Project Resident, Christopher Tourre | Public Brewery

April 28th - May 31, 2011


Closing Reception
Friday, May 27 - 6:00pm - 9:00pmThe final exhibition will display the development and accumulation of artifacts, materials, documentation and research within the brewery, as well as a tasting of all drinks made throughout the term of the project.

PUBLIC BREWERY will unite the general public of Chicago with urban foragers, gardens, and local food experts to create a temporary and experimental brewery inside of Spoke's Residency Project Space. Throughout the length of the project, members of the community will contribute ideas, stories, materials and local ingredients to create beers and sodas inside the brewery. Weekly workshops will also be open to the public throughout... the length of the residency teaching beer and soda-making techniques. As the residency builds, so will the brewery, the accumulation of ingredients/equipment, and most importantly, stories. The final exhibition will display the development and accumulation of artifacts, materials, documentation and research within the brewery, as well as a tasting of all drinks made throughout the term of the project.

WORKSHOPS (Open to Public, limit to 25 participants) Workshops will demonstrate to the public home-brewing techniques. Participants are encouraged to bring an ingredient they have grown or purchased locally that they feel would be an excellent ingredient within a beer or soda. Local urban agriculturalists will also be present at each workshop to facilitate discussions on local food production:

Saturday, April 30th, 3-8 PM (Beer, 21+)
Saturday, May 7th, 3-8 PM (Beer, 21+)
Saturday, May 21st, 12pm-3pm (Soda, Open to families and children)

OPEN STUDIO BREWING (Open to public to come and go) Members of the public are free to stop into the Spoke Residency Project Space to informally chat with artist Christopher Tourre and learn more about brewing practices as he brews specialty batches of beer.

Friday, May 6th, 6-10 pm
Friday, May 20th, 6-10 pm

BIOGRAPHY
Over the past three years his practice has transformed from a sculptor and video-maker to, as he describes it, a social aggregator. Some of his most recent projects involved raising chickens in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen and delivering the harvested eggs to local residents. In 2010, he and his studio partners, Unit 2, created a public workspace at the MCA Chicago, which centered on conversations, designs, and construction of furniture pieces made from leftover scraps of demolished Chicago houses. In 2010, he also began the Artisan Beer Series, a project aimed at entwining communities, stories, personal narratives, and education through the creation and distribution of beer and soda-making.

Tourre often finds alternative outlets to display his work, but has been featured in various spaces in Pittsburgh and Chicago including Pittsburgh Film Kitchen, Gallery 400, Eel Space, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

For more information regarding this project, contact christopher@christophertourre.com

Please see Project Resident Blog for details and updates.

Erin Thurlow

OH WHY DID I DID IT MY WAY
The IPhone Monologues:
(We Have) Hard Drives/ The Prison Planet.
A work in progress.
by Erin Thurlow

Wednesday, April 27th, 6-8pm

Erin Thurlow's new performance/ social sculpture, set in the dystopian near-present, incorporates aspects of action poetry, prop-art and an interactive comedy work-shop. Erin Thurlow is a sculptor and the April artist in residence at threewalls. He will open his studio as part of the threewalls Community Supported Art launch, April 30th, 6-9pm.

Supported in part with funds from the Toronto Arts Council.

More information about Erin Thurlow: erinthurlow.blogspot.com
Three walls: http://three-walls.org/calendar/2011/04

UPDATE: WORK IN THE WOODS, Project Residency

PRIVATE VIEWING

Appointments available March 27 - 30

Hello Friends:

Contrary to earlier publicity, there will be no separate invitations going out for private viewing before the public reception. I’m taking all the time between now and March 26 to “set the stage” for DISCIPLINE’s BEARbrand concept presentation. The reception itself will act as an invitation to a more private collaborative viewing. My priority is building real relationships between viewers and characters, which is the central notion behind the “slow play” format. Get to know DISCIPLINE in the real time processes of BEARbrand-ing!

For friends who are unable to attend the public reception, consider this your invitation to a private viewing. Private viewings will take place by appointment, March 27 – 30. You may make appointments at the reception or by contacting me directly. Email at gvg.hinge@gmail.com or telephone (864) 247.8207.

Looking forward to performing for you.

With enduring esteem,

G. Vincent Gaulin

Spoke Project Resident

Writing as SCARCITY

Performing as DISCIPLINE BEAR

Project Resident: Vincent Gaulin

March 1- March 31

Project Resident: Vincent Gaulin

WORK IN THE WOODS from SCARCITY asks,

“IS THIS YOU, WANT?”

A slow play by G. Vincent Gaulin

PUBLIC RECEPTION Saturday, March 26, 6pm - 8:30pm

For more information, follow the daily media feed on Spoke's blog (www.spokechicago.blogspot.com) under Project Resident Blog.

 

March’s Project Residency WORK IN THE WOODS is act I, scene II in a sprawling  “slow play” called IS THIS YOU, WANT? Written, directed, and performed by SCARCITY, a character created by interdisciplinary artist, writer, and performer G. Vincent Gaulin as a personification of the foundational conditions of economics. The first act of the play, POPULATION, is based on a saying handed down by the artist’s grandfather:  “Used to, there was just three bears [of Goldilocks and the Three Bears] in the woods, and now the woods are full of them.” This act dramatizes the confounding affect of population growth on the state of politics, and translates large-scale political dynamics into interpersonal, relational dramas between its characters and viewers.

WORK IN THE WOODS is a darkly comical scene. The main character DISCIPLINE BEAR, workshops his BEARbrand, “a lifestyle corporation” with five administrative agencies and six product and service divisions, approaching every corner of life from food to clothing, exercise, occupation, scheduling, and even entertainment. The BEARbrand’s corporate structure aims to ensure comfort and security in the WOODS, as countermovement to ETIQUETTE BEAR’s leaving. At best, DISCIPLINE is an attentive and charismatic young executive. At worst, he’s an exploitative megalomaniacal sentimentalist. In a tragic confusion of motivations, DISCIPLINE spends a month wrestling with his compulsively cumbersome ultra-bureaucracy under the guise of attending to ETIQUETTE’s increasingly obstructed needs.

Desperate for any sources, the protagonist turns to the viewers of the work, ordinary humans with no experiential knowledge of the WOODS, to help him define and resurface conditions that ultimately have no potential for bolstering his far-reaching romantic project. The drama attempts to portray the dark energy massing in the wake of failing societal conventions like gender roles and dominant ideologies (religious, nationalistic, militaristic, industrial, and progressive), and also the mounting tensions between social “norms” and contemporary efforts to define and orient identities distributed across life’s real conditions, in real time.

Due to the relational nature of the project WORK IN THE WOODS will be open for viewing on an invitation and referral basis only. Viewing the work is not like viewing a conventional play. Participants are invited to schedule a personal meeting with DISCIPLINE BEAR to digest the work in conversation with the character and/or collaborate through exchange as he workshops his BEARbrand. Invitations will go out the first full week in March.

PUBLIC RECEPTION Saturday, March 26, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM open to the general public for viewing the play’s artifacts and some culminating action for the scene. Daily media feed available on Spoke's blog. (www.spokechicago.blogspot.com) under Project Resident Blog.

To solicit an invitation call 864.247.8207 or email gvg.hinge@gmail.com with a description of your interest in or existing relation to the work, artist, arts community, or space.

G. Vincent Gaulin is an artist, writer, designer/builder, percussionist, and performer based in Chicago, IL. His work draws from diverse influences including classic literature, fashion, art history, theology, family heritage, American regionalism (esp. Southern history), urban and rural studies, Hip-hop entrepreneurial models, Jazz lifestyles, industrial manufacturing, human ecology, storytelling, “women’s work”, commercial marketing, and folk traditions. Gaulin is a self-proclaimed NPR junky, avid non-fiction reader, long-winded conversationalist, and compulsive kitchen-talker. The artist is a contemporary family man—a dedicated grandson, son, nephew, brother, cousin, friend, and romantic. He fancies a comical outlook and presentation, and believes in playful realism, the necessity of abstraction, and the transformative potential of criticism. He is an optimist.

 

Project Residency Program

We at Spoke are happy and excited to begin our new programming series.

Our Project Residency Program is geared towards projects and art practices that are socially engaged, process oriented, participatory and multi-layered. The Project Residents can treat the malleable project space as a laboratory, test-site, classroom, studio, experimental gallery or social space.  We encourage our residents to take time to explore and experiment without pressure for creating a completed work or final product. 


March - Vince Gaulin (details coming soon)
May - Christopher Tourre (details coming soon)


Please check out our future tab to see what other events are happening at Spoke.