"A State" returns as part of Chicago Artists' Month

My audio tour, a state, will be available as part of Chicago Artists' Month (Oct 1st - Nov 15). Details on how to download the tracks and walking map are forthcoming. Meanwhile, visit www.chicagoartistsmonth.org for information on all of the CAM events!

Local Disturbances: The Return, and The Class

Rather than make endless excuses about why this blog completely ground to a halt over a year ago, I'll post an entry like that never happened. (...whistling nonchalantly)

I'm teaching a site-specific performance class at the Neo-Futurarium in July. Of two thousand and nine, yes, shut up.

Here are details:

LOCAL DISTURBANCES: SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE
SATURDAYS FROM 1-4PM
JULY 18-AUGUST 29
(7 WEEKS)

Aimed at performers, artists, writers, and anyone else who’s interested in creating performances inspired by, and existing within, particular spaces or places around the city. We will investigate how to work with and against the geographies and histories of a site to create a performance within it (or even about it). We will use the sounds, sights, smells, tastes, limitations, excesses, frustrations, joys, boundaries, freedoms, secrets and lies of Chicago places and spaces to make people look twice at their surroundings and pay attention to their everyday routines. We will explore a continuum of performance—from pieces that rely on the performer to initiate and sustain them to pieces in which the performer is utterly absent.

All classes are $250.

All classes will meet at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago, IL 60640.
Class size is limited to 15 on a first-come first-serve registration.

To register, email Neoclasses@gmail.com to express your interest. Then send a non-refundable registration check for half of the amount ($100) made out to "The Neo-Futurists" to The Neo-Futurarium at 5153 North Ashland Ave., Chicago, IL, 60640. Full payment is due at the first class.

*Cough.*

Boy, this blog is dusty.

Uh.

I have no excuse.

Look, everything in my life is dusty at the moment. One has only to peer underneath my bed to see just how disturbing the situation has become. I can blame the weather, I can blame work, I can blame my complete overload on all things performative after finishing up my dissertation -- but like I said, no excuse. Just stasis. I'm stuck at the top of the ferris wheel waiting to come down, nauseous, but also closely inspecting the horizon.

If anyone is still tenaciously reading this thing (and I thank you, I do), some interim information to tide you over until I get off the ride:

My mac.com home for "A State" has lapsed because I'm not paying for the website parking. But - you can still listen to the tracks on this great new site, Vocalo. It's like Youtube for radio. Cool stuff. I'm working on putting it on iTunes or something so that the tracks are actually downloadable. Here's my channel.

Also, peek at BoyGirlBoyGirl's updated website to see what's next for the boys and girls.

And you can see the fruits of my poetry-slam coaching career here. In February, the Chicago Botanic Gardens held a poetry slam with a green theme as part of their Fairchild Challenge. The top six competitors were asked to form an "Eco-Slam Team" and compete in Louder Than A Bomb, the nation's (universe's?) largest teen poetry slam sponsored by Young Chicago Authors. The students were phenomenally devoted to the project, and they pulled second place in both their preliminary bouts, which is pretty incredible given that they had all of six rehearsals to get their individual and group poems in shape for the competition. Wooo!

So that's that. I guess I HAVE been sorta busy, but truth be told, everything's been kind of a major haze since the year began. I really need to invest in a Swiffer or something. Do they make those for the insides of one's head?

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.