Palimpsest Project | re[public] in/decency


April 26-May 23, 2010 We are closed during the research period of Spoke residency 
   

Performance Installation and Dialogue: Saturday, May 15th, 6pm-8pm   
Open House for Art Chicago: May 1st, 2010, 6-8:30pm


re[public] in/decency, a Canadian-US arts-activist collaboration is developing The Palimpsest Project, an interactive live arts installation on trauma and the erasure and recovery of transgenerational and trans-cultural memory. re[public] in/decency, in collaboration with Chicago-based dressmaker, designer, and artist, Kristin Mariani Frieman will talk about their process working with select individuals, invited groups and communities over the course of their residency and to the general public during a culminating interactive installation.

  
re[public] in/decency is an inter-arts activist initiative and creative think tank that explores the trans-national intersections between live art, social justice activism and arts-informed pedagogy. 

Created in 2008 through a collaboration between two professional artists: community-based developer, theatre and performance artist Coman Poon (Toronto, Canada) and cultural worker, choreographer and performance maker Erica Mott (Chicago, USA), re[public] in/decency seeks to engage diverse audiences in our interdisciplinary work while acting as a conduit between social justice activism and conceptual art practice.

Our art-making practice is highly collaborative and we work with both artists across disciplines  as well as diverse inter and intra-national communities. Key collaborators include teacher, video and performance artist Sheelah Murthy, experimental media artist Juana Awad, performance artist and scholar, Lisa Biggs and artist and designer, Kristin Mariani Frieman. Our work embraces cross-cultural perspectives and is fueled by experiential research with arts-mediated dialogue about social, economic and racial justice. We place the artist as a central participant in our society. We believe that through performative action, the creation of strong and resonant images and the power of play, artists may act as catalysts to encourage citizens to reframe and possibly revise their in/action. Our creative projects are informed by personal experience and strives towards building connections between ‘local’ and ‘global’ issues. We focus on inclusively examining the ‘relational’ (composites of unique bodies and stories, political, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, gender inhabitation and artistic constitution) as a key component of collaborative creation.