In the summer of 2015 Latham Zearfoss and I were invited to ACRE, an artist residency in Steuben, WI. We came for three days, during which we met with many artists in residence for studio visits. We also created and performed a second iteration of our Borderless Musical Imaginaries Mixtape (BMIM) project, which we had premiered in January 2014 at Links Hall in Chicago. The original BMIM performance/lecture, documentation of which is linked in the Public Talks/Publications section of this website, focused on the development of queer, Black and Latino nightlife in Chicago, with an eye and ear towards the ways that contemporary projects like Chances Dances connect to longer brown, punk histories, such as those related to house music. To engage our audience at ACRE, and ensure that the perspectives we were presenting in BMIM would be relevant to the group, we asked residents to submit anonymous responses to the following questions, and integrated them into a visual score that accompanied the performance/lecture:
What cultures/subcultures does dancing connect you to?
Tell us about a time you found freedom on the dance floor.
Did someone teach you how to be a part of a dancing community? If so, in what ways?
What compels you to move your body? When and where have you felt most compelled?
In addition to using text-based answers to these questions to flesh out the content of the first BMIM, we also asked ACRE residents, staff and visiting artists to help us bring the voices of our guest panelists back into our talk by reading quotes from the original post-performance/lecture panel and replaced our original audio score with a live DJ (Nic Kay).
CLICK HERE for the new BMIM visual score.