Nov 4 | Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens
Nov 4, 2016
6pm - 7pm
The Muffler Shop, 359 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago
The Mobile Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens, created by artist Jenny Polak, is imagined as a deployable speakers’ corner that is both functional and symbolic. The two halves of the Speakers’ Podium rely on each other. Suburban house collides with prison fence to invoke the needed voices and ever-presence of the incarcerated among the free in a country that locks up 2 million people. The Speakers’ Podium is inspired by the effective coalition of citizens and immigrants/non-citizens who fought successfully to block the building of a for-profit detention center by Corrections Corporation of America in Crete, IL. Weekly programming will feature activists, poets, student groups, prison abolition groups, performing artists, and individuals who through their practice engage with conversations around mass incarceration, immigrant detention, and citizenship.
free and open to the public; rsvp
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Diaz Lewis and Balas & Wax
Diaz Lewis and Balas & Wax perform a new work for four voices at the Mobile Speakers' Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens November 4. This work explores a provision in the 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act—which includes a quota to detain 34,000 undocumented immigrants nightly—incorporating the bill itself, detainee interviews, intake documents, news reports, and other sources to question the humanity and unintended consequences of our current immigration policies.
Balas & Wax is the ongoing collaborative art practice of Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz. Their work mines social histories, texts and archives—using poetry, ethnography, and multimedia production to create writing, installations, performances and public works. Their work has recently been presented at Experimental Sound Studio, Compound Yellow, and in the Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature, and Art. They are part of ThreeWalls’ current Research and Development Lab program cohort.
Websites: diaz-lewis.tumblr.com & balasandwax.com
Patricia Nguyen
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. As a child of refugees, her performance work is grounded in her family’s stories to critically engage with issues of forced migration, notions of freedom, inherited war trauma, state violence, memory, and healing. In her practice as a performance artist, she creates durational performances and devised theater that centers on oral histories of immigrants and refugees. Her performance installations play with the tactile and sensorial affects of audience witnessing and participation to explore the relationship between bodies, objects, and memory. She has performed at the Nha San Collective in Vietnam, the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Jane Addams Hull House, Oberlin College, Northwestern University, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Prague Quadrennial. Nguyen has over 15 years experience working in arts education, community development, and human rights in the United States and Vietnam. She has facilitated trainings and workshops with The Fulbright Program, American Center at the US Embassy in Vietnam, Jane Addams Hull House, Social Workers Association in Vietnam, Asian Human Services, and 96 Acres. She is the cofounder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community-centered art, food, and design studio in Chicago. Patricia Nguyen is also a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
Website: patricianguyen.info
Jenny Polak
Jenny Polak makes site and community responsive art that reframes immigrant-citizen relations, amplifying demands for social justice. She examines detention centers, racial profiling, and strategies for surviving hostile authorities. Her work and site-specific projects have been exhibited widely and awarded support by NYFA, the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Study of Visual Art and Franklin Furnace, among others. She has held artist residencies including with the National Park Service, Newark Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and conceived the Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens while she was Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University.
Website: jennypolak.com
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This venue is physically accessible. Please contact Arts + Public Life at 773.702.9724 with any questions or accommodation requests.
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