Proposal Title

The Tenders: Embrasures in the Fort’s Collapse

Presenter Information

Judd Morrissey, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoFollow
Abraham Avnisan, Kent State UniversityFollow
Mark Jeffery, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoFollow

Submission Type

Performance

Start Date

16-7-2020 6:00 PM

End Date

16-7-2020 7:30 PM

Abstract

The Tenders: Embrasures in the Fort's collapse (zoom edition) is an simultaneous multi-channel mixed reality performance that engages with structures of the fort and the home, combining remote live performance and augmented reality poetics with 3d scans of the site of Fort Dearborn, an early American garrison out of which the city of Chicago was incorporated. Juxtaposing excavations of urban monuments with scans of the bedazzled home of self-taught artist, Loy Bowlin, who embodied the persona of "the original rhinestone cowboy", The Tenders seeks to invert and queer colonial narratives lodged deep within the American imaginary.

Bio

Judd Morrissey

Judd Morrissey is a writer and code artist who creates poetic systems across a range of platforms incorporating electronic writing, live performance, and augmented reality. He is the creator of widely studied digital literary works including The Last Performance [dot org], The Jew's Daughter, and My Name is Captain, Captain. He is co-founder of the experimental language, performance, and technology collective, Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality (ATOM-r), with whom he has created two large-scale multi-platform projects, The Operature (2014) and Kjell Theøry (2017). Judd is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art and Technology Studies. He is a recipient of a Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a Fulbright Scholar’s Award in Digital Culture, and a Mellon Foundation Collaborative Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship.

Judd's solo and collaborative works have been included in a broad range of festivals, conferences and exhibitions with recent venues including The MAC (Dallas), Counterpath Press (Denver), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Zero1 Garage (San Jose), Eyebeam (NYC), Le Cube (Paris), Anatomy Theater & Museum (London), House of World Cultures (Berlin), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and the Chicago Cultural Center. His work has been the subject of numerous critical studies and reviews have appeared in BOMB Magazine, the New York Times, RAINTAXI, and the Iowa Review.

Abraham Avnisan

Abraham Avnisan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text, and code. He creates artists' books, applications for mobile devices, interactive installations and technologically mediated performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language.

Abraham has presented his work in national and international exhibitions and biennials including Refiguring the Future at the Hunter College Art Galleries (2019); Between Bodies at The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington (2018-19); the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017); and a four-person exhibition at Post-Screen: International Festival of Art, New Media and Cybercultures in Lisbon, Portugal (2016-17). He has been invited to speak about his work at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and The Kitchen in New York City, among other venues, and has presented his research at the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing and The College Art Association (CAA), the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and the Electronic Literature Organization’s (ELO) annual conferences. He has been interviewed by BOMB Magazine and his work has been published in INDEX Vol. 6: An Annual Document of Performance Practice; the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3; the International Symposium on Electronic Arts’ (ISEA) 2015 symposium proceedings, Stonecutter, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Drunken Boat, New Delta Review, and others.

Abraham is the recipient of a Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship through the Simpson Center for the Humanities, a Digital Studies Fellowship through Rutgers University—Camden, the Rosen and Edes Foundation Semi-Finalist Fellowship for Emerging Artists, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s New Artists Society Merit Scholarship. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Abraham is an Assistant Professor of Digital Sciences and Journalism & Mass Communication in the College of Communication & Information at Kent State University.

Mark Jeffery

Mark Jeffery is a Chicago based performance/installation artist, curator and Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 1994 Mark Jeffery has developed unconventional collaborations with visual artists, scholars, video artists, sound artists, new media and code artists, dancers, choreographers, curators, and writers. In 2012, he co-founded the language, performance, and technology collective Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality (ATOM-r). ATOM-r premiered its first work The Operature in 2014 and in 2017 premiered Kjell Theøry a performance and exhibition created through two residencies at The International Museum of Surgical Science and The Graham Foundation. ATOM-r is currently in research and development of their new work, Rhinestone Cowboy that they anticipate to complete in winter of 2021. 

He is organizer of the IN>TIME Tri Annual performance festival hosted by multiple venues in Chicago. The last edition was in the winter of 2019. Mark was a former member of the internationally renowned Goat Island Performance Group from 1996 - 2009. Recent performances and exhibitions include: Graham Foundation, Chicago, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Chisenhale Dance Space, London, Alfred De Vrove, Prague, International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, Performance Arcade, Wellington, NZ, Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne and 606 Trail, Chicago.