On July 10, 2-4 PM Perel and artist, R.E.H Gordon, will host a reading circle of Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960’s by Carrie Lambert-Beatty. The reading circle is open to the public, and topics in the book will be used as for general discussion of what makes a dance, and the history and future of dance in contemporary art.

On July 16, 7-9 PM Perel will guest curate an evening for the literary series Red-Rover, entitled: Magnetic Affinities & Altered Relations. The event is open to the public and will feature text-based performances, sound and video works that channel haunting discontinuities between identity,place, desire and visibility by San Francisco-based artist Jai Arun Ravine and local artists Zihan Loo and Oliverio Rodriguez.

On July 23, 5-8 PM, Perel will open her solo show, For a long time, all I could do was surrender. The show will feature photography, writing, video and performance made in collaboration with artist Oliverio Rodriguez. The artists will expose their collaborative relationship occupied within the context of performative submission. Their work probes surrender in its myriad definitions; 1 a : to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand b : to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another 2 a : to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner b : to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence). Through mutually generated texts on childhood memories, romantic love, the limitations of the body and sexual abandon, the artists create landscapes of distanced roleplay, in which they perform with/for one another live and for the camera. Perel’s show runs from July 23-31 and is open by appointment: 312-593-8691.

WORK IN THE WOODS is a darkly comical scene. The main character DISCIPLINE BEAR, workshops his BEARbrand, “a lifestyle corporation” with five administrative agencies and six product and service divisions, approaching every corner of life from food to clothing, exercise, occupation, scheduling, and even entertainment. The BEARbrand’s corporate structure aims to ensure comfort and security in the WOODS, as countermovement to ETIQUETTE BEAR’s leaving. At best, DISCIPLINE is an attentive and charismatic young executive. At worst, he’s an exploitative megalomaniacal sentimentalist. In a tragic confusion of motivations, DISCIPLINE spends a month wrestling with his compulsively cumbersome ultra-bureaucracy under the guise of attending to ETIQUETTE’s increasingly obstructed needs.

Desperate for any sources, the protagonist turns to the viewers of the work, ordinary humans with no experiential knowledge of the WOODS, to help him define and resurface conditions that ultimately have no potential for bolstering his far-reaching romantic project. The drama attempts to portray the dark energy massing in the wake of failing societal conventions like gender roles and dominant ideologies (religious, nationalistic, militaristic, industrial, and progressive), and also the mounting tensions between social “norms” and contemporary efforts to define and orient identities distributed across life’s real conditions, in real time.

Due to the relational nature of the project WORK IN THE WOODS will be open for viewing on an invitation and referral basis only. Viewing the work is not like viewing a conventional play. Participants are invited to schedule a personal meeting with DISCIPLINE BEAR to digest the work in conversation with the character and/or collaborate through exchange as he workshops his BEARbrand. Invitations will go out the first full week in March.

This project reveals a “behind the scenes” look at the working process by a group of artists. This unique collaborative effort reflects and questions the collaboration of interdisciplinary artists who usually work alone. This project also examines how group dynamics affect the creative process and explores how individuals relate and respond to the process of collaboration and group work.

Using a set of guidelines, a collective artwork will be made describing the shared atmosphere of the studio and exhibition/project spaces that are Spoke. Each artist will have two opportunities to install, interact and respond to the collective artwork over a two week span of time. Seeing the project as a weaving of practices and a material conversation, all the artists will come together after the first week to discuss and reflect on the project thus far before resuming for the second week.

Featuring Jeroen Nelemans, Heather Mullins, Deirdre Colgan, Kristin Mariani, Rana Siegel and Jean Alexander Frater.

In the days following September 11, 2001, Clear Channel Communications distributed a memo to 1,200 of their radio stations. Along with songs referencing bombs, bullets and airplanes, the Bangles’ 1980s pop hit “Walk Like An Egyptian” was included as “lyrically questionable.” Executives strongly suggested that DJs avoid playing it.

Do these instants represent what Cairo looks like from America? What does the city look like close up? Cairo On The Length is a project that taps the imaginations of over 50 people to construct a collective image of contemporary Cairo. Viewers are invited on a collaborative passage through the city, guided by both locals and outsiders, via a collection of photographs, maps, drawings, texts, videos, and an evening of readings.

Over four months, the artist, a citizen of the United States and of Egypt, drifted for 100 hours with 30 different people in Cairo. Some of the walkers had spent their entire lives in Egypt; some were tourists who had been in the city for a day. Each of 28 segments of the walk began from the end point of the previous segment; conversation and encounters on the walks dictated their paths.

Each segment was documented with photographs and with writing composed by the walkers, as well as through a process of call and response with Chicago artists and writers. Over the course of the four-month project, the artist sent photographs from each walk to Chicago artists and writers, requesting a response in whichever form each individual saw fit.

During the project at Spoke, the artist will host walks from the space through the West Loop. The public is invited to join in a process of observation, collection, and discussion about our own evolving city. The materials produced from these walks will be sent to artists in Egypt, who will in turn create responses. Through this cycle of exchange, a collective image of Chicago’s West Loop will be produced.

The Ways of Connecting the Floor to the Ceiling investigates the creative process through the use of material and language. An installation or a material component of process, tufts of raw wool and hair will morph into an abstract surface of felted fibers, growing out of the architecture and spreading throughout the gallery. The artists will open the gallery to visitors as they construct the space, ultimately creating an environment of process. The visitors will become participants as they move through the space, creating a collective path by felting the raw materials on the floor with their feet. As the space congeals, a reading will occur at the end of the show, bringing writers whose process is evident in their final product into the space, to build upon the environment of experiment, chance, intention and the spirit of continuum.

Through the fusion of found and custom made objects, Porter creates mechanical prototypes which mimic human and animal behavior as well as natural phenomenon. Emphasizing the quality of hand-made object, Porter’s sculptures serve as performative prototypes, which embrace experimentation and the relationship between inventor and invention, as well as invention and user.

Lise Haller Baggesen (Chicago, USA), Gitte Bog (Mexico City, MEX), Gudrun Hasle (Copenhagen, DK), Anni Holm (Chicago, USA) and Berit Nørgaard (Copenhagen, DK) will focus their energy on exploring the possibilities of mutually beneficial relationships rooted in conversation, exchange and sincerity.

Baggesen looks at her relationship with America through her experience as a recent immigrant, while Bog invites visitors to form relations with residents of Mexico City. Hasle examines a break up, while Holm brings people together through personalized songs and Nørgaard explores the kindness of strangers.

In collaboration with dress-maker and fabric-based artist Kristin Mariani Frieman, re[public] in/decency are the inaugural artists-in-residence at Spoke from April 26-May 23, 2010.

Our cross-disciplinary and community-engaged research envisioning the creation of embodied and large-scale installation of community-interactive “palimpsests” unearth hidden cultural memory and promote dialogue amongst and between diverse “diasporas.”

The Palimpsest Project (phase one) will employ the creation of an environmental and performative chalkcloth “palimpsest” to trace the intricate relationships between the physical body, transgenerational memory, and landscapes of belonging.

We view the chalkboard and chalk cloth as metaphoric contemporary incarnations of the historical palimpsest, a manuscript on parchment which has been effaced to make room for later writing, but of which antecedent traces remain. It is our hope that enlarging and collectively engaging in the rite of inscribing and re-inscribing personal narrative will create unique and powerful (individual and collective) connections whist engaging in an accessibly expressive and socio-cultural dialogue.

Over the span of three weeks DYNAMO project-space in Thessaloniki, Greece and Spoke in Chicago, U.S.A. will host the commencement of dialogue between selected artists. The conversation will spring from an open, collaborative process and will be used to identify topics relevant to the group. Invited curators, artists and historians will lead discussions during weekends for the duration of the DYNAMO exhibition.

Initially, artists will display past work at DYNAMO, while an exchange of knowledge, ideas, and influences will spur each artist to create new work in response to discussion, as they each contend with where they situate themselves politically in contemporary culture and within their historical past. The exhibition space will reflect the organic nature of conversation, continually evolving and displaying evidence of discussions along side with both past and newly created work. The process will be evident, presented at DYNAMO just before the end of the exhibition.

Organized by Rachel Moore. Artist participants include Lena Athanasopoulou, Kim DeBord & Rachel Moore, Monica Herrera, Georgia Kotretsos, Areti Leopoulou & Theofanis Nouskas, Dimitris Michalaros, Jeroen Nelemans, Shannon Schmidt, Briana Schweizer, Hui-min Tsen, Chryse Tsiota and Vasilis Zografos. Guest participants include Stephanie Bertrand, Ellen Rothenberg, Syrago Tsiara and Shannon Stratton.

Spoke will be home to a miniature version of the Hagia Sophia. Complete with gold dome, marble floors, and 168 windows, this recreation is just big enough to seat one adult inside. Come hear about its colorful history, and enjoy the warm golden light of seasonal affective disorder therapeutic lamps housed inside its walls.

Presented by Gwendolyn Zabicki.

Waiting Room is a performance that operates much like a place of business. Spoke will be transformed into a waiting room, complete with comfy chairs, a variety of reading material, and soothing music. A camera will monitor the room, automatically capturing digital stills at regular intervals.

As a participant, you will be asked to sign and stamp a timecard, and we’ll set a timer for your desired wait time. This can be as short or as long as you like, minutes or hours. Then relax and enjoy an aimless span of time. An attendant will call your name when your wait is over, and you’ll again be asked to stamp your time card to conclude the experience.

The images and minutes collected during the performance will be used as documents of the event, and presented together as a monument to moments lost in waiting. Nadeau is interested in how these performed instances of waiting function within the larger narrative of the mechanics of time, as well as how they engage the politics of production, and offer a new valuation of idle time.

Work by Amber-Carla-Lia, Luke Boehnke, Kim & Zach DeBord, Kazuki Guzman, Andy Hall, Scott Jarrett, Kevin Kaempf and Heather Mullins.

See the website for details and related events.