Dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism.

sprout‘s dinner-theater series continues this month on Wednesday, May 5th.  The theme for this month’s dinner is Performance and Spectacle in Public Space.

kanarinka’s “It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston”

Our performers include the following artists, thinkers, and doers ::

• Milan Kohout is a member of the Mobius artists’ group. He is a political street performer as well as a visual artist. Originally from the Czech Republic, he now teaches Tufts University and performs in the Boston area.
• John Bell is a co-founder of the HONK! Festival in Davis Square as well as the NYC-based theater company Great Small Works–as well as a co-organizer of these dinners! He will be taking a historical perspective on the theme, looking at how our relationship to public space and performance in that space has changed over time.
• kanarinka, a.k.a. Catherine D’Ignazio, an artist and educator, will discuss her project It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston, and examine the role that fear can play in public space, especially in the form of public transport awareness campaigns, terror simulations in public space, and so on.

It will be happening just outside of Davis Square in Somerville, MA, at sprout (339R Summer St.) on Wednesday May 5 with dinner at 7:30PM and performances beginning at 8. A $10 suggested donation will help us cover expenses.

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Emily Larned’s Stock Project

More Repression | NYC cops and Federal agents raided the headquarters of the fourth annual Anarchist Film Fest. [Infoshop]

Reason to Celebrate | Our friends at Red Sun Press celebrate 35 years with a retrospective show this May.  Here’s the video (Facebook required) for those who can’t make it to Boston. [Red Sun Press]

Notes from Underground | Boston’s local zine library celebrates its reopening this weekend with some lovely friends.  Come say hello! [Papercut Zine Library]

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Public Things, curated by Conrad Bakker, highlights the necessarily contingent nature of producing in public, including work from six artists whose works focus on the dialectic between public and private, between objects and their surroundings, between networks and the nodes within them.

Ryan Thompson’s “Glacial Erratics” regards the erratic displacement of rocks by both glacial and human forces.

Relying on a definition of the public thing as a “specific production of space and time for the purpose of both contemplation and conversation—[at once] a thing, an event, a platform, a meeting place, an issue, and a matter of concern,” the exhibition includes both naturally occurring and human made objects and gestures.  For example, Untitled (On the Ideology of Public Things 1) by Jennifer Danos examines the democracy of dirt in a participatory piece that will evolve over the course of the show, while the Think Tank that has yet to be Named hosts a series of Privately Held Public Meetings on the subject of public things.

The influence of history is a recurrent theme, explored in the Think Tank piece, as well as Ryan Thompson’s Glacial Erratics, pictured above, and Melting Pot, by Katie Hargrave and Meredith Warner.  In boulders and tourism alike, the artists find the forces shaping the public and their interaction with it, and offer pieces that make that continuity visible.

Participating artists include Conrad Bakker, Jennifer Danos, Katie Hargrave, Meredith Warner, Philip Matesic, and Ryan Thompson.  Public Things opens March 18th, at Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland.

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Somerville’s speculative history/community art project by artist Tim Devin (previously seen on Groundswell here) has launched, offering a rich vision of the next 90 years, from fleets of mobile libraries to population influx due to the flooded streets of neighboring Boston.  Grab a free PDF of the book,  or browse the full timeline here.

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Residents of Somerville may wish to speak with Tim Devin.  His ongoing History of Somerville, 2010-2100 involves gathering stories from past and current residents about life in that city over the next 90 years.  Devin’s plan is to compare these visions of a future Somerville against official development plans, and draw up a printed publication for early 2010.

It’s public ideation plus speculative fiction, and it’s entirely in line with our thoughts on crisis folklore.

Thanks, Tim!

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