Chicago El Stories

So here's an interesting art project: Chicago El Stories is an installation at the Armitage Brown Line stop in Lincoln Park that pairs photos of seemingly unimportant sites around the city with audio files of peoples' memories and stories about the places. It's an interesting way of showing how the urban environment is littered with personal experiences, and how the city can be so many different things to so many people.

Mapping the Self @ the Museum of Contemporary Art

At first glance Mapping the Self, the MCA's contribution to the Festival of Maps lineup, takes some serious liberties in how it defines what a map is. But then, as the introduction to the exhibit plainly states, this exhibit is not about maps. It's about how artists use maps, both to define themselves and the physical, social, and emotional spaces that they inhabit and/or experience. In fact the very meaning of the word "map" is derived from the Latin word mappa, for the cloth that maps were drawn on. A map is an exploration drawn out on a physical surface. With the etymology in mind, the pieces at the MCA's exhibit fit the theme a bit more logically.

Save for a few larger pieces spread throughout the fourth-floor atrium (including a clever recreation of John Baldassari's Framed Heights), the bulk of the work in the exhibit is organized into two rooms; the first deals with artists' use of mapping to define and examine themselves, and the second with the way that they use maps to explore and reimagine the world around them.

A piece by artist Patrick McGee is a notable highlight in the first section as it explodes the traditional concept of the map at the same time that it asserts itself as one. McGee took measurements of his head to come up with a new system of units of measurement; the diameter of his head (the Fit) became the measurement of length, its volume (the immersion) the measurement of capacity, and weight (the burden) the measurement of mass. McGee's piece is both entertaining and thought-provoking, especially in the context of this exhibit. It represents, after all, the physical nature of the artist's head, but it also breaks the head down into very basic calculations and reevaluates the rest of the physical world in relation to the artist. It is a philosophical mapping of the idea of physicality; a delightful mindf*ck, if you will.

The second room contains pieces that look more like...well, maps, or at least more like what you might expect maps to look like. There are exceptions to this rule, but even a glance around this gallery will reassure anyone thrown off by the first section. Chicago plays a major role here as the physical place being examined and/or reimagined in many of the pieces on display, adding to the sense of familiarity. Works by Stephanie Nadeau and John Cage are highlights, but again, one piece sort of steals this half of the show. That piece, Paula Henderson's Extended Remix, takes Chicago's 77 community areas, color codes them by their majority racial demographic, and then puts them into alphabetical order. The boundaries stay the same, but the names and colors shuffle around, creating a vivid and rather jarring reinterpretation of this notoriously segregated city's racial landscape. It is a very different Chicago seen in this map; paired with Nareau's photographic piece Redlined, it makes a potent statement about the history of racial politics in the Windy City.

Overall, complaints about this exhibit are of the petty variety. Single plaques often hold the descriptions for multiple pieces, which can be confusing. Some of the work on display seemed to lack label or explanation altogether. The thematic nature of the two rooms gives the exhibit structure, though it can be a bit loose at times; as a result, some pieces feel a bit superfluous. But as a whole, the exhibit does what it sets out to do by providing a solid exploration of the way contemporary artists are using maps in very different (and very challenging) ways to explore what it means to be human, and what it means to be part of our society.

While Mapping the Self takes up a relatively small amount of floor space, don't expect to make it through this one on your lunch break. While that would be do-able in theory, in reality you can't really get much from this exhibit unless you plan on taking your time. With most of the art on display, you'll find your efforts well-rewarded.

IF YOU GO
Mapping the Self is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art until March 2nd, 2008. The museum is open 10:00am-8:00pm on Thursdays, and 10:00am-5:00pm Wednesdays-Sundays; it is closed on Mondays. The entry fee for the MCA is $10 for adults, $6 for students and seniors (both suggested). Tuesdays are free admission.


Links:
Mapping the Self (Museum of Contemporary Art

Guerilla Geography

"We all have a different view of the world. Each of us have our own and diverse ways of using our unique senses to interpret the risks, emotions, possibilities, futures and experiences that places have to offer. How we see where we are is dependent on the experiences that we have had, how we have experimented and explored our environment - and so if the guerilla geographer (psycho-geographer) shapes an experience for a person, that person might forever change their view of themselves, their influences and their world."



Links:
Guerilla Geography Blog (found via Very Spatial)

WEEKEND READING: June 16-22, 2007

This week kind of flew by. That's a good thing, though, so please don't mistake that last sentence for a complaint.

ITEM ONE: I'm a bit late in posting this entertaining piece about a real(ish) State of Mind at the Venice Biennale, but it's worth the read.

ITEM TWO: Attention all green dreamers -- the race is on to build the first "Living Building," as reported by CEOS for Cities. Perhaps living glass will help?

ITEM THREE: Another place-y linkgasm over at growabrain.

ITEM FOUR: Trying to get from here to there (with here being a gridlocked freeway and there being an airport)? Check out this brilliant little nugget of entrepreneurial ingenuity.

ITEM FIVE: Placekraft is taking on a new Chicago-centric mapping project based around the ephemeral "art world."

ITEM SIX: The Breuer tower in Cleveland covered in the first Where post has become rather ubiquitous. Even the NY Times thinks so.

ITEM SEVEN: An absolutely side-splitting Onion article about large-scale neighborhood redevelopment and the people who try to stop it.

Enjoy your weekend! I'll be checking out the Future Cities exhibit here at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, so watch for that to show up in a post next week.

(Photo from Flickr user John Drain.)

States of Mind

"I'm in a weird place right now."

We've all probably said that, or heard someone else say it, in our lifetimes. It's an odd phrase, when you think about it; to be, physically, in a strange location is one thing. But we know better than to take this phrase literally -- it refers, of course, to a state of mind.

I've always thought it interesting how geography works its way into our daily language. To say one is in a "weird place" in order to convey some kind of life-altering instability says a lot, I think, about how subtly place invades our consciousness. We are much more aware of where we are than we usually acknowledge.

And think, for a minute, about an actual State of Mind. A physical place that represents your consciousness. In reality, physical places are nothing more than fragments of that imagined place -- or, rather, the billions of imagined places in which each one of us lives. Assuming that we have the ultimate freedom to make all of our choices for ourselves, we live in the States of our Minds. We create our own rules, social structures, traditions, languages. Each one of us forms, throughout the course of life, our own culture. We build our personal geography.

If we live in the States of our Minds, what does this mean for the world around us? Our emotions, our values, our thoughts, our dreams -- how do all of these things translate into physical reality? Does a fence protect us or cage us in? Do streets speed us along or divide us from our neighbors? If we choose to live in the city, do we do so to become more connected, or to get lost in the crowd? Do we live in a lively place? A dangerous place? A mysterious place?

A weird place?