Big Car

Kader Attia- The Body’s Legacies (Part 1: The Objects)
2019-05-07 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Attia’s recent film The Body’s Legacies (Part 1: The Objects) is an extensive account of testimonies by academics, scholars, collectors, and museum directors from Canada, the US, Ivory Coast, and many other locations, relating the histories behind bodies and artifacts from the world over.
This screening is part of the Bauhaus Imaginista: Collected Research exhibition.
Project partners:
Goethe-Institut, Bauhaus Kooperation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Auswärtiges Amt, Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
On the occasion of 100 Jahre bauhaus (100 Years of Bauhaus).
Kader Attia (b. 1970, France), grew up in Paris and in Algeria. Preceding his studies at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and at Escola Massana, Centre d’Art i Disseny in Barcelona, he spent several years in Congo and in South America.
The experience with these different cultures, the histories of which over centuries have been characterised by rich trading traditions, colonialism and multi-ethnic societies, has fostered Kader Attia’s intercultural and interdisciplinary approach of research. For many years, he has been exploring the perspective that societies have on their history, especially as regards experiences of deprivation and suppression, violence and loss, and how this affects the evolving of nations and individuals — each of them being connected to collective memory.
His socio-cultural research has led Kader Attia to the notion of Repair, a concept he has been developing philosophically in his writings and symbolically in his oeuvre as a visual artist. With the principle of Repair being a constant in nature — thus also in humanity —, any system, social institution or cultural tradition can be considered as an infinite process of Repair, which is closely linked to loss and wounds, to recuperation and re-appropriation. Repair reaches far beyond the subject and connects the individual to gender, philosophy, science, and architecture, and also involves it in evolutionary processes in nature, culture, myth and history.
In 2016, Kader Attia founded La Colonie, a space in Paris to share ideas and to provide an agora for vivid discussion. Focussing on decolonialisation not only of peoples but also of knowledge, attitudes and practices, it aspires to de-compartmentalise knowledge by a trans-cultural, trans-disciplinary and trans-generational approach. Driven by the urgency of social and cultural reparations, it aims to reunite which has been shattered, or drift apart.
Kader Attia’s work has been shown in group shows and biennials such as the 12thShanghai Biennial; the 12th Gwangju Biennial; the 12th Manifesta, Palermo; the 57th Venice Biennial; dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel; Met Breuer, New York; Kunsthalle Wien; MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; or The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York — just to name a few. Notable solo exhibitions include “The Museum of Emotion”, The Hayward Gallery, London; “Scars Remind Us that Our Past is Real”, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona; “Roots also grow in concrete”, MacVal in Vitry-sur-Seine; „The Field of Emotion“, The Power Plant, Toronto; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; “Repairing the Invisible”, SMAK, Ghent; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; “Sacrifice and Harmony”, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; “The Injuries are Here”, Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts de Lausanne; “Contre Nature”, Beirut Art Center; “Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob’s Ladder”, Whitechapel Gallery, London; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
In 2016, Kader Attia was awarded with the Marcel Duchamp Prize, followed by the Prize of the Miró Foundation, Barcelona, and the Yanghyun Art Prize, Seoul, in 2017.

Shelley Selim: The Women of Bauhaus Discussion
2019-05-15 18:30 - 20:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus art school, join curator Shelley Selim and learn more about the trailblazing women of this famously influential academy. While often overshadowed by their male counterparts, recent renewed interest has brought to light the female students and teachers of the Bauhaus and their incredible contributions to the Modernist movement.
Shelley Selim is Associate Curator of Design and Decorative Arts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. She provides curatorial oversight of the museum’s design and decorative art collections, as well as its two historic homes—the Lilly House and the Miller House and Garden. Her recent projects include Meadow, an interactive installation by artists Studio Drift now on display at the IMA’s Efroymson Entrance Pavillion, and a reinstallation of the IMA’s Design Gallery—the largest permanent collection gallery devoted to modern and contemporary design of any museum in the country.
Project partners:
Goethe-Institut, Bauhaus Kooperation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Auswärtiges Amt, Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
On the occasion of 100 Jahre bauhaus (100 Years of Bauhaus).

Wendelien van Oldenborgh- Two Stones
2019-05-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Two Stones explores the trajectories and ideals of the Bauhaus-trained, German architect Lotte Stam-Beese and the Caribbean activist and writer Hermina Huiswoud through dialogues and appearances by contemporary protagonists. Both Stam-Beese and Huiswoud spent time working in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and both ended up being active in the Netherlands after WWII.
Two Stones was filmed in the 1930s constructivist district of KhTZ in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the first large housing project on which Lotte Stam-Beese worked, and in Stam-Beese’s celebrated 1950s Pendrecht, designed during her period as Rotterdam’s main architect / urban planner.
In the 1970s, Hermina Huiswoud was agitating against the Rotterdam housing rule, which limited Caribbean Dutch inhabitants to settle in any of the city’s districts if their presence would exceed 5% of the population.
Resonances as well as dissonances between the distinct trajectories of the two women and their expectation from communist ideology, are sensed through thoughts and experiences of the protagonists, who all have a personal or professional relation to the issues at hand.
This screening is part of the Bauhaus Imaginista: Collected Research exhibition.
Project partners:
Goethe-Institut, Bauhaus Kooperation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Auswärtiges Amt, Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
On the occasion of 100 Jahre bauhaus (100 Years of Bauhaus).

Zvi Efrat- The Most Beautiful Campus in Africa
2019-06-04 19:00 - 20:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
A short film that critically illuminates the design by the Israeli architect and former Bauhaus student Arieh Sharon for the University of Ife campus, Ile–Ife, Nigeria, built in 1962 as part of an Israeli assistance program in West-Africa. Zvi Efrat, architect and architectural historian, is a partner in Efrat-Kowalsky Architects (EKA) and was head of the Department of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, from 2002 until 2010. He studied at Pratt Institute, at NYU, and at Princeton University. He has taught at several universities, lectured worldwide, published extensively, and curated numerous exhibitions, among them Borderline Disorder at the Israeli Pavilion of the 8th Architectural Biennale, Venice, in 2002, and The Object of Zionism at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel in 2011. His book, The Israeli Project: Building and Architecture 1948–1973, was published in Hebrew in 2004.
This screening is part of the Bauhaus Imaginista: Collected Research exhibition.
Project partners:
Goethe-Institut, Bauhaus Kooperation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Auswärtiges Amt, Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
On the occasion of 100 Jahre bauhaus (100 Years of Bauhaus).
Photo: Keren Kuenberg

Lugao Kasberg: Balay Means Home
2019-06-07 18:00 - 22:00 | Guichelaar Gallery, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Curated by Danicia Monét
Lugao Kasberg is a Mangyan-American artist based in New York City. His earliest memories were with family and community speaking his native Hanunó’o-Mangyan tongue in the Philippines. Balay means home in his traditional Hanuó’o language. Growing up in Indianapolis, IN as an indigenous person he experienced the hardships of poverty, depression, and abuse when his parents separated. Through the strength of family, education, entrepreneurship, and the arts he learned the importance of hard work and dedication as he was determined to attain a better life while also helping others.

During high school and college Lugao orchestrated community outreach initiatives which helped hundreds of youth explore, share, and celebrate art. This effort also ignited his love for film, photography, and documentation. As a successful commercial artist in New York City he was involved in creating works for some of the top brands in the world. After feeling creatively drained and unfulfilled in 2018 Lugao decided to reunite with his Mangyan family in the Philippines and live in the village.

He documented his journey through film, photography, and audio recording. Lugao is the first of his eight Mangyan-siblings and mother to return to their ancestral land after leaving for the United States in 1992. He shares the importance of family, community, and the connection to the land. Mangyans are the indigenous people of Mindoro Island in the Philippines. They have inhabited the land for thousands of years by practicing sustainable farming and developed tightly knit communities with their own language, writing systems, and government.

Like many other indigenous people, Mangyans also face issues of discrimination, land rights, and access to resources. As a solution, Lugao is using his platform to create visibility while also helping to grow the culture by developing initiatives for the youth and community through education and the arts. One such initiative is “Rice 4 Kidz”. This endeavor has had an impact by serving over 55,000 hot meals to one thousand Mangyan schoolchildren with the help of rice sponsors, faculty, and international community during the hunger months of August through October. Service being at the core of his work, Lugao aspires to bring positive change to this present generation for future generations.

To learn more about the artist visit
http://www.lugao.co
Instagram: @Lugao.co and @lugaokasberg

Otolith Group- O Horizon
2019-06-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The title refers to the surface layer of soil, changed in the area around Santiniketan as the result of Tagore’s introduction of new flora in development of the campus. In studying this trajectory, the film extends The Otolith Group’s ongoing consideration of the Anthropocene, a premise that denotes that the current geological age is one wherein human activity spurs the primary changes on climate and the environment. With O Horizon, The Otolith Group also proposes that Tagore’s project maps onto the notion of terraforming—a term originating in science fiction and now more widely used—whereby a party (typically but not always an interloper) reshapes the atmosphere of a place for their own needs.
O Horizon reflects upon modernist theories of dance and song developed by Tagore and the experimental practices of mural, sculpture, painting, and drawing developed by India’s great modernist artists affiliated with Santiniketan: K.G. Subramanyan, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij. O Horizon draws together visual arts, dance, song, music, and recital to assemble a structure of feeling of the Tagorean imagination in the 21st Century.
This screening is part of the Bauhaus Imaginista: Collected Research exhibition.
Project partners:
Goethe-Institut, Bauhaus Kooperation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Auswärtiges Amt, Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
On the occasion of 100 Jahre bauhaus (100 Years of Bauhaus).

99.1 WQRT Rhinestone Country Film Series-Urban Cowboy
2019-06-26 18:45 - 21:30 | Duke’s Indy, 2352 S West St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“You a real cowboy?” John Travolta traded disco for a mechanical bull in this adaptation by James Bridges and Aaron Latham of Latham’s article on Western nightlife. Texas country boy Bud (Travolta) moves to Houston to work on an oil rig with his Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin), and he swiftly becomes indoctrinated in the nighttime rituals of drinking, dancing, and showing off cowboy duds at Gilley’s, the enormous local honkytonk. There he meets and marries the sassy Sissy (Debra Winger), but the honeymoon quickly ends when Sissy starts spending too much time learning the men-only skill of mechanical bull-riding from ex-con Wes (Scott Glenn); Bud throws her out and hooks up with slumming Pam (Madolyn Smith). Under the paternal tutelage of Uncle Bob, Bud then learns not only how to master the bull but also what it takes to be a real man rather than just an ersatz cowboy. With a story, cast, and setting that were essentially Saturday Night Fever country-style, Urban Cowboy was poised to be a summer 1980 hit. Although its box office did not live up to Fever’s legacy, Urban Cowboy did spawn a soundtrack album of country-and-western hits and helped spur a Western fashion vogue; people from all regions began sporting cowboy boots, and mechanical bulls started replacing passé disco floors. The first of Travolta’s many comebacks, Urban Cowboy provided the star with a more “manly” image after his Moment by Moment (1978) fiasco, but it was neophyte co-star Winger who got even better notices. With its Western milieu and retro view of relationships, Urban Cowboy stands as a sign of the nascent Reagan era, as ’70s icon Travolta learned bull-riding himself and replaced his white polyester with a black Stetson.” ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
Presented by Upland Brewing Company

Wildstyle Paschall: Culture, Indy HipHop Music
2019-07-05 18:00 - 22:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Wildstyle Paschall’s multi-media installation “Culture, Indy Hiphop Music”, is a captivating look into the unseen counter culture of America’s most popular music genre centered in the capital of a Midwestern city more known for cornfields, a 500 mile race and various amateur sports. The ever-evolving cultural movement created by people of color exists in Indianapolis, isolated from much of the financial success and mainstream consumerism seen in larger cities.
As a lifelong musician and long time hiphop producer, Paschall is a product of 1980s and 90s hip hop culture. During a time
when hiphop storytelling, music, and culture expanded internationally, he was concerned that even by 2015 significant accounts of the rich culture created in central Indiana was not being archived to shared with outsiders as well as passed down to future generations.
“Culture, Indy Hiphop Music” takes the viewers and puts them on stage with independent hiphop artists performing and creating music to see their passion and dedication to the art through picture and video.

Aurora PhotoCenter at Tube Factory: Keliy Anderson-Staley
2019-07-05 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Aurora PhotoCenter officially launches this summer, joining Indianapolis with an inaugural community-focused workshop and exhibition by renowned tintype artist Keliy Anderson-Staley.

This exhibition will be open July 5-19 in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery.

In June 2019, Anderson-Staley set up her tintype studio at Tube Factory and made 70 tintype portraits over a four-day period. This exhibition showcases portraits made during Anderson-Staley’s visit to Indianapolis, as well as subjects photographed in other American cities from New York to Cleveland to Houston to San Francisco. A selection of historical tintypes from the collection of the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites provide context for the modern portraits and show how the medium shaped our identity as a state and nation from photography’s earliest days.

To make a tintype, a light sensitive collodion emulsion is mixed and poured onto each plate shortly before a portrait is made. Tintypes need long exposure times, so the subject must remain completely still for up to 30 seconds to produce a sharp image. People sitting for tintypes often don’t smile, as it is difficult to hold a smile perfectly still for the length of the exposure.

Unlike the instantaneous digital selfie of today, a tintype portrait is an intimate collaboration between the photographer and the sitter, resulting in a one-of-a-kind portrait and experience. These portraits are rich in atmosphere and detail, emphasizing an often intense and mesmerizing gaze. Anderson-Staley’s beautifully textured tintype portraits use 19th-century technology to depict the wholeness of what “American” means today.

Keliy Anderson-Staley was raised off the grid in Maine, studied photography in New York City, and currently lives and teaches photography at the University of Houston in Texas. Her images are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art (Maine), and Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. Her work was published in a solo issue of Light Work’s Contact Sheet and has been shown at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, SFO Museum, Akron Art Museum, Bronx Museum of Art, Southeast Museum of Photography and the California Museum of Photography, as well as at a number of non-profit art institutions and galleries around the country. In 2016 she completed a major public commission for the city of Cleveland, producing fifty large-scale portraits for installation in the airport tunnel of the rapid transit line. A book of her portraits, On A Wet Bough, is available from Waltz Books. She is represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery.

Founded by local artist-photographers, Adam Reynolds, Craig McCormick, and Mary Goodwin, Aurora Photo Center serves as a creative bridge between artists and the greater photographic community with a regional, national, and international perspective. Aurora will be a place where artists meet, create, share work, and find inspiration.
In its first year, Aurora will focus on awareness of photography as a medium for art and social expression. By hosting partnerships and pop-up-style events, Aurora will work to build a community in central Indiana around the medium of photography through exhibits, conversations, and workshops. As Aurora grows and receives non-profit status, it will establish a dedicated gallery space, along with darkroom and studio facilities for both community education and working artists.
“Photography was once a medium permanently documenting history, family, and places. Today it is a momentary medium ruled by innuendo,” says Craig McCormick, Aurora co-founder. “Through Aurora, we hope to explore how photography becomes art in fast and slow times.”
Partnering with Big Car Collaborative in the Garfield Park neighborhood, Aurora’s inaugural event will feature Anderson-Staley’s ongoing tintype portrait series, [hyphen] American. Based out of Houston, TX, Anderson-Staley has spent the past decade travel- ing the country with a portable 19th century tintype studio capturing a typological portrait survey of the human faces that make up today’s America. Her next stop is Indianapolis, where she will be holding a tintype workshop and portrait sessions open to the community, followed by a curated exhibition of her tintype portraits from Indianapolis and beyond.
“Keliy’s project is an open invitation for Indianapolis to come together in a collective portrait of our city,” says Aurora co-founder Mary Goodwin. “It gives us a chance to re-examine what it means to be ‘American’ today.”
[hyphen] American will be on display in the Tube Factory’s Efroymson Gallery July 5-26 with an opening reception on July 5. Keliy Anderson-Staley will be in Indianapolis June 13-16 making tintype portraits. She will host a workshop on tintypes on June 15.

Masters Retrospective II: Social Practice & Placemaking
2019-08-02 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The second cohort in UIndy’s MA in Social Practice Art exhibits their work from the last year in many neighborhoods in Indianapolis and from around the state, including interactive and participatory projects in the gallery.
*Closing Reception: Friday, August 16, 5-7 pm (Remarks at 6)
Gallery is free to attend & open during regular Tube Factory Artspace hours.
Eve Eggleston presents a series of social practice art projects to raise community awareness of the plight of the pollinators. This recent body of work re-purposed refuse in upcycling at Rabble Coffee in Indianapolis. Her current project is using beehives for education about urban agriculture, sustainability, environmentally healthy practices, and pollinator value at IPS 39: William McKinley as part of their Learning Nature Center and at Jason Micheal Thomas’s urban farm, Indy Urban Awareness Gardens. William McKinley hosts a live honeybee hive in their gardens and is a part of a curriculum to understand honeybees and other pollinators. Through working with their Garden Club, ran by several teachers and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, the hive will provide pollination for their gardens and orchard. This project also included a full day of lectures, demonstrations, and activities for every class to familiarize the students with these issues. Part of this discussion was learning to understand not only the benefits of honeybees, but all pollinators. To address native bee populations, her thesis project expanded to include creating pollinator hotels with the Green Team of Groundwork Indy. These ongoing projects are always looking to expand. Please contact Eggleston with any inquiries or any opportunities.
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Indianapolis artist Kindness AK is shaped by internal and external conflicts that have a tendency to manifest itself physically through the creative arts. Although some people would choose one specific platform to focus in, she is unconsciously drawn to multiple artistic mediums and media. Her many life experiences, ranging from scientific, therapeutic, and artistic, have become embedded tools which she uses to rediscover and accept a more competent, accountable, and positive self-narrative. The M.A. in Social Practice Art program has helped her align her passions by exploring how placemaking can encourage healing-centered engagement through community building and self-reflection. Her exploration is through a series of projects that are based on personal and professional interest. Projects displayed include Transformative conversations, Affirmation mirrors (individual and community), Trafficking, and Lyles Station. These projects all in one way or another narrate how to enhance or identify the already “existing power of resiliency” within the self and/or community to hopefully initiate more access to social justice. Her broader objective is to increase resiliency and empowerment, using art as a tool to promote critical reflection and build a more culturally inclusive lens of social justice and healing.
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Writer and memoirist Sarah J. Wilson has deepened her exploration of Indianapolis’ Eastside neighborhoods through her social practice and placemaking projects. She grew up there and continues to live there. By collecting artifacts and oral history, she has expanded her creative practice in writing and memoir to more directly engage residents on the Eastside and investigate its complicated and enduring history. This summer, she has worked on the Eastside to collect local history and artifacts, especially from youth and the aging population, to create interactive social practice projects to commemorate this history and to celebrate its future.

Jessica Uçul: White: Trash, Washed, Lies
2019-08-02 18:00 - 22:00 | Guichelaar Gallery, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
White: Trash, Washed, Lies features work made from the artist’s personal collection of photography and video.

About the artist
Jessica Uçul is an American artist who uses a variety of media, including found and archival imagery and everyday objects to make photographs, collages, videos, and sculpture. Uçul’s work maintains a regard for kitsch as a cultural expression of loss. Born and raised in Franklin, Indiana, Uçul received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in Indiana.

Cry Salon
2019-08-10 19:00 - 22:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Featuring readings by Sammi Skolmoski, William Joseph Gass, and Jeremy Kennedy / Soundtracked by John Dawson and Jared Landberg

About Performance:

Sammi Skolmoski, William Joseph Gass, and Jeremy Kennedy will present their contributions to the recently released book “Cry List”, a collection of essays on the topic of crying, along with a variety show other of poetic conversations, and short plays. The soundtrack for the evening will be provided by John Dawson and Jared Landberg.

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Bios:

Sammi Skolmoski is a writer and fiber artist born, living, and probably dying in Chicago. She is the managing editor at Featherproof Books and a contributor at Reductress, the Hard Times, Bandcamp, and elsewhere. Her first book, a translation of several shooting screenplays by the Dardenne brothers from their original French, came out in June.
William Joseph Gass (St. Louis) has worked in the direct patient caregiving industry since 2012. His wordage has been featured in publications including and from Art Papers, Universal Love Upload, and Penny-Ante, among others. He is happily partnered with Dr. Monica Sentmanat and their pets Reagan (MacNeil) and Adele (Bertei).
Since the late 1990’s, Jeremy Kennedy has been creating and exhibiting sound, artwork, and concepts in both community and academic settings. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2009, the largely self-taught artist spent over a decade living and working in Bloomington, Indiana. Kennedy is an active visual artist, writer, and sound-maker, as well as co-founder and playwright with P/Sicho Street Theatre Company, and a founding editor of Rebel Hands Press.
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About: Cry List
Contributors: Chelsea Rector, Jamie Iacoli, Jeremy Kennedy, Sammi Skolmoski, William Gass
Photography: Ang Wilson
Crying is nothing other than itself. Metaphor is a construct that brings crying out of itself… These essays are accounts of crying, and the essay lists are not metaphors. It is a way for the authors to say that these things have takenthem, emotionally, directly. No metaphors. What these essays account is the form of agitation we call crying. From joy to sorrow, the items listed explore the questions, what does it take/what makes us cry?. The lists are a conceptual framework, organizing the otherwise indomitable act of crying.
The essays each list five items that make the authors cry… Unlimited in range, about the tangible or abstract, the essays also ask you, the reader, to think about when you cry. “Cry List” is a collection of insights on opening the hermetically sealed core of crying through connection with another form of expression that appears outside the body. Scored throughout with watery photographic notation, “Cry List” assembles a world of feeling, tangential to objective reality.

Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Cloud Divination
2019-09-06 18:00 - 2020-01-11 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
In this new exhibition, New-York-based multi-media artist Saya Woolfalk explores our understanding of the human condition — a state of affairs governed by seemingly unavoidable conflicts such as birth, growth, and death. This show explores how technology has allowed us to ease our suffering by making change less difficult and transformation more enjoyable. Perhaps the ultimate human technological advancement would be the elimination of mortality by extending human life indefinitely in a biological, digital, or other virtual state. Recent advances suggest our species may already be on the cusp of achieving this evolutionary landmark.
Woolfalk’s exhibit at Tube Factory includes her signature installations, sculptures, prints, video art works, and the works of artists who influence her practice. It builds on one of her first projects, No Place (a play on the translation of the word utopia), where she collaborated with filmmaker and anthropologist Rachel Lears. Both then in their mid 20s, they invited people into Woolfalk’s studio to talk about their ideas of utopia and created work from there.
“Similar to the way you would construct a folktale, we took these ideas and we constructed the culture of the NoPlaceans. People would come to the studio, put on costumes and enact the things that they were imagining,” says Woolfalk who created a six-chapter ethnographic film about this future utopian world based on people’s visions.
To explore the conceptual boundaries of this cultural moment, this also led Woolfalk to create a fictional transhuman species known as the Empathics, which she describes as a race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. “If you have a utopia, then how do you actually make that utopia real? I worked with biologists at Tufts University to think about what in nature could occur in order for people to mutate to become more like plants.”
Woolfalk’s Tube Factory installation will extend the story of the Empathics, blending multi-media aesthetic phenomena, spirituality, cultural hybridization, capitalism, technoscience, and artificial intelligence to conjure a broad network of interconnecting philosophical strands. Informed equally by science fiction and anthropology, the morally ambiguous future that the exhibit shares is open to the interpretation of its viewers. “Going from modularity to monumentality is how I approach my practice. I work in ways that are incredibly small and I also work in ways that are incredibly big. The work functions like collage.”
Should we fear the world Woolfalk and other transhumanist artists are mapping? Should we embrace it? Should we shrug it off as a Pollyannic fantasy, doomed by the human idiot factor? Woolfalk seems to be implying a potentially disturbing fourth option: Some of us — particularly those with special status or outlandish means — have already started to transform. Is this art, or a warning shot across the cultural bow of the human race?

About the artist
Woolfalk (b 1979, Japan) is a pioneer within an emergent, international aesthetic movement examining transhumanism — a theoretical belief that humans will mobilize technology to transcend their biological limitations and evolve into a non-human, or “posthuman” race. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of The Empathics and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity. She has exhibited at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces throughout Asia, Europe and the United States including solo exhibitions at the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (2012); the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (2014); the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (2014); SCAD Museum, Savannah, GA (2016); Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2016); Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE (2016); the Mead Museum of Art, Amherst, MA (2017) and group shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among many others.
“When I started making work it was very important that it was not autobiographical,” says Woolfalk. “The work is not about me at all. The work is about talking to people about their ideas and trying to understand what’s going on in the world then taking that material and adapting it into installation based spaces that people can experience.”
Made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Efroymson Family Fund.
Part of the Social Alchemy Series, this exhibition is in partnership with the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art.
Image: Saya Woolfalk, Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination, Plate 2, 30”x40”, 2018.

Power Plant Grant Information Session
2021-03-25 18:30 - 21:00, 2021-04-01 18:30 - 21:00
Learn more about the new annual Power Plant Grant program made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts on March 25, 6:30pm, April 1, 6:30pm or April 15, 6:30pm. The grants provide visual artists who live, work, or run spaces in Indianapolis with grants ranging from $2,000 to $10,000. Applications for this round are due by April 26, 2021.
Eligible applicants are visual/multidisciplinary artists who create original work in painting, drawing, sculpture, book art, ceramics, fiber, printmaking, digital/media works, film, video, photography, performance art, sound art, social practice and/or hybrid or interdisciplinary practice of any/all of the above.
Artists must be over 21 at the time of the application, and may not be full-time students.
Artists must live and/or work in Indianapolis.
Employees or board members (or immediate family members of employees or board members) of Big Car Collaborative are not eligible for this opportunity.
Teams, partnerships, and unincorporated individuals running spaces are eligible. Nonprofit organizations are not.

Words & Music-In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
2021-03-31 18:00 - 19:00
In this first installment of Words & Music: An audio series exploring the life and work of Indiana writers, Hoosier authors Susan Neville, Adrian Matejka, Kevin McKelvey, and Jim Walker discuss the sublime beauty and challenges of Indiana through the lens of William H. Gass’s 1968 fiction story, “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.”
The episode features excerpts of the story as well as a conversation about what it means to be a writer living and working in Indiana. This launches an eight-part series made possible by Indiana Humanities and produced by WQRT and Big Car Collaborative.
You can listen live via the streaming link or listen on regular FM radio in Indianapolis by tuning in to 99.1 FM. After it debuts on the station, it will be available for listening online. We’ll share that link here.
About the participants in this show (all Indiana writers):
Susan Neville is the author of six works of creative nonfiction and her collections of short fiction include The Town of Whispering Dolls, winner of the Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction; In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize; and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She teaches at Butler University.
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and served as Poet Laureate of Indiana for 2018-19. He is the author of five award winning books and his first graphic novel, “Last On His Feet” is forthcoming from Liveright in 2022.
Kevin McKelvey is a place-based poet, writer, designer, and social practice artist. He teaches at University of Indianapolis and directs the M.A. in Social Practice Art and oversees the undergraduate major in Environmental Sustainability. At University of Indianapolis, he founded Etchings Press, a student-run publisher, helped start a community garden and microfarm, and has contributed to numerous interdisciplinary efforts for students and the community.
Jim Walker is a poet, artist, and teacher who believes everyone deserves open access to the joys of art, creativity, and great public places. A co-founder and executive director of Big Car Collaborative, Jim worked previously as a journalist (writer, photographer, editor, and designer). He’s a student of cities and enjoys spending time with his family, supporting his Garfield Park neighborhood, walking, biking, travel, reading, and baseball.

Art Dog
2021-04-11 12:00 - 17:15 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us for the first event of 2021 at Tube Factory! We are partnering with food artist extrodinaries, Thin Glizzy. We are excited to share with you foot long hot dogs like we’ve never seen or tasted before! Also on site will be Cat Head Press, doing demos and selling merchandise from some of Indianapolis’s best artists, live music from Preston Ott, and War Pig Beer available. Littleton, CO native Natasha Vidger will have her artwork up in the Main Gallery at Tube. Reserve your tickets now for indoor seating. No groups of more than 4. And this ticket will reserve your seat for 45 minutes. Franklin Food Pantry will be accepting canned good donations. Masks required. Hot dogs range in price from $10-12.

Amanda Strong:Animations
2021-06-04 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“Biidaaban”
In Amanda Strong’s astonishing short film, Biidaaban sets out to harvest sap from sugar maples in urban Ontario neighbourhoods. The practice of harvesting sap to create syrup goes back to time immemorial for the Anishinaabe, people but the lands have since been covered over by urban development and occupation. Biidaabaan can see the traces of the people, creatures, land and time as they work to continue in their ancestors’ movements. Biidaaban is a young Anishinaabe gender non-binary person that can see through multiple dimensions while existing and moving in their present time and space. They are sometimes accompanied by their friend Sabe (a 10,000-year-old shape shifter who some have called a Sasquatch), Ghost Caribou, and Ghost Wolf — but only Biidaaban can see them. They act as reminders of what exists in this space and provide lessons about honesty, humility and working for the people.
19 minutes 14 secs

“Four Faces of the Moon”
This animated documentary follows the journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. She witnesses moments in her family’s history and strengthens her connection to her Metis, Cree and Anishnaabe ancestors. This is a personal story told through the eyes of director and writer Amanda Strong. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies.
12 minutes 54 secs

About Amanda Strong
Amanda Strong is an Michif interdisciplinary artist with a focus on filmmaking, stop motion animations and media art. Currently based on unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver, BC, Canada. Strong received a BAA in Interpretative Illustration and a Diploma in Applied Photography from the Sheridan Institute. With a cross-discipline focus, common themes of her work are reclamation of Indigenous histories, lineage, language and culture. Strong is the Owner/Director/Producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc. (SFP). Under her direction, SFP utilizes a multi-layered approach and unconventional methods that are centered in collaboration on all aspects of their work.
Strong’s work is fiercely process-driven and takes form in various mediums such as: virtual reality, stop-motion, 2D/3D animation, gallery/museum installations, published books and community-activated projects. Strong and her team at Spotted Fawn Productions are currently working on the research and development of bringing these works into more interactive spaces.
Most recently she was selected by renowned filmmaker Alanis Obamsawin to receive $50,000 in post-services through the Clyde Gilmour Technicolour Award. In 2016 she received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards for Emerging Film and Media Artist. In 2013, Amanda was the recipient of K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Film and Video. Her films have screened across the globe, most notably at Cannes, TIFF, VIFF, and Ottawa International Animation Festival. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, BC Arts Council and the NFB. Spotted Fawn Productions is currently developing new short animations Wheetago War and Spirit Bear. SFP’s latest short animations Biidaaban (The dawn comes) Four Faces of the Moon and Flood are available online through CBC Short Docs and CBC Arts.

Masks are required. Made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

New Harmony Community Conversation-Social Alchemy
2021-06-24 19:00 - 20:00
New Harmony residents are invited to our help plan for our reboot of Social Alchemy, a series of events connecting New Harmony and Indianapolis! These meet ups in New Harmony invite residents to meet those involved in proposing in the project and become part of it.
This meeting we will discuss the symposium which is scheduled for April 10-13, 2022.

E-mail email hidden; JavaScript is required for the Zoom link. This meeting is at 6pm in New Harmony, IN.

Why is this called Social Alchemy? In our research about New Harmony, we discovered that Father George Rapp — founder of the Harmonists, the first utopian experiment in New Harmony — studied alchemy and was trying to make gold and other precious commodities to fund his vision of utopia. Today, with New Harmony already a successful town with much to offer (including events and public programs), this project and symposium combines all the assets of New Harmony: the people who live there, the architecture, art, and food to celebrate and expand the town’s magic to Indianapolis and hopefully even further. We’re calling this mixture of everything Social Alchemy.

New Harmony, Indiana brims with art, history, architecture, and a strong sense of place. The impact of past and current efforts within this community have created a town that continues to represent the universal human condition.

What can we in urban Indianapolis learn from rural New Harmony’s social alchemy? Tons. With support of Indiana Humanities and the Efroymson Family fund and our partners — University of Southern Indiana, Indiana State Museum, Historic New Harmony, New Harmony Workingmen’s Institute Central Library, and lots of individuals –– we will explore, learn and share how the pursuit of utopia forms places and pursuits.

WHY IS BIG CAR INVOLVED?
We’re fascinated by people who strive for utopia and by intentional communities: Past, present, and future. Our overarching goal for the Cruft Street Commons project in Garfield Park is to develop an arts-focused, socially cohesive block. And a key inspiration is the southwestern Indiana town, New Harmony — location of multiple and varied utopian experiments.

THE PROGRAM
This idea started with visits by Big Car Collaborative/Tube Factory artspace curator, Shauta Marsh, and artist and writer Jim Walker, to New Harmony over the past several years and conversations with artist, writer, and philanthropist Jeremy Efroymson — who lives, part-time, in New Harmony — and former New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art director Garry Holstein. It is made possible by Indiana Humanities and The Efroymson Family Fund.

WHAT WE’RE DOING:
• An interdisciplinary exhibition at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art focused on New Harmony’s visionary civic leader and preservationist Jane Owen (1915–2010).
• An exhibition at the Tube Factory about the history and art of New Harmony (designed to travel), with emphasis on Angel in the Forest and visual interpretations of this lyrical text.
• A series of radio shows.
• A symposium in April 2022 in New Harmony to include philosophers, writers, historians, designers, architects, placemakers, urban and rural city planners, politicians, and community organizers.
• Two Tube Factory exhibitions by Native American artists Elisa Harkins and Wendy Red Star: both creative responses to their peoples’ forced dystopias, with ideas for cultural renewal.

THE IMPACT
This project explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social design projects. It offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between the built environment and social good.

PROJECT PARTNERS
University of Southern Indiana: As the administrator of both Historic New Harmony and the New Harmony Gallery, USI is encouraging staff, professors, and students to participate in the project.

Historic New Harmony: HNH will host programs, help to develop the exhibitions, and help travel the New Harmony exhibition about after its Indianapolis debut.
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art: The gallery will host the Jane Owen exhibition.
Indiana State Museum: The museum will be assisting with research, and help with didactics.
Pattern will be a promotional partner alongside Big Car’s low-power radio station 99.1 WQRT FM.

Nick May: Fag Family
2021-09-03 18:00 - 2021-11-14 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“Fag Family is a series of double portraits of individuals in my queer community. These portraits capture the queer relationships, queer spaces, and the liberating magic of queer world-building that I have the privilege to observe and be a part of,” says May.
“Historically, portraiture was a display of wealth and power; a luxury afforded only to the rich, affluent, white aristocracy. Queer individuals, especially queer individuals of color, have been totally erased from that history. I vehemently reject the stink of white supremacy and classism that continues to infect the art world, and my goal with these portraits is to subvert that ugly history by capturing my fellow queer friends with all of the luxuriance and beauty of oil painting.

Created with photo references, my portraits are nearly life-size and meticulously painted in order to earnestly catalog and celebrate the human lives I observe. Painting is an incredibly physical process: building the stretcher bar, stretching the canvas, priming and the process of painting demands an inordinate amount of energy. This painstaking process is compulsory however, because it is crucial for me to match the energy of the sitter I portray. Exerting so much energy into the surface of the canvas itself injects a kind of life into the portrait, as a homage to the living person themself.

Many of my fundamental artistic influences derive from the trauma I endured as a queer child. The escapist avenues I ventured in adolescence like children’s novels, campy movie musicals, fantasy video games made an invariable impression upon me. Growing up with image-dump platforms like Tumblr and Instagram exposed me to many artists who influence my work: Alice Neel, Mickalene Thomas, and Jordan Casteel to name a few. As a queer adult, drag queens, experimental pop music, and queer literature has indelibly impacted me. The apotheosis of these influences has left me obsessed with beautiful images, creating fantasies, and the human lives around me.

The power and beauty of my queer community inspired me to create this body of work. Despite existing in predominantly conservative midwestern towns and within an oppressive society, we create safe spaces for one another to brazenly enjoy our queerness. Within these spaces we transform ourselves, celebrate, and love one another. Within these spaces we create a whole new world that celebrates and uplifts us.”

Nick May is a portrait artist whose practice is deeply rooted in community and queerness. They received their Bachelors of Fine Arts with emphasis in Painting from Ball State University and are currently working as a portrait artist in Indianapolis, Indiana. Created from photographs, their portraits are nearly life-size and meticulously painted in order to earnestly capture and celebrate the human lives they encounter.

Made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Words and Music-From The Belly: Etheridge Knight
2021-09-18 20:00 - 21:30 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
In this installment of Words & Music, an audio series exploring the life and work of Indiana writers, Sean Smith aka, Oreo Jones, explores the fascinating life and poetry of an Indiana Icon, Etheridge Knight.
Susan Neville, Adrian Matejka, Hanako Gavia, and Smith discuss Knight’s later years as a poet living in Indianapolis, his critically acclaimed publishings after prison, and the art of meddling.
Born in rural Mississippi, Etheridge Knight would grow to become one of the most prolific voices in the late Black Arts movement in the 70s. In a dark and dreary jail cell in Michigan City, Knight would begin to find his true voice and calling as a pivotal writer/poet of the 20th century. A couple years into his sentence Etheridge would correspond with an American poet, author, teacher, and Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, and Detroit’s Dudley Randal from Broadside Press. It was his first published poetry book, “Poems From Prison” that would make a splash in the literary world of poetry.
Upon his release from prison, Knight would move around the country as a mysterious figure of Black American folklore, Known for his authenticity of the Black experience and his legendary Haikus. It was after the release of “Belly Song and other Poems”, Knight grabbed a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973, and would help establish the Free Peoples Poetry Workshop.
The episode features poetry from Etheridge Knight along with a live soundtrack provided by Sean Smith’s father, Mark Powell.
This is a continuation of an eight-part series made possible by Indiana Humanities and produced by WQRT and Big Car Collaborative.
You can listen live via the streaming link or listen on regular FM radio in Indianapolis by tuning in to 99.1 FM.
About the participants in this show (all Indiana writers):
Susan Neville is the author of six works of creative nonfiction and her collections of short fiction include The Town of Whispering Dolls, winner of the Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction; In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize; and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She teaches at Butler University.
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and served as Poet Laureate of Indiana for 2018-19. He is the author of five award winning books and his first graphic novel, “Last On His Feet” is forthcoming from Liveright in 2022.
Hanako Gavia is the Assistant Director of the Center for Citizenship and Community at Butler University. She also is the great niece of Etheridge Knight.
Oreo Jones has made Indianapolis his creative mecca. A multi-talented artist who delves into sound, music, and visual experimentation, Jones shares and expands the minds of people in surrounding neighborhoods, while helping the city grow.
This episode contains strong language which may be offensive to some listeners. Listeners discretion is advised (edited)
Painting of Etheridge Knight by Michael Jordan aka, Alkemi.

Lockerbie Movie Night-Alice (live soundtrack by Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester)
2021-10-21 18:00 - 21:00 | Needler’s Market, 320 N New Jersey, Indianapolis, IN, 46204, United States
Step through the looking glass with us at Lockerbie Movie Night! Box Burger food truck and Sun King Brewery will help fill your bellys. Sound artists Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester will stimulate your ears with a live soundtrack to Czech director and stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer’s “Alice.” Loosely based on the classic Alice in Wonderland story, the colors and proportions are dreamlike and lucid — even more so than one might imagine, and the pace at which it moves is both enchanting and perplexing. Svankmajer calls it a children’s film, but any adult would be equally as entertained by the strangeness of it all.
In Svankmajer’s “Alice,” the main character switches back and forth between being a human and a doll. And there’s no shortage of weird little details that make you cringe: rats that decide to camp out on Alice’s head and start a bonfire, socks that function as worms and crawl in and out of the wooden floors, animal creatures collaged out of bones, metal, and scarps who try to trap Alice into a closet full of creepy, crawly things.

About Landon Caldwell & Mark Tester: Caldwell & Tester are Indianapolis-based artists, musicians, composers, and producers. Their duo work explores various niches in electronic music with a focus on process, often incorporating spontaneous composition & experimentation with an array of technology, creating works that harness rhythm, ambiance, and melody to conjure meditations on fleeting sensations and early morning comedowns.
Together they have toured in the United States, Canada, and Europe and are regularly engaged with artists and musicians across the Midwest and beyond. Since 2016 they have operated Medium Sound, producing a number of the label’s releases.
Film will start at 7:15pm
Run time 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Eternity 123
2021-11-12 19:00 - 20:30
Change is a central element to the avant-garde Japanese dance form of Butoh. As a part of the Spirit & Place Festival, Big Car Collaborative and Indianapolis Movement Arts Collective have partnered to present choreographer and performer Vangeline presents an original work, Eternity 123 , that asks audiences to see Butoh as a way to transmute the pain and discord of societal shifts into art.
Eternity 123, is the third installment of a feminist dance triptych choreographed and performed by Vangeline. Eternity 123 traces the symbolic journey of women’s emancipation across time. With this piece, Vangeline also celebrates the impact of women on the art form of Butoh, and “cabaret.”
Butoh is a hybrid form of dance theater that came out of Post WWII Japan. Butoh links physical and spiritual practices from around the globe and accounts for aging of differently abled bodies as well as the energetic qualities of youth. Drawing from many Eastern spiritual traditions, Butoh revalues darkness as a transformative agent and an integral aspect to growth, healing and transformation for both performer and audience alike.

Create Hear-Kris Graves
2022-01-29 14:00 - 16:00, 2022-02-03 12:00 - 14:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Produced by artists and curators from Big Car Collaborative, Create Hear is your place to listen to conversations with people making intriguing, innovative, and impactful things happen on the cultural front in Indianapolis, across Indiana, and beyond.

In this episode, Oreo Jones interviews photographer Kris Graves, the most recent Artist in Residence at Aurora PhotoCenter and whose exhibit “A Southern Horror” is Feb.4-March 20 at Tube Factory artspace’s Guichelaar Gallery.

Graves (b. 1982 New York, NY) is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. He received his BFA in Visual Arts from S.U.N.Y. Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Getty Institute, Los Angeles; and National Portrait Gallery in London, England; among others. Permanent collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Institute, Schomburg Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brooklyn Museum; and The Wedge Collection, Toronto; amongst others. Graves also sits on the board of Blue Sky Gallery: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland; and The Architectural League of New York as Vice President of Photography.

Create Hear: Laura Foster Nicholoson
2022-02-05 14:00 - 15:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Produced by artists and curators from Big Car Collaborative, Create Hear is your place to listen to conversations with people making intriguing, innovative, and impactful things happen on the cultural front in Indianapolis, across Indiana, and beyond.

In this episode, Shauta Marsh interviews New Harmony, IN based textile artist Laura Foster Nicholson, who recently received the Dehaan Artist of Distinction Award. Her exhibit “Scenes from the Carbon Border” runs February 4-April 18 at Tube Factory artspace.

Kelvin Burzon and Jenny Delfuego: Process/Progress
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-03-25 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Multi-genre visual artists Kelvin Burzon and Jenny Delfuego are creating movement-based work to accompany their visual art as part of a partnership between Big Car Collaborative and Indy Movement Arts.
In the fall of 2020, Indy Movement Arts began experimenting with small, digital fellowships as a small contribution towards the arts economy and keeping artistic production viable. The Process/Progress residency is the latest iteration of this experiment, paying intermedia artists to reflect on their creative process and how they incorporate movement into their practice.
The residency was conceived as a digital one but given that Indy Movement Arts is rooted in movement and dance, a discipline that often involves some immediate interchange between artist and audience, the artists were commissioned in partnership between the two organizations to make a new work involving such an interchange.

About the artists:
Kelvin Burzon’s recent work addresses, but does not attempt to resolve, the tension between religion and homosexuality. He examines religion’s traditions, imagery, theatricality, and psychological vestige. By appropriating religious imagery and language, the work is recontextualized by the insertion of LGBTQ members and activists. Burzon’s work has been exhibited abroad and all over the country and is part of several permanent collections including the Kinsey Institute and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.

Jenny Delfuego was born in Chicago to immigrant parents and has been exhibiting work under different monikers since the 90s. She examines ephemerality, light and shadow, and the edges of impermanence. The indications of our existence are often made and unmade in the time it takes to observe them. Her involvement with Indy Movement Arts has promoted experiments in communal conversation and collaboration. What marks, what indications do these conversations leave? Delfuego studied painting at Indiana University and her work is in private and corporate collections on five continents.

The exhibit is made possible by The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Performances will take place March 25th

Kris Graves: A Southern Horror
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-04-16 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Kris Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues. He also works to elevate the representation of people of color in the fine art canon; and to create opportunities for conversation about race, representation, and urban life. Graves creates photographs of landscapes and people to preserve memory.

“In Summer 2020 a collective uprising rooted in local civic engagements ricocheted around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. It relied on one of the central pillars of Democracy—peaceful protest. Although grounded in the particular, the embodied actions of the multitudes illuminated larger universal questions of basic human rights and dignity in the 21st century. The echo of empathy, anger, and pain born from the eight minutes and 46 seconds of viral video that captured Floyd’s passing, resonated not only in the United States, but in ongoing struggles across the globe. While this was going on, I photographed memorials, monuments, and sites of the antebellum South and the Confederacy. My friend Marshall (@fu64) and I drove approximately 4000 miles across eight southern states making photographs of every site we could find. Some have been removed, most remain in place.” — Kris Graves
A Southern Horror is primarily a series of 175 non fungible token or NFT works. NFTs are unique digital files that can be owned. While any person can replicate the artwork through screenshot or other means, NFTs are designed to give the purchaser ownership of the work. For example anyone can own a Mona Lisa print but there is only one owner of the actual painting. Click here to visit the works.

Kris Graves (b. 1982 New York, NY) is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. He received his BFA in Visual Arts from S.U.N.Y. Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Getty Institute, Los Angeles; and National Portrait Gallery in London, England; among others. Permanent collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Institute, Schomburg Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brooklyn Museum; and The Wedge Collection, Toronto; amongst others. Graves also sits on the board of Blue Sky Gallery: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland; and The Architectural League of New York as Vice President of Photography

Presented by Aurora PhotoCenter
The exhibit is made possible by The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Laura Foster Nicholson: Scenes From The Carbon Border
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-04-18 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
From the hands of a young person in China, to a shipping container crossing the Suez Canal, to a semi-truck driver transporting containers cross country, to people at the big box or mom and pop who unload them, to everyone going to the stores to buy things. These are carbon borders we’ve created 一 our feet, our cars, trains, planes, streets, and sidewalks all in motion. These borders both connect and divide us.
Two years ago, driving from her home in New Harmony, Indiana to Chicago, artist Laura Foster Nicholson — a textile artist known for her handwoven tapestries — paused to notice the landscapes from our carbon borders. And the work she began creating then offers us — in this exhibition — a view of the path taken by the goods we purchase. This is often unseen and costs the world more than what’s listed on the price tag. And these carbon borders separate us from the people who made many of the items with which we live and adorn ourselves.
Nicholson noticed the cost to the environment and ultimately ourselves. She began incorporating these aspects in her works, calling attention to disasters and accidents along these borders, reminding us of the seen and unseen dangers of our way of life. “I watched the Wabash swell annually, frequently inundating the fields, sometimes filling basements, and once in a while warranting the efforts of the National Guard to sandbag around the New Harmony Inn. This past couple of weeks, texts have updated me regularly about extending the flash flood warning for the area,” says Nicholoson.
With this, we can pause to consider the invisible people and places behind items we consume and the inevitable disasters that result from the journeys. As each piece takes many hours to create, Nicholson’s work gives us access to our connectedness as humans instead of being based on consumerism and the whims of market research and algorithms. “As an artist, I am first visually inspired: the reflections in the water of these structures, foretelling the future, reflecting the past,” says Nicholoson.
This work reminds us that though we say the world has become smaller, we have become more distant from one another. No longer do we know all the hands that touched the objects we use to define ourselves. These tapestries are scenes from the carbon borders driven by our consumption and connecting us like the threads of her works.

Laura Foster Nicholson’s artwork is in several museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Denver Art Museum. With a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, she has lectured, taught, and exhibited in the US, Canada and Italy. She has been awarded an NEA fellowship, the Leone di Pietra prize at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, three Illinois Arts Council fellowships, and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Research in the Fine Arts. Most recently she was awarded the Dehaan Artist of Distinction grant.

Part of our Social Alchemy Project in partnership with University of Southern Indiana & The New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art- this exhibit was made possible by Indiana Humanities, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, The Efroymson Family Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Image: “Hanjin,” 2021. 31” x 43 ½”. Wool, mylar, cotton. Nicholson used “warming stripes” to indicate long term warming trends.

pLopLop Vol. 14 Submission Form
2022-03-17 08:00 - 2022-08-01 17:00
Are you a writer? Have something to say? Want to put it in print? Submit your work to PLopLop! 100 word limit. Submissions are due by August 1.
pLOpLop is an “Antholozine” of Poetry, Prose and Artwork published by Indianapolis, IN based visual artist, Big Car co-founder and writer John Clark since 1992.
pLopLop has published the work of writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Fielding Dawson, Eileen Myles, Gerald Locklin and more.
Influences: Surrealism, Dada, Henry Miller, Patchen, lo-fi indie rock, DIY activities, indie publishers and bookshops, British Invasion, mimeo-revolution, underground writers, garage rock and improvisation.
