a wild goose walk

All right. My dissertation project's done! And ready for beta-testing of sorts.

What it is:
A State is an audio podcast tour of about a half-mile stretch of State Street, the tracks corresponding to 22 brass plaques set into the sidewalk by the city in 1996. The plaques, along with several informational kiosks, were originally meant as part of a "self-guided walking tour" of State Street landmark buildings. I've created audio for each stop that sometimes complements and sometimes (err, mostly) contradicts the original tour's intentions. The tour takes you from 190 North State (the ABC Building) to 400 South State (the Harold Washington Library).

How to participate:
1) Go to http://web.mac.com/rclaff and click "Subscribe" to download the podcast tracks of the tour into iTunes. I don't know how the magic works on a PC but if you're having trouble, feel free to contact me and I'll try to send you the audio files or give you a CD.

2) On the left-hand side of the webpage, download a PDF of the accompanying map (NOTE: it's designed to print legal-size). You can also download the map from here.

3) Take the tour! It's designed to be taken whenever you wish, and it lasts about 70 minutes in all (15 minutes of walking and about 55 minutes of audio).

Also, I'd be forever greatful if you'd leave me some feedback on the podcast page, or here. Thanks!

"...abeyance."

I had an old highschool friend used to say "...lull" whenever there was a lull in a conversation. Which then eventually turned into "...abeyance", because it's a f'schmancy (and funnier) word for "lull."

I had weird friends.

Also, I'm in abeyance. ("...segue!") Rather, this blog is in abeyance. I'm deep deep in the deepness of creating my final project for this MA--the dissertation, really--and I'm so deep at the moment that I can't even come up for air to post about my progress. Though I should, really, because it would probably help me sort through some things, and who knows, maybe some brilliant performance artist might stumble across my flailings and write something inspiring in the comment section that simultaneously lifts my spirit and solves all my problems.

Or maybe I'll just go back under this bed.

At any rate, I'll resurface shortly. With a bounty of information and Fun Things to Do.

In the meantime, here's a teaser:

accidental installation 001

So about ten or eleven years ago, when I first joined the Neo-Futurists, there was a dilapidated convenience store at the southwest corner of Clark and Foster, which Diana referred to as "The Shift-E-Mart".

Shifty it was. The front window was papered over with bleached-out posters advertising movies that had been released years prior. A questionable clientele shuffled in and out at all hours. The counter by the register only paid a vague homage to the usual convenience-store stock: A handful of dusty gum and mints that, like the movies touted in the front window, had been released years prior.

The rest of the store's inventory was no better, but one display, visible from the plate-glass windows on the Foster Street side, made for completely accidental political art. One steel-grey shelf was stocked, for the most part, with big boxes of laundry detergent. In the midst of the boxes, however, a neat little space had been cleared, and in the middle of that space, pristine, unmoved, framed on all sides by Gain and Downy and Dreft, was one perfect bottle of Summer's Eve douche.


That bottle of douche stayed there, untouched, week after week, month after month, year after year, until finally the store was shut down (and taken over by a similarly questionable "Vitamin Outlet" which, although it has no such douche displays, sure does have a bizarro inventory of weight-gain powders, astronomically overpriced Pirate's Booty, Tofutti, and sports drinks). Serene in its little niche on the shelf, it couldn't have been more attractively accentuated had Carol Merrill been standing next to it, smiling and gesturing.

How we loved that douche.

In honor of that completely unplanned installation piece I give you the first in a series of accidental art moments. This one comes courtesy of another convenience store which, although it has its questionable moments--who wants to buy produce from a store where the owner chain-smokes at the register?!??--is saved by the unfailing sweetness of its adorable employees, two of whom are the owner's sons.

I would've thought at least one of them would've noticed this by now:


In the immortal words of Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

A HUGE thank you to Chloe for the photo.

Feeling frisky?

...well then, Frisky, you can go right ahead and read my critical analysis of the Memorial Day II project:

Download file here.

Three thousand words. Big ones.

I'm tired.

A few more photos

Because they're kind of priceless. Thank you Edward and Heather for sending them. All the documentation of the documentation of the documentation is making my head spin!

Ah yes, drinking in the alley. Good times.

Rachel posts picture on blog that Heather took on cell
phone of Rachel taking picture of plaque while Rick films (off camera)

On the trolley, Rachel receives Godly visitation in the form of David Kodeski

Performance art? I'll tell you what I think of your stinkin'
performance art. Now pass me some more of that champagne.

By the way

Those of you who sent me stories that I didn't use, do not be cross! Once the dust settles on my dissertation, I will be creating plaques and doing more ceremonies -- as one-off performance gatherings (rather than grueling cross-Chicago treks like this first attempt).

If you didn't send me a plaque story and would like to, please do so here. Or you can have a plaque made yourself at The Engraving Connection and have your own ceremony! Huzzah! World domination!

Memorial Day II: Brian's ceremony

Somewhere between Richard's and Edward's ceremonies, spirits began to falter. Blisters blistered; children and adults alike approached meltdown. We needed a boost.

That boost came in the form of a free trolley ride! to the Lincoln Park Zoo, where we would be performing the final ceremony. Free! To the Zoo! Instead of having to wait for (and pay for) the Fullerton bus, we got to ride in open-air high style.

Free trolley ride with accidental product placement

Edward noted that there was a sign in our trolley advertising the fact that it could be rented. Which is true. En route to the zoo we wondered whether or not we could rent one and simply drive around picking up random tourists, offering them own particular and personalized take on Chicago's sights. (Watch this space, I suppose.)

The zoo was fifteen minutes away from closing when we arrived; we couldn't have timed it more perfectly. (Well, for the adults, anyway -- Lily wasn't altogether pleased by the drive-by zooing). After a quick scouting of locations, we decided on a slightly out-of-the-way electrical box mounted behind the benches at the sea lion exhibit.

Brian Lobel was also unable to attend, so I read his story (against a great backdrop):

2007. I had broken up with my best friend about eight months prior. I don't know what else to call it when your best friend's abusive lesbian partner forbids your best friend from talking to you. We were broken up, but I didn't fully get it, and had continued to call her for the last eight months without a phone call returned, an e-mail answered, a random party bump-into to be followed up on. I was sad.

I had welcomed my parents two days earlier to Chicago and for some reason, they were still only in the middle of their trip. They should have been gone after the honeymoon period (the approximately 48 hours in which my parents and I really get along), yet I still needed to fill two days of their trip with fun times. We had seen a play, seen a dance performance, eaten three good meals at great Chicago restaurants I'm too cheap for, and I was running low on ideas. The Lincoln Park Zoo…

I hadn't been since a drunken ZooLights in December 2005, but I knew it'd be perfect. We love animals. The Lobels love animals. Not in nature, but in controlled areas, where they can be appreciated. We begin to walk through the front gates, giddy with having found yet one more activity in Chicago, when my thigh buzzes with an unrecognized 734 number. I had erased my best friend from the phone, to stop me from calling, but I knew it was her. She was crying. One minute later I was crying, and five minutes later, I realized that my parents were waiting for me, impatiently, to go into the African Experience. Waiting. Waiting. So I shoo-ed them forth, physically walking 30 feet behind but always appearing to read plaques and scientific names. I thought it could look like I just needed more time to appreciate.

Puffy eyes and tearing and snotting--it was pathetic and gay and fantastic (only from a critical angle which I didn't have at the moment). But the conversation had to happen then and I'm glad we didn't wait. For 45 minutes I held up the charade until I saw my parents, arms folded, standing outside of the epileptic zebra area. The ignoring-of-the-cell-phone-in-public game had to come to an end, so I saved my friend's number, gave my face a minute to cool down, and then headed to the Sea Lions where the Lobels were waiting so that, as a family, we could appreciate the animals.

Installing Brian's plaque

"The conversation had to happen, c. 2007"

And with that, we were done. I took one final picture of the stalwart remaining participants and we dispersed. Fifteen minutes later, it began to rain. Hard.

Serendipity.

David, Edward, Noey, Lily, Diana, and Dina: Loyal to the end

Postscript: Due to weather and exhaustion, there is one remaining plaque, John's, which has yet to be installed. Check back to the site for a date and time!

Memorial Day II: Edward's ceremony

Edward Thomas-Herrera's ceremony was a bit of a wild card (wild plaque?), as he had determined a few days prior that the parking lot in which his story took place is now taken up by a massive athletic complex. Still, we were undeterred.

Edward told his story on the sidewalk where the parking lot entrance (roughly) used to be.


February 14, 1990. Valentine’s Day. Chicago is hit with 9 inches of snow. I'm stage managing a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the DePaul Theater School. I get on a DePaul shuttle bus in Lincoln Park that transports me and about half the cast and crew to the Blackstone Theater downtown. It’s a 30-minute drive that takes over two hours. We do the show and get back on the bus. It’s stopped snowing, but it still takes us about two hours to get back to Lincoln Park. We arrive in the parking lot on Sheffield just north of Webster. I’m so happy to have survived my first big snowfall, I lie down in the snow and make a snow angel. I’m a 25-year-old from Texas and this is my very first. I think to myself, “I’ve successfully escaped Texas."

The universal gesture for "snow angel"

Installation (with a side of ham)

Just after Edward installed his plaque, a DePaul security guard came strolling out of the gym entrance. We all pretended to be deeply, deeply interested in the sidewalk. He paid us no mind.

Bye, Mr. Security Guard!

I like the notion that Edward's plaque is installed on a fancy new gym. Layers and layers of history, accumulating like the snow in a parking lot, seventeen years ago.

"Made a snow angel, c. 1990"

Memorial Day II: Richard's ceremony

Next we travelled to the corner of Paulina and Grace, to install Richard Fox's plaque (in absentia, I suppose I should say, as Richard was unable to join us).

We waited for the Damen bus.

And waited.

Sunblock was applied.

Waiting.

Lily climbed in and out of her stroller. The only one amongst us successfully self-amusing.

Finally: Bus!

I tried to get a picture of the scrolling LED sign at the fore of the bus that announces the cross-street stops, as our stop simply read "GRACE" in big red blazing letters. Would've been all symbolic and eloquent, no? But here's a tip: Digital pictures of stationary objects on very shaky buses? Usually blurry.

Anyway, here was Richard's story:

One weekday morning, in March of this year, I was out walking. At the corner of Paulina & Grace Streets, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of utter and complete happiness. Truly. I had not felt like that in years and years. I guess I am surprised when I feel content, but this was full-on happiness. The feeling lasted for hours. And I found myself saying, simply, “Thank you.”

I was surprised by the overlap between my story and Richard's; indeed, between mine, Richard's, and a few other stories that people sent me (but I was unable to use this time 'round due to money and time constraints). Indefinable moments of infinite calm. It's a little sad to think that so many of us think of (and recall) these moments as rarified. But I suppose identifying them for what they are makes us what we are: Artists. (And moody ones at that.)

I'd love to think that the installation of the plaques might inspire similar moments of unbridled joy in unsuspecting passersby. I can hope, can't I?

Caution: Moody artist at work

Installing Richard's plaque (after we figured out we could bend it into a curve!)

Photo not taken from shaky bus, but blurry nonetheless

It was decided that the Brown Line train would be the best route to take to Edward's ceremony. Public transport + formalwear = curious stares and smiles from passengers.


I sense an entirely different performance piece in the works...

Memorial Day II: Heather's ceremony

On our way to the next ceremony, three delightful events: First, we ran into Diana's friend Jason sitting on his front stoop. While he could not spontaneously attend the next ceremony, he did spontaneously supply us with a second bottle of champagne from his refrigerator. We love Jason.

Jason, Edward; Edward, Jason

Despite this photo's appearance, Diana is not plying young Lily with champagne

Second, the winded arrival of Dina, who joined us by bicycle. We also love Dina. Our swelling ranks made their way to Berwyn and Ravenswood.

Diana, en route, avec champagne

Heather Riordan has been a member of the Neo-Futurists since the Ice Age, I believe. She never told me the story behind her plaque; she simply sent me a single sentence. Luckily it was quite straightforward.

'Nuff said

The third delightful event occurred when Heather called her friend Rick, a professional filmmaker, who agreed to meet us on the ceremonial corner (as he lives two houses away) and shoot video of the installation. How's that for serendipity?


Free champagne and free video documentation. What else could I ask for? Oh! I know! Two more audience members: Kat and a friend, coerced from where they were idling on their front stoop. These are the moments I adore Chicago: it's the small-towniest of big cities. Walk half a mile on a sunny day and you're nearly guaranteed to run into someone you know.

The burgeoning crowd

I told Diana I was starting to feel like the Pied Piper of Performance Art.

The plaque was installed in similar fashion to mine -- on the window casing of an unsuspecting building.


Check back later for Rick's video!

Memorial Day II: Phase Two opening ceremony

On Sunday afternoon we gathered, a small but intrepid group: Diana, David, Edward, Debs, Heather (who later had to leave to go to work), Noelle, Lily (our youngest participant -- age two), and myself. Luckily, the forecasted rain had resolved itself to a tiny drizzle.


Not everyone could get gussied up, but Diana more than made up for it. Plus, she's an expert champagne pourer.


We kicked things off with the installation of my own plaque in the Winnemac Avenue alley, where it empties onto Carmen Avenue near Clark.


Here was the story I read:

Summer 2002. I was on my way to a 9:30pm rehearsal when I rounded this bend in the Winnemac alleyway. I looked up to see that the sky was this pure, deep, unbelievable blue, the kind that only happens on a late summer’s evening. And looking at that cool sliver of sky between buildings I had a moment of unadulterated angelic compassion for myself, one of those moments that is impossible to achieve willfully, where you treat yourself as you would want to be treated by others, with absolute and gentle kindness. I looked at that sky and thought everything’s going to be okay. It’s going to be fine. I didn’t attach the sentiment to anything in particular; it was just going to be fine in general. Whatever happened, I was going to be all right. For that moment, and only for a few blessed moments since that day, I truly believed it.

Reading my story to the group

A captive audience

After deliberation, we installed the plaque on the ground-floor window casing of a building on the south side of the alley (said window is behind me in the photo above). The criteria for installation, which became mandate over the course of the day, were 1) install the plaque somewhere it won't be immediately taken down by angry authority figures, particularly city officials; 2) install the plaque where it won't get too wet in the rain. (The adhesive on the back, while tenacious, is not 100% waterproof.)

Showin' off my plaque

My plaque, installed

After a pleasant swill of champagne, we moved on to Heather's ceremony.

A toast!

Memorial Day II: Phase Two

Sunday, June 3, 2007: The ceremonies will begin at 2pm in the Winnemac Avenue alley right where it opens onto Carmen Avenue. (Here is a map.) There we will dedicate my personal plaque and have a champagne toast. The rest of the journey is as follows (by car or by public transport, depending on resources):

Corner of Berwyn and Ravenswood Aves: Heather Riordan ceremony
Corner of Paulina and Grace Streets: Richard Fox ceremony
Lincoln Park Zoo entrance: Brian Lobel ceremony
DePaul parking lot on Sheffield Ave, just north of Webster: Edward Thomas-Herrera ceremony
Corner of Fullerton and Albany Streets: John Pierson ceremony

We will wrap things up with a postmortem/snack at Lula Cafe.

Formal dress. However you choose to interpret that is fine by me.

Unsolicited testimony; unexpected sex change

Woo hoo! The plaques have been made. And they look so... so... legitimate. Here's a teaser:

They're black brass; the engraving is gold. Delightful. Don't you want to attend Phase Two?

The wonderfully-named Rex M. Tubbs at The Engraving Connection turned my order around at lightning speed and didn't question just what in the heck I was up to. Thank you, Rex, even though the shipment was addressed to "Richard", not "Rachel." I guess that's what I get for meticulously spelling my last name but assuming my first name translates fluently over the phone.

Memorial Day II: Phase One

This is an excerpt from the email I sent out to approximately 30-odd people (as opposed to 30 odd people, although I'm sure some of them would cop to being a little odd):

With your input, I will be creating a series of plaques to install throughout the city. The plaques will "commemorate" events in people's personal lives that occurred on the spots at which the plaques are installed. ...

By the end of the day on Monday, May 21, send me a short email explaining where you would want a plaque installed in the city, and what happened on that spot. Also include the date that it occurred. It can be anywhere within city limits. Ideally, it would be a place that isn't completely obvious (i.e., wouldn't attract immediate unwanted attention and be taken down by The Man or other authorities). ... I will (with your help) cull a short text for the plaques from your emailed stories.

I will pick five plaques from whatever people send me and have them professionally made. Further installations may be done, though, after this particular round of the project is over.

The plaques will be installed in a non-invasive fashion -- easily removed from questionable surfaces if necessary.

The response was delightful. Not only did a great deal of people immediately write back, but I had the pleasure of sifting through their stories -- funny, sad, wistful, odd (!), and intimate.

As an added bonus I'd given the email the subject line "You're beautiful", in attempt to shamelessly flatter recipients into lending me a hand, so imagine if you will the warm feeling of opening up your Yahoo! account and seeing a slew of "Re: You're beautiful"s in my inbox.

A big thanks to everyone who responded. As I said in the email, I hope to be able to do another installment of this project sometime in the near future, once dissertation is dissertated and I've taken a few deep cleansing breaths.

Memorial Day II: Some background

In college, my friend Jenna and I played a game wherein we decided which on-campus object or place we would "dedicate" to ourselves upon graduation. Like most campuses, ours had the usual quota of Memorial Benches (and Wings and Halls and Statues and Libraries), erected and plaque-d in honor of the Somebody Q. Moneybags who had donated to the college, or the Class of Xty-X who'd ponied up enough dough to be remembered ad infinitum. So we asked ourselves: Where would our plaques go? What would serve as the perfect marker for our (unfatal) passing?

It is clear to me now that we played this game with a mixture of defiance and terror. Defiance against the insanely wealthy and the bronzed kowtowing that ensued whenever they snuffed it -- why couldn't we, the students who struggled penniless and work-studied through four years of academia, why couldn't we have that kind of eternal reward? Sure, the rich might be responsible for the college's very backbone; its dorms and halls and quads of green, but we were its heartbeat. We deserved just as much reverence. Engraved, if you please.

And terror because hey: it was senior year. Soon we'd be ejected into the real world, armed with Humanities degrees that virtually ensured our ongoing poverty. If we had to plunge into the ocean, we at least wanted a guarantee that our big-fish status would be recognized forever by future inhabitants of our beloved little pond. Proof that we'd mattered somewhere.

At any rate, the ground rules were simple: Choose an object (or place) that nobody would think of memorializing. None of the usual benches or buildings or flowerbeds. Something or somewhere that would take one by surprise. (And, perhaps, be less likely to attract the attention and outrage of campus administration, were the project ever to come to fruition.)

Jenna's answer was by far the best: On the lower entrance level of the campus theater complex (massive auditorium, smaller black box, offices, and classrooms) there was a recessed concrete landing, sheltered on three sides by the outer walls of the auditorium and by a set of glass double doors. Some quirk of this particular architecture caused air currents to get trapped in the landing niche, creating a gentle, constant, swirling vortex of leaves, trash, and general debris.

This, she said, would be her gift to future students and staff. She said she felt it nicely encapsulated her four years on campus. The Jenna Memorial Vortex.

I can't recall my own contribution. I think her choice was so good that I just couldn't top it. Regardless, it was the seed of this project. Thanks, J.

could we have that in English?

Local Disturbances is, ultimately, the practical portion of a project undertaken as part of a Master's degree in Cultural Performance at the University of Bristol.

Some background: I've been part of the program(me) since 2003, but took a leave of absence during the second half of the course, which was a residency at Lanternhouse International, working with the masterminds behind Welfare State International.

When I returned this spring, the degree option had ceased to exist (it is currently 'under development' while the university's Department of Drama is restructured). Also, Welfare State officially disbanded in 2006 after 38 years of existence (Lanternhouse International is now run by a collective of artists very much in tune with WSI's original mission). And my previous advisor had left Bristol. As had his wife, who stepped in to run the program in 2005-06 while he was on sabbatical.

So I suppose I could say that this project is an attempt to prove my very existence, at least in academic circles.

Actually, the folks at Bristol (who, ostensibly, heroically crawled out of the smoldering crater of my degree) have been kind enough to let me finish my studies here at home and advise me from afar. (Thank you, Sara Jane.)

My intention with this blog is to create a repository for the documentation of performances and installations around the city of Chicago (undertaken by myself and a small group of like-minded artists; hopefully, later on, this group will expand to include artists in other cities). The inaugural project, Memorial Day II, will take place in June of 2007 (see here).

The performances themselves will be site-specific and tactical (as defined by de Certeau 1988); that is, operating within a given system in order to defy that system--in this case, the regulated narratives of city space. They will be designed to produce ‘a rearticulation of site’ (Pearson and Shanks 2001: 159; see also Turner 2000).

I have been particularly inspired by this type of performative intervention in the urban landscape: Forced Entertainment's precarious overlay of imaginary history onto a guided bus tour; Janet Cardiff's factual/fictional audio narratives; Industry of the Ordinary’s various takes on boundary, claim, and sporting match; Stephanie Brooks' sly refashioning of street signage. These pieces ask us to perpetually reconsider our relationship (physical and emotional) to the cityscape. They call for a heightened awareness of public space; of the body as both reader and writer of an urban text.

I'm also drawn to the works cited above because they couch intention in humor, playfulness, gentle mischief--where the "pleasure of getting around the rules of a constraining space" (de Certeau 1988: 18) is valued above a dour struggle with the dominant order. As Thompson notes in the foreword to The Interventionists, "Nothing can suck the air around it like political art: so many words, so much ideology worn so transparently on the sleeve, so much certainty, and so little of interest to look at" (Thompson and Sholette 2004: 10). Adam Brooks of Industry of the Ordinary echoes this sentiment in textbook:

I think it's dangerous to pigeonhole any work as political, certainly with a large "P". Daniel Buren said that all artwork is in some way political with a small "p". The very act of making a discreet work becomes a politicized action, but I think that really what we're doing is taking information and subject matter that both of us feel is resonant and it needs in some way to be represented and doing just that: re-presenting it. (2005: 34)

Again I look to de Certeau for some definition: in these projects, urban place is re-presented as space. Where place is stable, distinct, governed by the rules and laws of the "proper", space "is composed of intersections of mobile elements" (1988: 117) and can be modified, temporalized, reoriented. It lacks stability. It contains multitudes. It is a palimpsest -- where infinite histories, memories, stories overlap and jostle and collide and resonate. A grey area. None, and all, of the above.

It is in this slippery space that Local Disturbances resides. For the moment, at least. Who knows where it will be tomorrow.

what's all this then?

Local Disturbances is:

a call for sensible acts of random kindness.

an archive of site-specific performance.

off the map.

a continual muddle of space and place.

an experiment.

messing with your head.

ephemeral installation.

evidence.

diversion.

unnecessary by certain standards.

compilation.

documentation.

living proof.

disruption.

here.


no, wait.

here.