcinema Program 1
THE PATHO-POLITICAL WORLD, Part 1: Documents and Actions
(TRT: 85 min.) Dylan Mira in person!
Atavistic protest, DIY gender-queer television, experimental re-workings of recent and distant histories, and documents of creative organizing, these videos re-invent politics through an excess of imagination and feeling, from exuberance to loss.
United Victorian Workers, Dara Greenwald with Josh MacPhee and Bettina Escauriza, 4 min., 2006.
A Call and An Offering, Dylan Mira and Latham Zearfoss, 25 min., 2006
Post Mortem (excerpt from 2-channel video installation), Mary Patten, 5 min., 2000
Decision 80, Jim Finn, 10 min., 2003
Jean Genet in Chicago, Frédéric Moffet, 26 min., 2006
A Caring Strike, Precarias a la deriva, 15 min., 2006

Sat. June 23 At Gallery 400

1pm Reading: Laurie Palmer, S.A.D. Reading under fluctuating light from a collection of writing on visits to sites of mineral extraction in the U.S. and observations on their multifarious effects on bodies and landscapes. Excerpts from Mercury, Lead, and Sulfur, probably.

Also June 23 At Gallery 400

2pm: "Singing melancholia, or singing," Megan Ransmeier
2-4pm: "I think about Iraq everyday," Lauren Berlant
3pm: "This dream, this frequency," Mary Walling Blackburn

Sun. June 24 At Gallery 400

4pm at the Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone Ave.) Sown change
A discussion of three nomadic projects of extravagant generosity, intimate and extimate connection-building, community and critique. Short presentations by Carole Lung (Re-dressing New Orleans), Andi Sutton (CrossPollenNation), Charlotte Saenz (ORD-BEY-ORD) followed by discussion

Tues. June 26 at Gallery 400

6pm Reception and discussion with Feel Tank Chicago. Come to Gallery 400 for a special viewing of Pathogeographies, with a reception and discussion with Feel Tank collaborators Lauren Berlant, Debbie Gould, Mary Patten and Rebecca Zorach. Co-sponsored by the Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council. Refreshments and appetizers will be served. Reservations are required. E-mail events@thepublicsquare.org, online, or call 312.422.5580 to make a reservation.

Thurs. June 28 At Gallery 400

6pm Don't be a bystander, Tamms letter-writing project. The Tamms Poetry Committee will be holding a letter-writing event for the 286 prisoners housed in the Tamms Supermax prison in Tamms, IL. These men are in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, conditions that the UN and Amnesty International consider torture. The inmates suffer from extreme sensory deprivation, loneliness, and depression. Come read some of their letters, meet members of their families, and be part of a group mailing experience.

Fri. June 29 At Mess Hall (6932 North Glenwood Ave.)

7:30 pm Microcinema Program 2
THE CONTINUING STORY OF CAREL AND FERD (TRT: 58 min.)
Ferd Eggan in person!
"A fascinating hybrid of performance and video verité, The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd introduces Carel and Ferd, a couple who allowed Ginsberg to produce an ongoing documentary record of the intimate moments of their relationship. Carel, a porn actress, and Ferd, a bisexual drug addict, invite the camera to participate in their wedding, their sex life, and their break-up. Produced before the landmark PBS documentary An American Family introduced television audiences to the live-in camera, this document raises questions about the dynamic of subject and camera, privacy and manipulation. Originally presented as an installation, this one-hour version, which includes interviews with Carel, Ferd and Ginsberg, was distilled form thirty hours of footage recorded from 1970 to 1975. Produced by the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen, VTR series." - Electronic Arts Intermix
BIO: Ferd Eggan is an ageing gay white man in Los Angeles who makes videos and texts for the internet: "Communiqués from a cranky PWA" http://crankypwa.blogspot.com, a serial joke about AIDS, liver cancer and death, and "Revolution is an eternal dream" http://www.ferdeggan.net/id16.html, a series of interviews on transforming the world.

Sat. June 30 At Gallery 400

12-7pm Mapping the Body Politic
A series of presentations, workshops, performances, and discussions to help sketch out the contours of the multifarious Body Politic. (Schedule subject to change)

12-1pm Drawn Lots (presentation)
starts a dialogue concerning how people feel about their hopes for owning land and/or a house/home. The collective interacts with a variety of communities to gauge personal responses to property. Research feeds into Google image searches that will in turn serve as a resource for drawings.

1:15-1:45pm Travis, WEEDS (performance). Every time I see you naked I offer my death bed but you won’t take it. Strange, my flower bed cannot hold you. In my prime I tried to burn away my winter weeds but I breed and then I decay. Strange, my flower bed cannot hold you.

2-3pm BLW workshop: A Meeting is a Question Between June 30th and July 7th, BLW invites co-participants to five open meetings to be conducted in public. Meeting at unremarkable sites around Chicago, the group will look for traces of power and listen to expert testimony that considers: what are the landscapes of war? BLW provides agendas, notepads, refreshments and site-seeing apparatus. Schedule and locations will be posted on the Pathogeographies website and at Gallery 400.

3:15-3:45pm Habit Swap with Meredith Haggerty & Public Movement Troop. Participants should bring habits or movements from structured events such as work or rush hour and will recreate them in a new space. The goal is simply to reroute these activities as both internal and external events.

4-5pm The Cranky P.W.A. Morbid queer thoughts of the Cranky P.W.A., who also shares meditations on radical frivolity, living (or dying) with liver cancer, remembering Michael Bumblebee, and much more.

5:15-6:45pm I think about Iraq every day -- roundtable with Mary Walling Blackburn, Elise Gardella/Friends of William Blake, Laurie Hasbrook/Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and Rocky Pyskoty/CAMi (Comite Anti-Militarizacion).

Also June 30 At Gallery 400

7:30 pm Microcinema Program 3
THE PATHO-POLITICAL WORLD, Part 2: Slow Feeling (TRT: 106.5 min.)
Isil Egrikavuk in person!
Slowness as interruption to speed, billions of info bits, the fast read, the quick study, the swift satiric bite…slowness as analogical to how the political flows through bodies, gets blocked, gets absorbed, is manifest in what we might call "political feelings"…the slow burn, the double-take…
The Infamous Library, Isil Egrikavuk, 7:40 min., 2006
The Black Tower, John Smith, 24 min., 1987
South of Ten, Liza Johnson, 10 min., 2006
Not a Matter of If, but When: brief records of a time in which expectations..., The Speculative Archive (Julia Meltzer and David Thorne), 17:33 min., 2006
Archivo, Bea Santiágo Muñoz, 30 min., 1999-2003
Untitled Video on Lynne Stewart and Her Conviction, the Law and Poetry, Paul Chan, 17:30 min., 2006

Mon. July 2 At Hyde Park Art Center

6:30 - 9:30 pm. Dan S. Wang presents Patho-Selections: Listen and Feel Together As a return of the long dormant Selections series, Dan will be playing and speaking about songs having to do with politics and feelings, including feelings of Anxiety, Depression, Apathy, Impatience, Irritation, Sorrow, Paranoia, Righteousness, Confusion, Inspiration, Ecstasy, and maybe even a little Outrage. This will be a listening party/presentation of recorded music presented in two sets: Part 1 will be about twenty songs, maybe more, mixed in with commentary; Part 2 will be just music for the rest of the evening without commentary. The presentation will include a mini-set of songs from artists who came out of Chicago's South Side. A free pamphlet text assembled to accompany the event will be made available.

Wed. July 4 Meet At Gallery 400

2pm. 5th International Parade of the Politically Depressed Meet outside 400 S. Peoria and from there we'll walk the walk, talk the talk, feel the feel.

The Fourth of July is the perfect day for a Parade--of the Politically Depressed. What, you've never been to a Parade of the Politically Depressed? Never reveled with comrades about engaging, avoiding, responding to, repressing, being angry about, and wanting a lot more from politics? Here's your chance! Come barbecue your depression. Marinate it in a delicious concoction of counter-politics and collectivity. Stew in alternative emotions! Feel Tank Chicago invites you to join us in numbness and jaw-dropping disbelief about the state of the world for the Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed. Come help us make a political world that vibrates to a different tune.

Fri. July 6 At Gallery 400

10pm Get Down And Dance Your Heart Out At The Disco of the Depressed! Featuring Special Guest DJs Dewayne Slightweight and Sadie Benning

Gallery 400

Sat. July 7 At Gallery 400

12-6pm The Body Politic in Recovery, or, Debrief. Open time slots for performances, reports back, discussions, documentation.

Sun. July 8 Near Gallery 400 On the Lawn At Harrison And Halsted

12-4pm S*M*A*S*H Organized by Salem Collo-Julin and Mike Julin
An opportunity to beat on an old junked car.
Tools: one junk vehicle (beater, drained of fluids and glass popped out. a shell of plastic and steel waiting for impact)/empty field for a few hours/timer and whistle/gogglesand gloves/tarps.
The Plan: $5 = thirty seconds. you and the decommissioned vehicle. What would your inner demon do?

Reviews

Chicago Tribune -- July 5 , 2007