Borderbend Arts Collective
  • home
  • about
    • what people are saying
    • donors & funders
  • blog
  • links
  • donate
  • contact
  • Sounding Florida

Why Make Art? : Interview with Carron Little

2/15/2014

0 Comments

 
For my interview project with Borderbend, I set out to explore some of the unanswerable questions that have been squirming to escape my mind, and fired them on Chicago artists in search of some marinated wisdom. I ask why art is important in communities, why humans value art, why artists care, and what makes art art. All of their words have helped me on my path as an art student, and a person making sense of this world. Their challenges to survive in the art world of Chicago are inspiring yet devastating, their passions are strong, and their work is meaningful and genuine. Enjoy, and keep your eyes open for any of their upcoming work. Thanks for reading.
- Hannah Brookman

Carron Little

Picture
Why Make Art?

For change.

“When I was a young, I was very political and did a lot of direct action. At the age of sixteen I became a representative for youth CND in Yorkshire and Humberside, in the north of England. I had a big group of fifty young people. One of the first public performances I did was to organize all of these young people and to go to every main station in each major city in Yorkshire and Humberside, and we staged a nuclear fallout in the stations, so suddenly fifty people would drop to the floor, and people would come with theses radiation bins.”

Carron is now using performance to bring awareness to the Chicago public. Her most recent performance took place at Bridgeview Bank for Open House Chicago in October. It was called Unto Each Their Own Safe, and was conducted by Little’s extravagant alter ego, The Queen of Luxuria. “The philosophy of the Queen is to challenge the notions of patriarchal power, hence the celebration of the diamond dust breast plates, I call them gender plates.” On this special day, the Queen, and her lovely assistants were posted up at the bank to play games with the public. “I created this interactive performance where the public went up to these three different stations and either play chess or there was this game, Octagon, based on one of Duchamp’s games, and I created a Jenga/Queen of Luxuria style stacking game.” There was a fourth game, which the Queen herself administered. In this game, the participants would move around ‘gender plates’ and discuss their finances and earnings with the Queen of Luxuria.

“If a person was earning $30,000, according to the Queen of Luxuria, the minimum wage should be $80,000, so I would make up the difference. If a woman was sat in front of me I calculated her working life and multiplied that by the money she hadn’t been paid over her lifetime. One woman earned to $30-60,000 bracket. She was unhappy at work so I gave her an extra $80,000 so she could take the year off and find a job that she really wanted to do. And she was happy in life. If somebody was unhappy in life I would give them an extra $20,00 so they could take a holiday or go to the spa every once in a while. People that were retired were getting over a million dollars which wasn’t what I was expecting how much women would get. It really is a profound statement on the inequality of our lives.”


“We as a society still have a long way to go in terms of creating peace and equality in the world and 40% of countries are still in a state of war. I often think about how women are treated all over the world, and our quality of lives and even in the western world, it went up since last year, it was 73 cents to the dollar and now its 77 to the dollar. I’ve been in positions where I’ve had greater qualifications starting out a job but was still paid less than my colleague that had less educational qualifications.”

“Every time I lose hope or contemplate giving up, which I don’t, I refuse to, I just look at the statistics of how many women have had solo shows in museums or how many are represented by commercial galleries. Even a gallery that I show at, I invited the director over for a studio visit and I asked him ‘how many women have you represented in your gallery over the year?’ And the next year he made a point to show one female artist for every male artist, and just by having that conversation I made him aware , its such a prevalent problem.


“The next big project that I’m starting to work on is ‘The City Alive With Dreams’. From 2012 to 2013 I interviewed one person a week about their dreams and then I wrote poems about their dreams and invited them to select their favorite line. One person I interviewed selected, “the sacred key of ecstasy and orgasmic health opened the door to everything that is a part of me” the poetry really documents the extremes of human experiences as a story or a reflection of the interview. I'm really excited to put those ideas into public space. I’m inviting all of the people who have participated to a meeting to discuss how they would like their stories placed in a public space, but I’m also thinking, how am I going to make it interactive so that theres lots of different things to think about. It’s really part of my artistic practice to create these interactive performance; it’s part of my feminist aesthetic. I think it’s a really critical part of womens practice and the way in which we all parade in the world.” 

Apart from creating her own pieces, Carron also runs Out of Sight, a public performance festival in its’ fourth year, and growing. Carron also teaches art in city schools and is looking forward to a new teaching position in the SAIC performance art department. She currently has a piece opening at Fluxus in Minneapolis, is finishing The City Alive With Dreams, and is drawing all the time. 


“The rhesus monkeys are the closest monkeys to us, but anthropologists have studied their behavior and said that they have greater empathy and community towards each other than humans display towards each other and my hope is that humans will become more intelligent through culture, and be able to figure out more peaceful ways. Through culture, my hope is that we will eliminate war and eliminate violence. We still have a way to go, and it won't happen in my lifetime but hopefully I can be a part of the train of change” 
 -- Carron Little

Find out more about Carron Little by visiting her website at carronlittle.com.  

0 Comments

Bicycles & the Arts

7/12/2012

0 Comments

 
The Borderbend Arts Collective has presented two "Bicycles & the Arts" events -- during the Chicago Calling Arts Festival in 2010 and last year. Borderbend is co-presenting a third "Bicycles & the Arts" event, in partnership with Working Bikes Cooperative. That event happens on September 28, during the Seventh Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival. 

Bicycles and the arts have commingled a lot for more than a century -- such as in film, literature, sculpture, and music. Here are some highlights which span more than a century. Alfred Jarry was a French writer who wrote the play Ubu Roi and came up with the concept of pataphysics; he was an avid bicyclist, and bikes appear in many of his writings. Another French artist named Marcel Duchamp created a sculpture entitled Bicycle Wheel in 1913; that sculpture was among Duchamp's many readymades which have changed the way people think about art. Several decades later, Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica directed The Bicycle Thief (1948), an iconic Italian film which "works as a sentimental study of a father and son, a historical document, a social statement, and a record of one of the century's most influential film movements." In 1960, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely unveiled a kinetic sculptureentitled Homage to New York, which included dozens of bicycle wheels and other parts, and whichfell apart during a 27-minute performance. Have you seen the video of a 22-year-old Frank Zappa teaching Steve Allen how to play a bicycle, followed by a performance with musical bicycles and the accompaniment of the Steve Allen Show orchestra?  


Today you can find examples of intersections between bicycles and art, in Chicago and around the world. Recently a collective in Rogers Park proposed that 15 bike racks be constructed, and that proposal won funding during the 49th Ward's participatory funding initiative; those bike racks are currently under construction. If you've ever seen or participated in a Critical Mass event, you've probably seen some interesting art bikes, including tall bikes. As you travel along North Avenue in the Wicker Park / Bucktown neighborhood, you will pass a colorful bicycle mounted on the side of a building, at the corner of North and Wolcott Avenues. That bicycle, which hangs above the entrance of Rapid Transit Cyclechop, has fans in the bike wheel spokes, so the wheels are often spinning in the air. Local artist Ronnie LoBello built that bicycle 15 years ago.

Working Bikes Cooperative has several amazing bike artworks created by Matt Weber and others. Steven Lane curates an annual winter bike art show; that's always an exciting show to look forward to.   



Examples of art bikes and bicycle art abound elsewhere here in the U.S. Artistically designed bike racks are being constructed in Rogers Park, and David Byrne has designed bike racks which have been installed in New York City. A group in Minneapolis has organized several annual Bike Art shows, and Tall Bike Posse in California organizes Art Bike Build events and bike art shows.Bicycle Inter-Community Action & Salvage in Tucson offers workshops where you can make inner tube wallets, tire belts, mobiles, sculptures, and jewelry out of recycled bike parts. In 2010 I saw Gabriel Orozco's Four Bicycles (There Is Always One Direction) at the MoMA, amazing.
Picture
photo of artworks on display during the "Bicycles & the Arts" event at Happy Dog Gallery (10.1.2010)

above: photos from the "Bicycles & the Arts" event during the 2010 Chicago Calling Arts Festival


Globetrotters can find plenty of examples of intersections between the arts and bicycles around the world. The Dekochari (Japanese art bike) is a unique phenomenon; here're some interesting pictures. Kunstrad (Art Cycling) competitions are happening in Europe.

Stay tuned for updates regarding the next "Bicycles & the Arts" event. 

-- Dan Godston
0 Comments
    Borderbend Blog

    Authors

    Sharon Bladholm
    Hannah Brookman
    Lou Ciccotelli
    Janina Ciezadlo
    Albert DeGenova
    Angel Elmore
    Dan Godston
    Samina Hadi-Tabassum
    Corey Hagelberg
    Jon Hey
    Spencer Hutchinson
    Wayne Allen Jones
    Keith M. Kelley
    Maggie Leininger
    Charlie Newman
    Jeff Sweeton
    Amy Thomas Elder
    Joe Vajarsky
    Rich Washam

    Archives

    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    April 2018
    October 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    December 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    100 Thousand Poets For Change
    1700s
    1800s
    1900s
    1910s
    1920s
    1930s
    1940s
    1950s
    1960s
    1970s
    1980s
    1990s
    21st Century
    Aacm
    Activism
    Afrofuturism
    After School Matters
    Als
    Anti-violence
    Architects
    Architecture
    Arts
    Arts Education
    Arts Workshops At Mozart Park
    Banned Books
    Beat Generation
    Bebop
    Benefit Concert
    Bicycles
    Black History Month
    Brian Jones
    Caribbean
    Carlos Cortez
    Carl Sandburg
    Charles Mingus
    Charlottesville Va
    Chicago
    Chicago Calling
    Chicago Heroes & Arts Journeys
    Chicago History
    Chicago Learning Exchange
    Chicago Park District
    Chicago Public Libary
    Choreography
    Collaboration
    Collaborative Arts
    Collage
    Comedy
    Community Arts
    Composers
    Compound Yellow
    Concert
    Conservation
    Creative Writing
    Curation
    Cycling
    Dada
    Dance
    Dance & Movement
    Designers
    Dfbrl8r
    Discussion
    Duke Ellington
    Ed Roberson
    Environmentalism
    Eric Dolphy
    Evanston
    Festival
    Fiber Art
    Fiction
    Film And Video
    Fine Arts Building
    Fracking
    Frank Zappa
    Fred Anderson
    Fundraiser
    Gardens
    Gary
    Gentrification
    Graphic Design
    Haiti
    Haitian Arts
    High School
    Hip Hop
    Hive Chicago
    Hyde Park
    Illinois
    Immigration
    Indiana
    Interdisciplinary
    Interfaith
    Internship
    Interviews
    Jazz
    Jens Jensen
    Joan Mitchell
    Joni Mitchell
    Journalism
    Labor Rights
    Legler Regional Library
    Les Turner Als Foundation
    Literary
    Logan Square
    Marcel Duchamp
    Margaret Burroughs
    Meg Duguid
    Mingus Awareness Project
    Missouri
    Mixed Media
    Move Remove Place Displace
    Mozart Park
    Multi Arts
    Multi-arts
    Murals
    Music
    Music Documentary
    Music Education
    Musicians
    National Park Service
    Nato
    Nature
    Nelson Algren
    Next Objectivists
    Night Out In The Parks
    No Bs! Brass Band
    Oak Park
    Open Call
    Out Of Site
    Painting
    Panel Discussion
    Paris
    Passenger Pigeon
    Paste Magazine
    Peace Warriors
    Performance
    Philosophy
    Phonography
    Photography
    Piano
    Pilsen
    Poetry
    Poets
    Politics
    Printmaking
    Prosody
    Public Art
    Publishing
    Radical Pedagogies
    Richmond
    Richmond VA
    Rogers Park
    Sacred Texts
    Sciarts
    Science
    Sculpture
    Social Justice
    Social Movements
    Soundscapes
    Steam Education
    Sue Graham Mingus
    Sun Ra
    Surrealism
    Switching Station Artist Lofts
    Theater
    The Blues
    The Wall Street Journal
    University Of Chicago
    Urban Nature
    Video
    Visual Art
    Visual Artists
    Volunteering Opportunities
    Wilmette
    Wisconsin
    Women's History Month
    Working Bikes Cooperative
    Workshops
    Writers
    Youth Arts

    RSS Feed