Mar 1st 2018

Artist Ellen Rothenberg joins writer and translator Nathanaël, artist and translator Jennifer Scappettone, and writer and code artist Judd Morrissey to present readings, performances, and talks on movement and migration. This presentation considers connections between past and contemporary issues of migration.

At the Poetry Foundation, 61 West Superior Street, Chicago, Thursday, March 1, at 7:00 pm.

Free presentation in support of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership commission of site-specific installation by internationally-acclaimed, Chicago-based artist Ellen Rothenberg. Entitled ISO 6346: ineluctable immigrant, it will be on view beginning February 1, 2018, in the Institute’s main floor Gallery, 610 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. With this work, Rothenberg prompts visitors to consider connections between past and contemporary issues of migration. The project is inspired by objects and documents that Rothenberg uncovered in the Spertus collection—as well as research she pursued in Berlin at Germany’s largest refugee camp, currently housed in the monumental Tempelhof Airport, a disused site that was originally designed and built by the Nazis.

Rothenberg has titled the installation ISO 6346 after the international standard for identification and marking of shipping containers, such as those being used to house refugees at Tempelhof. Images of these containers will appear in dialogue with materials from the Spertus collection—such as passports, birth certificates, comics, and photographs—that represent earlier Jewish immigration and movement. The word “ineluctable” in the exhibition title (meaning: inescapable, unavoidable) was first used in print in 1623, notably at the same time as the words “immigrate” and “migration.”

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