PAC/edge Fest

The PAC/edge festival here in Chicago opened quietly last night.

I have a good number of gripes about the way the festival is presented and organized but never the less as I enter the third year of the festival I realize that during this month in March is the only time I really feel like their is energy in the performance community in Chicago. I feel artistically excited and at home.

Not that everything will be great, but there are going to be numerous experiments, small scale works and a mix of installation, theater, performance art, and dance that you wish the MCA was doing all the time.

This year I am not performing and have mixed feelings about not being involved more but I have several friends putting up shows.

Kata Mejia opened a piece last night, I Draw You You Draw Me In. She won a commission from PAC for last year to produce it and I think it is interesting and typifies the PAC/edge Fest performance right now.

Tonight my friends in Weather Talking present the opening of a collaborative piece.

Kim of Morganville has hurt her leg and hopefully they won't have to cancel their show.

Also Deva Eveland has built a box to blow up balloons in.

Goat Island is performing one of their rare performances.

Malin Lindelow has an installation you can wail in.

Julia Rhoads/Lucky Plush presents Surrelium, which was a nice piece when I saw it in a version a year or so ago.

Nomy Lamm is someone I know from my days in Olympia, WA. She has been quiet since moving to Chicago but now she's giving it up one night only at PAC.

Hopefully this year will go well and the organizers will start to get it together...as in the festival artist should be getting free passes to the festival shows, the volunteer system could use a revamp, and the opening night party priced itself out of an audience. And so on.

Right now they seem like they are trying to make due as they establish themselves. Maybe the money will start to flow in and they won't lose their audience in the meantime.

They have a fancy new entrance-way featuring a nice video projection of a swimmer by the way.

April Grant Dates

There are two great art opportunities for performance artists coming up in April.

In NYC, the Franklin Furnace Archive is offering a $2,000-5,0000 grant just for performance artists. I don't see that very often.

In Chicago, Gallery 400 is receiving apps for their Art At the Edge program which gives you a three week installation in their space and a good deal of support. Go to the "Upcoming" Exhibits link to fine the right info.

erik

What Animals?

The animals that are tagging along with me was a glib idea. I liked sounding like a band and not being alone while injecting my website into cyberspace. My girlfriend had created a barnyard at her site and it was a clear thing. Animals are clear.

But then animals have regularly appeared in the solo performance stuff I make without much intention behind it. They are often metaphors for emotions and marginalized groups...a shark is hunger/the desire to live/the elderly, pidgeons are the homeless, performance artists in Chicago are interviewee-animals.

I also think the animals is a good way to think about all the unintentional, unperformed stuff in a performance. Not more true or better but a piece of performance that is always there. Animals are our history and a foundation and a way to connect to the audience.

Coming from a more theater place I am shocked by the lack of emotion in the visual art I have interacted with over the last few years.

Other Blogs I Have Known

This blog is preceded by a few other brave souls.

Matt Dallman, composer, musician, Integral thinker & writer maintains a blog called the Daily Goose in which he considers art, Integral things, the growth of his unborn children both artistic and human (or bean). He has called himself Goose for years for what I can tell and that is his secret webname as well. www.MatthewDallman.com

My girlfriend Stephanie used to have a secret anonymous blog that she wouldn't show me or talk about. One day I made a joke that I accidentally found it on line and she decided that it might actually happen one day so she erased it. Now she uses Blogger to create a question and answer page for her club the Little Arts Society

I also know another verbal Matt in Matt Rentschler who keeps our heads clear with some daily commentary in his diary.

And then of course there is Khaela Maricich who has a lovely website that has many internal links that don't work for me but the blog is there and it is mess and gooey.

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blog

I have been wanting to write some articles for my website but there isn't always enough time to kick them out so now i have a blog. I am more interested in trying out some ideas than being an alt-news source or anything,...more personal and conceptual than that.

I have been slowly creating this site www.ErikAndTheAnimals.com for several months and I am still trying out somethings. Mostly it is a platform for my portfolio and a place the play out some ideas. Finding space to perform doesn't get much easier than this,

Drop a comment if you like. Join my mailing list if you want to receive notices about my activities.

erik