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The inPrint Project
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inPrint
Conceived by Erica Mott
Movement by Erica Mott, Rachel Damon, Elisa Foshay, Anida Yoeu Ali,
Cristol Sabbagh
inPrint is a movement and material-based inquiry examining the trafficking of women's bodies through cultures and time. A group movement collage that incorporates live voice, projected image, and dance to explore the disposability of the female body in the human trafficking industry—a dark tale examining what we as a society throw away.
It is difficult to hold and grasp something as multilayered as power and violence dynamics amongst humans. inPrint offers striking images and movements which resonate on an emotional level with the audience, promoting dialogue and inquiry.
In conjunction with the Links Hall performances, guest artists will provide opening performances exploring the intersection between arts and human rights: 220 Weeks of War / Acts of Love on June 8th; This Expert Slut Moans and A Reading from the Interrogation Log of Detainee 063 on June 9th, Say That! and The Monk Who Licked Me on June 10th. Earlier on June 9th, there will be a Symposium on Contextualizing Art and Community.
Nicole Garneau and a crew of volunteers will create an outdoor public action
for peace and compassion at the intersection of Newport, Sheffield, and
Clark entitled, 220 Weeks of War / Acts of Love. For this work, she
is inspired by the words of poet Sekou Sundiata, who calls on artists and
activists to "uncover a 'transcendent' vision of society that lifts our
visions to the highest possibilities of human conduct."
Nicole Garneau is an interdisciplinary artist involved in experimental theater, music, dance, visual art, and writing. Her work is informed by feminism, struggle against white supremacy, the politics of the female body, sexuality, spirituality, her experiences living and working in Russia, and the sociopolitical issues of contemporary urban life. For 10 years, she has worked closely with Insight Arts, an arts organization dedicated to increasing access to cultural work that promotes social justice and defends human rights. She is interested in creating performance and visual art work that is directly political, critically conscious, and community building. She just completed HEAT:05, a year of daily performances marking ten years since the 1995 Chicago heat wave disaster. She is a member of the gender performance troupe, A Sordid Collective.
Symposium: Contextualizing Art and Community
Free
In conjuction with The inPrint Project performances, this symposium will
be a lively, interactive discussion with artists and activists pushing
the boundaries of traditional definitions of 'art' and 'community' and
re-envisoning the potential of their intersections, while debating questions
like "How can we recontextualize an artistic act as a social act?" and
"How do we walk the line between didacticism and asthetics?" These burning
questions and more will be debated by provocateurs formerly and presently
from such organizations as Amnesty International, Insight Arts, and Bread
and Puppet.
Growing Up Girl : An Anthology of Voices
from Marginalized Spaces
During the weekend of events, this multicultural anthology will
be available for viewing and purchasing. The collection from
GirlChild Press
examines issues such as identity, domestic violence, acceptance,
motherhood, beauty, and sexuality. Copies will be available thanks
to Women &
Children First, one of the largest feminist bookstores in
the country.
Exploring women's reactions to pornography and female pleasure, Jennifer
Karmin will read her performative text This Expert Slut Moans.
Part-poetry, part-narrative, inner and outer, beautiful and ugly at the
same time.
Jennifer Karmin is a poet, artist, and educator who has experimented with language throughout the U.S. and Japan . She curates the Red Rover Series with fiction writer Amina Cain and is a founding member of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at a number of festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets. Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Public Schools. Recent publications include Bird Dog, Milk Magazine, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, and Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces.
A Reading from the Interrogation Log of Detainee 063 combines excerpts from
the real interrogation log of a detainee held by the United States at "camp
x-ray," with scenes of simple puppetry, movement, and music. An elaboration
on the act of reading aloud descriptions of current interrogation practices,
this piece places the reality of detainee treatment in the context of a
broader investigation of human practices which transform the body in pain
into a manifestation of power.
Clare Dolan has been creating cantastoria performances, toy theater shows, and life-sized puppet plays since 1992. She leads workshops in stilt-dancing, puppet building, pageant-making and other things, while leading a secret double life as a nursing student and counselor in a residential mental health program. This piece came about as a result of documents she discovered on the internet while using the high speed connection at work late at night. The text used in the show, as well as many other documents on the treatment of prisoners under investigation can be found in many places on the web, including the ACLU website. This production is a creation of the Performance Department of The Museum Of Everyday Life, a developing new museum, both theoretical and actual, based in Glover, Vermont and Ms. Dolan's brain.
Say That! Is a cathartic Butoh-inspired experiment in which sexual
stereotypes of women are embodied, confronted, and ultimately subverted.
Improvisational movement and gesture also work in tandem with these
memories, myths and emotions.
Cristal Sabbagh teaches art at Adlai E. Stevenson High School. She received her B.F.A. in Art Education from the University of Illinois, in Urbana/Champaign, and her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College, Chicago. She is a visual artist as well as an interdisciplinary performance artist. Her work is motivated by film, culture, history, death/rebirth, music, hip hop, yoga, and butoh. She has been studying butoh with Katsura Kan, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Diego Piñon and others. Cristal has performed work in Michigan, North Carolina, New York and throughout Chicago.
Anida Yoeu Ali is an interdisciplinary artist who seeks an artistic, spiritual and political exploration of her identity as a non hyphenated Cambodian Muslim American woman. She is interested in using performance work as a means to transform loss into conversations about healing and understanding. She aches for home, a good pair of ass-kicking shoes, and poetry by Audre Lorde. Visit www.atomicshogun.com for more info.
Armed with vibrators, palmistry books, and the wisdom of Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Erin leaves Los Angeles for Vietnam, her motherland. Expecting to find answers in the ancient Buddhist temples and picturesque landscapes of Vietnam and Cambodia, Erin finds much more than she was bargaining for -- punks, monks, SARS, and wars. Erin O'Brien will be performing an excerpt from The Monk Who Licked Me is a modern day odyssey into the heart, mind, and body of a young woman on a spiritual quest. The story is a clever and poignant exploration of transnational identity and the effects of U.S. militarism from the U.S. war in Vietnam to the SARS scare to the current day U.S. war in Iraq. Through a compelling and often hilarious narrative, Erin covers issues such as love, sexual violence against women, and globalization by interweaving her personal experiences and reactions with the realities of the aftermath of war and U.S. cultural imperialism.
Genevieve Erin O'Brien is a Queer Vietnamese-Irish American interdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and popular educator. As an interdisciplinary artist her solo performance art has engaged audiences up and down the West Coast from Los Angeles to Vancouver B.C. Called a "modern day Virgil" by the LA Weekly, O'Brien's work addresses hate crimes, homophobia, and violence against women, with sensitivity and humor. Honored by the Gay Asian Pacific Services Network as a "Woman of Distinction" she has performed with Margaret Cho at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. O'Brien was the featured artist in the Los Angeles Media Arts Festival Flying Solo Showcase and has performed in Los Angeles's premiere Asian American Artist Showcases, Treasure in the House and Fresh Tracks. She is currently touring her new one-woman show called "The Monk Who Licked Me." As a community activist and popular educator O'Brien has developed programs for Sisterfire, Southern Californians for Youth, the UCLA Labor Center's Summer Internship Program, and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). O'Brien has trained with Augusto Boal and conducts Theater of the Oppressed workshops. She was a founding member of Arts In Action, a political and cultural arts collective space in the heart of LA's pico-union neighborhood. More info available at www.erinobrien.org.
Performance at Links Hall
(click on pictures above for larger image)