ACRE TV

Category: The Set Speaks

  • Blueprints

    Blueprints

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    The poster from The Set Speaks, designed by Kera MacKenzie with a drawing by Robert MacKenzie, is on view as a part of:

    Blueprints

    May 21-July 2, 2016
    Opening Reception: Saturday, May 21, 4-6 pm
    Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center
    6433 N Ravenswood Ave.
    Chicago IL, 60626

    Featuring works by Gwyneth Anderson, Janet Austin, George Berlin, Jessica Bingham, Michael D. Brown, Nicola Buttari, Karen Y. Chan, Julietta Cheung, Collabobo, Alicia Craft, David Craft, Vadim, Dadiomov, Carolina Fernandez Del Dago, Gary Duehr, Adam Farcus, Leah Floyd and Cristina Molina, Snow Yunxue Fu, Nick Fury, Yhelena Hall, Erin Hayden, Sylvie Hayes-Wallace, Mauricio Herrero, Ruth Hodgkins, Sarra Jahedi, Kara Johnson, Jonathan Kaiser, Dave Kennedy, Joshua Kent, Thomas Kong, Craig Kraft, Dorothy Krakauer and Diane Ponder, Gabrielle Kroese, Beatriz Ledesma, Leigh Anthony Dehaney, Léon XLVII, Kera MacKenzie and Robert MacKenzie, Nathan Margoni, Alexander Martin, Martha Morimoto, Liam O’Connor, Klaus Pinter, Tim Porter, Emily Schulert, Eva Mae Sedjo, Jean Smith, Nathan Smith, Sanaz Sohrabi, Elena Solomon, Nectarios Stamatopoulos, Ruby Thorkelson, Nick Van Zanten, Sara Willadsen, Chris Wille, Gary Wiseman, and others.

    Blueprints at Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center will explore and celebrate the initial ideas that provide the spark for creative projects.

    This exhibition is being organized in collaboration with Roman Susan, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to develop and support new, locally-focused opportunities to display, create, and experience art in Rogers Park.

     

  • Occasional Inquiries: IN DEPTH// Living in the Cinematic Moment

    Occasional Inquiries: IN DEPTH// Living in the Cinematic Moment

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    The Set Speaks poster and studio, with Alex Herrera. Photo: Michael Workman

    Drew Mausert-Mooney and Kera MacKenzie sat down and had an interview with Michael Workman about their last show The Set Speaks,  the upcoming show ACRE TV LIVE at The MCA and the history of ACRE TV for Occasional Inquiries in this interview “IN DEPTH// Living in the Cinematic Moment: Kera MacKenzie and Drew Mausert-Mooney’s “MCA LIVE: ACRE TV.”‘

    “Live cinema, and particularly live cinema sent out over a distance (tele-vision, in other words) is interesting to us in so many ways. There’s the looseness of it. If you fail in live TV, the embarrassment only lasts for a moment, which encourages a kind of experimentation and prolific pace of making that we are both very excited by.”

    “Also, there’s something exciting about broadcasting live because you know that viewers are witnessing what you’re doing in separate places at the same time. It creates a concept of a community of viewers in a way that video on demand doesn’t. There’s a political aspect to that live audience, because they are all experiencing and negotiating “now” together, which is why news works so well on television.”

    “For The Set Speaks, we invited seven groups of Chicago artists to take over our temporary studio and our stream. We asked them to think about what a real time studio practice/performance can look like in a frame, over distance.”

    “Seeing other artists work out what it means to go live in totally different ways has been more powerful than I could’ve imagined.”

    “Sometimes it seems like the collaboration is the work itself. Especially when we do live shows. Getting a group of people to sync their clocks in a room together and make something is the best thing in the world, and I think you can really see it in the work when lots of different people’s energy goes in to holding a scene together for a moment. It changes the scale and when you’re a part of it you get to stay constantly surprised by the work you’re making.”

    Read the full interview here.

  • “By Way of Today” Cameron Gibson and Kyle Schlie

    “By Way of Today” Cameron Gibson and Kyle Schlie

    ACRE_TV_Press

    By Way of Today

    Cameron Gibson and Kyle Schlie
    2016

    By Way of Today is an expanded soap opera produced by Cameron Gibson and Kyle Schlie. Equal parts genre study, fan fiction and mundane sci-fi, it is a series like many and unlike none. Episodes “air” irregularly and in various forms such as video, script, rehearsal, live broadcast, commercial, installation and animation.

    bywayoftoday.com

    Airing March 21 – 31, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • Amina Ross

    Amina Ross

    2016_LinksHall_02

    twinskin performance at Links Hall, 2016. Image by Heather Halbert.

    “I have been probing language, making toys and playing with my friends. Over the course of this week I will continue to do just as we please. Please join me for language explorations with collaborator Jory Drew, new work from collaborative music-based mystery twinskin and a live-broadcast class from Rashi of Woman Untamed.” -AR

    SCHEDULE:

    MONDAY, March 14

    Photo installation (Assembled 5-6 pm)

    TUESDAY, March 15

    Word Games w/ Jory Drew (6 pm – TBD)

    WEDNESDAY, March 16

    Word Games w/ Jory Drew (6 pm – TBD)

    THURSDAY, March 17

    Day Work by twinskin (9 am – 11 am)

    FRIDAY, March 18

    Rashida Khanbey (Rashi) of  WomanUntamed – live streamed morning class (10 am – 11 am)

    SATURDAY, March 19

    Word Games w/ Jory Drew (6 pm – TBD)

    SUNDAY, March 20

    Night Work by twinskin (8 pm – TBD)

    Looping video works when not live:

    Hiba Ali
    Postcolonial Language Segment2: Commercial, 2013-2015, 1:30
    hibaali.info

    NIC Kay
    body hack, 2015
    soft + cunt, 2016 4:11
    nic-kay.com

    Camille Laut
    Il Faudra Combler La Distance, 2015, 11:04
    vimeo.com/camillelaut

    Yani Aviles
    Blowing in the Wind, 2015, 2:04
    yaniaviles.com

    A.j. McClenon
    the more you are, 2013, 12:17
    ashleyjmcclenon.com

    Elena Tejada-Herrera
    INTIMACY, 2016, 3:38
    tejadaherrera.wordpress.com

    Emily Schulert
    3 Dancing Girls, 2015, 00:23 Loop
    Secret Garden, 2015, 00:21 Loop
    emilyschulert.wordpress.com

    Jeffrey Chance
    DuMaCaNaNa, 2016, 1:05 Loop
    cargocollective.com/jchance

    Amina Ross
    If Today Never Gives Up In Me, 2015, 1:54 Loop
    A Bridge, [A Black,] A Barrel, A Back, 2015, 6:24 Loop
    Raw Footage #2, 2013, 00:44 Loop
    White Rat, 2013, 00:56 Loop
    aminaross.com

    Amina Ross is an undisciplined artist fascinated with the abstraction and manipulation of visual and written language. As of late these interests have led to an exploration of PLAY as both a site of inquiry and a critical mode of making. Amina’s practice consists of image-making, writing, performance, and installation strategies.

    Jory Drew is an artist whose practice relates the conjunction of thought and vision, as they relate meaning, to pattern and repetition. Drew abstractions work to outline this confusion, of image over meaning or use over function, with the playful nature style.

    twinskin is a collaborative project by Joelle Mercedes and Amina Ross. “Twin skin” colloquially refers to the contours left behind after the birth of twins. Amina and Joelle would like to tuck away in this skin-sheath for a bit, there is sanctuary in this site of the underbelly. twinskin’s love of text, color, material and sound articulate a longing, a strangeness, a place between the skin one shows the world and the body that one inhabits.

    Rashida KhanBey (Rashi) is creator of Woman Untamed, a sensual dance fitness class created to help people feel strong, sexy and sensually alive in their bodies.

    Airing March 14 – 20, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • “#NewGlobalMatriarchy” Stephanie Graham and Maya Mackrandilal

    “#NewGlobalMatriarchy” Stephanie Graham and Maya Mackrandilal

    NGM ACRE Image

    #NewGlobalMatriarchy

    Stephanie Graham and Maya Mackrandilal
    2016

    The Goddesses are back, and they’re not happy. They find themselves in a world that has forgotten the radical abundance of women, forgotten our fierce, warrior insides. They’re back, ready to fuck shit up, to take pride in the limitations of their human form—eager for sex, money, decadence, violence, love, community, and power. They will raze the earth with the righteous fire of their anger and build a new one from the ruins: a culture of abundance, radical justice, and balance.

    #NewGlobalMatriarchy Multiple Events

    For #NewGlobalMatriarchy, Stephanie Graham and Maya Mackrandilal will present a series of performances and events that imagine radical black femme futures. The two will perform as ancient goddesses who have become incarnated in contemporary US-hegemonic culture, a world of reality television, instagram celebrity, and hyper-sexualization. By inhabiting the visual language and logic of consumerism and voyeurship, the goddesses infiltrate imperialism on its home turf, imbuing the mundane and familiar with moments of radical imagination. What does it mean to be a strong woman with friends in a culture that can only imagine female sexual competition for the ever-elusive “good man”? How can we construct narratives that sabotage a culture that devalues black life, the labor of women, and commodifies queer desire? Is it possible to seduce the oppressor into relinquishing his power?

    Graham and Mackrandilal will be joined by collaborators from a wide range of Chicago creative communities, including FEMelanin, a women of color identified theatre collective, and a reprisal of AudioGraham, a one-night music video festival. Programming will also include an international assortment of artists, poets, and collectives submitting work via video and participating in discussions via online video-chat services.

    mayamackrandilal.com
    missgraham.com

    Airing March 7 – 13, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • “the strangest gathering since the destruction of the Tower of Babel” Adela Goldbard

    “the strangest gathering since the destruction of the Tower of Babel” Adela Goldbard

    windmills

    the strangest gathering since the destruction of the Tower of Babel

    Adela Goldbard
    2016

    Films, photographs, maps, drawings, building and cooking will transform the studio into a set where late XIX century collides with contemporary Chicago. The project was prompted by the book “The Devil in the White City” and will stage archival research and ethnographic explorations of Jackson Park. This work will dig into the immanent exoticism and colonialism of a show of spectacle such as the World’s Columbian Fair of 1893 and into the influence that private institutions like the University of Chicago (est. 1890) can have in the (mis)configuration of a community.

    adelagoldbard.com
    youtube.com/adelagoldbard

    Airing February 29 – March 6, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • Open TV

    Open TV

    MANA-DIGITAL FLYER

    Between Monday the 22nd and Sunday the 28th, the #OpenTVCommunity will be live on camera developing new ideas, choreographing and rehearsing dance routines, shooting and editing video projects, and more.

    The week will also include a drag photoshoot with Shea Couleé, a dance party with Cqqchifruit and La Spacer of TRQPiTECA, and a performance by dancers from #OpenTVOriginals: #FullOutSeries.

    The #OpenTVMarathon will feature the artists from the Open TV Community: Fatimah Asghar with Jamila Woods, Darling Shear, Eli McKinnon, Honey Pot Performance, King is a Fink, Shea Couleé, Kai Green, Anna Martine Whitehead, James Welch, Mlondolozi Zondi, LADY/WATCH, and TRQPiTECA.

    SCHEDULE:

    MONDAY, February 22

    11:30 am: Fatimah Asghar in conversation with Jamila Woods about web series, poetry and politics
    5:00 pm: Darling Shear dance rehearsal
    6:00 pm: Elijah McKinnon for Two Queens in a Kitchen

    TUESDAY, February 23

    6:00 pm: Honey Pot Performance: Gala meeting

    WEDNESDAY, February 24

    8:00 pm: King is a Fink Productions, featuring dance performance and more

    THURSDAY, February 25

    12:30 pm: Darling Shear dance rehearsal
    6:00 pm: Shea Couleé introduces #LipstickCity

    FRIDAY, February 26

    8:00 am: Film shoot for Triggers, by Kai Green, Anna Martine Whitehead, James Welch and Mlondi Zondi
    5:00 pm: Darling Shear dance rehearsal
    8:00 pm: LADY/WATCH — Tien Tran and Kieran Kredell — choreography

    SATURDAY, February 27

    2:00 pm: Open TV Screening at Mana!
    7:00 pm: LADY/WATCH — Tien Tran and Kieran Kredell — choreography
    10:00 pm: TRQPITECA LIVE with Cqqchifruit and Natalie Mercedes (La Spacer)

    SUNDAY, February 28

    12:00 pm: Darling Shear dance rehearsal
    4:00 pm: Film shoot for Triggers, by Kai Green, Anna Martine Whitehead, James Welch and Mlondi Zondi

    OPEN TV is a Chicago-based web platform for television by queer, trans and cis-women and artists of color, currently a research project by Aymar Jean Christian, assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University.

    @weareoentv | #weareopentv | weareopen.tv

    Airing February 22 – 28, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • “YYYYMMDD” Blair Bogin

    “YYYYMMDD” Blair Bogin

    BlairBogin_YYYYMMDD

    YYYYMMDD

    Blair Bogin
    2016

    “Monday is work, Tuesday is laundry, Wednesday is sleep, you pee, shave your goatee and reel through, eyes rolling east to west. The seven-day week originates from early civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia attempting to make sense of nature by studying the sky. This knowledge of expert star-gazers resulted in the titles of classical planets as symbolic totems of time. But now that the glare of astral forces has been replaced by the glow of our screens, what does a seven day week mean?

    From Monday, February 15th – Sunday February 21st, I ask anyone in Chicago or beyond to call in, stop by or post online their list of things to do that day. From short concise checklists to detailed stories, I will document this information within the physical space of the set (through improved performance & installation) creating a live timetable of various peoples day and therefore treating the four walls as a collective, zoomed in, square block in a calendar page.

    Each participants shared, daily undertakings will be an important component for re-creating or preserving a mythology. Moon, Monday, Lunes, Mars, Martes, Mardi, Mercury, Miércoles, together we will realize the contemporary language, patterns or pacing of each day, what it can characterize, denote or emote.

    Tune in, call in, stop in, write in to keep time on a cosmic clock of storytelling, performance, legendary quests and visiting guest as we digest the meanings, muse-ings and markings mingled into our modern calendar.” -BB

    blairbogin.com

    To share your schedule for any day this week you can:
    CALL and leave a message at: (240)-883-6464
    or
    SEND AN EMAIL to: iamdoingthistoday@gmail.com
    This can be anonymous or not.

     

    Airing February 15 – 21, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • “Eke Name” Kera MacKenzie, Andrew Mausert-Mooney and Jesse Malmed

    “Eke Name” Kera MacKenzie, Andrew Mausert-Mooney and Jesse Malmed

    Eke Name

    2016
    Concept and Images: Kera MacKenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney
    Writing: Jesse Malmed
    Still life base: Min Song
    Tortoise sculpture: Daniel Baird

    Two week-long, live, static shots — a still life, a landscape — are made dynamic by orbiting lights and ceaseless time. Text, made dynamic by the reader, plays alongside wondering, “what is it, by any other name?”

    keramackenzie.com
    vimeo.com/amm
    jessemalmed.net

    Airing February 8 – 14, 2016

    As part of The Set Speaks

  • The Set Speaks

    The Set Speaks

    TheSetSpeaks_posterThe Set Speaks

    February 8 – March 31, 2016

    ONLINE

    ACRETV.org

    ON SET

    Propeller Fund Studios
    Mana Contemporary
    2233 S Throop St, 4th flr. | Chicago, IL

    The problem is to make space speak, to feed and furnish it; like mines laid in a wall of rock
    which all of a sudden turns into geysers and bouquets of stone.

    – Antonin Artaud, The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto)

     

    The Set Speaks is a two-month continuous live stream featuring seven artist-groups who will produce week-long performances from a 641 square foot studio in Chicago. Provided with 24/7 access, four cameras, a video switcher, a computer and a connection to the internet, each group will create their own 168-hour live, durational work. Borrowing from the ubiquitous forms of nature cams and security feeds, the live broadcasts will be equal parts moving image works and portraits of the artists at play, rest, rehearsal, and performance. Taking shape and enduring alongside the viewers’ real-times, the interests and subjectivities embedded in the works will amount to seven takes on simultaneity. Stop-by, call-in, and watch: YYYYMMDD, #NewGlobalMatriarchy, 2 Queens in a Kitchen, soap operas, still LIVEs, and more.

    BlairBogin_YYYYMMDD

    Blair Bogin, YYYYMMDD, 2016. Courtesy the artist.

    Week 1: February 8 – 14 / Eke Name Kera MacKenzie, Andrew Mausert-Mooney and Jesse Malmed
    Week 2: February 15 – 21 / YYYYMMDD Blair Bogin
    Week 3: February 22 – 28 / #OpenTVMarathon, Open TV: Darling Shear, King is a Fink, Fatimah Asghar with Jamila Woods, Honey Pot Performance, LADY/WATCH, Eli McKinnon, Shea Couleé, TRQPiTECA, Kai Green, Anna Martine Whitehead, James Welch and Mlondolozi Zondi
    Week 4: February 29 – March 6 / the strangest gathering since the destruction of the Tower of Babel Adela Goldbard
    Week 5: March 7 – 13 / #NewGlobalMatriarchy Stephanie Graham and Maya Mackrandilal
    Week 6: March 14 – 20 / Amina Ross
    Week 7: March 21 – 31 / By way of Today Cameron Gibson and Kyle Schlie

     

    Technical Assistance: John Kyle Cronan and Nick Bacon