Join us for a discussion and presentation of deposition, a project by Marissa Lee Benedict, Daniel de Paula, and David Rueter centered on the displacement, exhibition, and reprogramming of a large-scale trading pit, salvaged from the grain room of the Chicago Board of Trade. In 2021, the obsolete seven-tier commodity trading pit floor was relocated to the center of Oscar Niemeyer’s Ciccillo Matarazzo for the 2021 São Paulo Biennial with support from a grant from the Graham Foundation.  Benedict, de Paula, and Rueter will be joined by Karsten Lund, editor of their new book from Mousse Publishing that documents the project. Copies will be available for purchase in the Graham Foundation bookshop following the discussion.

About the publication:
Proceeding from the iconic installation deposition (2018–ongoing) by artists Marissa Lee Benedict, Daniel de Paula, and David Rueter in the central atrium of Oscar Niemeyer’s pavilion for the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, this volume traces the salvage, displacement, and exhibition of the last corn commodities futures trading pit from the Chicago Board of Trade. Essays and interviews provide divergent lenses from which to view the work, moving from intimate to distant, scanning over the object, the artists, the art institution, and the architectures of the geopolitical landscape in which these elements operate. Section by section, the book works through the multiple, and compacted, meanings of the word “deposition” (geologic, legal, art historical), layering images and texts to build concrete yet non-linear relations, as the 32 fragments of the former trading floor are dragged from Chicago to São Paulo.

deposition (Mousse Publishing, 2023) features the work of Marissa Lee Benedict, David Rueter, Daniel De Paula, and is edited by Karsten Lund with text by Yamila Goldfarb, Cameron Hu, and Ana Teixeira Pinto.

Daniel de Paula is a Brazilian visual artist and researcher. de Paula has been awarded the Mondriaan Funds Proven Talent Award and has exhibited widely at institutions such as MASP, São Paulo; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Kunsthal Gent; The Arts Club of Chicago; Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo; and the 2022 Lyon Biennale. His work is represented by Francesca Minini Gallery and Lumen Travo Gallery, and has been reviewed in Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Flash Art, Mousse Magazine, Folha de São Paulo, and Het Parool. He has participated in several international artistic residencies such as the Jan van Eyck Academie, FLACC, and KIOSKO.

Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter are visual artists, writers, and researchers working in collaboration since 2014. Benedict and Rueter have exhibited works at The US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; The Arts Club of Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; and Contemporary Art Brussels, amongst others. They have received major grants from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Their work has been reviewed by publications such as Artforum, Revista, Agenda Magazine, and Hyperallergic. They have collaboratively participated in numerous international artistic residencies including Rupert, the Banff Centre, and the Jan van Eyck Academie.

It was at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2018 that Benedict, de Paula and Rueter began their collaborative work deposition (2018–ongoing) with the salvage of the last remaining commodities trading pit from the Chicago Board of Trade. Their work has been awarded individual grant support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and has been exhibited at the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, The Arts Club of Chicago, and The Renaissance Society.

Karsten Lund is curator at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where he organizes exhibitions, edits publications, and oversees public programs. His most recent exhibitions include new commissions by Haig Aivazian (2021), Jill Magid (2021), Matthew Metzger (2021), and LaToya Ruby Frazier (2019, cocurated with Solveig Øvstebø), as well as group shows such as Nine Lives (2020, with Caroline Picard) and Unthought Environments (2018). His latest group exhibition, Fear of Property (2022), features new work by Benedict, de Paula and Rueter, an off-shoot of deposition (2018-ongoing), and he has acted as editor for a monograph on the work (of the same name) that is being released in 2023 by Mousse Publishing. As an editor, Lund works on three to four books every year at the Renaissance Society, including recent titles by Kevin Beasley and Jill Magid. He has also independently edited volumes such as the Graham Foundation-supported Spells by Irena Haiduk (Sternberg Press, 2015).

Image: Installation view, deposition, 34th Bienal de São Paulo, 2021. Photo: Everton Ballardin

Join us for an introduction to the exhibitions currently on view, Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Exits Exist, led by Graham Foundation staff.

Walkthroughs run from 2:00–2:30 on the following dates: 
Saturday, Feb 4
Saturday, Feb 11
Saturday, Feb 18
Saturday, Feb 25

Group tours are available by request, contact us at info@grahamfoundation.org

For more information on the exhibition, Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves, click here.

Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker perform the United States premiere of Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore, a transcription and reinterpretation of Italian folksongs from their birthplace, the rural Emilia-Romagna region, for violin, cello, and voice.

Tarozzi and Walker reflect, "These songs come from the first decades of the twentieth century and from the period of World War II, but some of them have older roots. The melodies and especially the lyrics have been transformed over time through oral transmission and adapted to different social, working, and historical contexts. One of the strongest influences of our project is the repertory of songs sung by choirs of female rice field workers, called the Mondine."

Since 2010 the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Note that seating for this performance is very limited. Reservations are required for entry, link to register via eventbrite coming soon. If you make a reservation and then are no longer able to attend, please cancel your reservation through Eventbrite or email info@grahamfoundation.org to release the spot to someone on the waiting list.

Silvia Tarozzi (b.1975, Bologna, Italy) and Deborah Walker (b.1981, Reggio Emilia, Italy) share a friendship that has evolved into a 20-year artistic partnership. Their music is characterized by a profound interplay, a focus on the acoustic qualities of their instruments, and the search for new possibilities in tunings, gestures, and sound. Together they have explored different musical forms and have worked in several varied projects, including Ensemble Dedalus, a contemporary music ensemble based in Montpellier, France, and Italian art pop band, Offlaga Disco Pax. Their long collaboration with composers Éliane Radigue, Pascale Criton, and Philip Corner have led to the creation of numerous new works. The duo has played at many international venues and festivals, including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield, England; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Biennale Musica, Venezia; Angelica Festival, Bologna; Festival Musique Action, Nancy, France; Festival Futurs Composés, Paris; Fast Forward, Teatro Dell'Opera Di Roma, Rome; Tectonics, Glasgow; and Café Oto, London. Their recordings have been released on Potlatch and Unseen Worlds.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Lampo gratefully acknowledges additional support provided by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago.

Join us for a performative lecture and discussion to launch the Cyberfeminism Index. Seu will be joined in conversation with artist Lee Blalock. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, Cyberfeminism Index gathers more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism, feminist manifestos, hackerspaces, hardware, and wetware education and net art from 1991 to 2020, starting with an excerpt from Donna Haraway’s seminal essay “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Its online complement, cyberfeminismindex.com (2020), is a living, online index that was commissioned by Rhizome and premiered with New Museum. Its print form, published by Inventory Press, was supported by a Graham Foundation grant in 2021. 

ABOUT CYBERFEMINISM INDEX
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races, and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.

The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.

Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.

Advance copies will be available for purchase in the Graham Foundation bookshop during the event. Pre-order copies are available now on inventorypress.com. Follow the international Cyberfeminism Index book launch tour on tour.cyberfeminismindex.com

Mindy Seu (b. 1991, California) gathers the histories of technology to analyze and inform contemporary society. Trained as a graphic designer, she works collaboratively across the disciplines of design, art, and technology to document overlooked voices. These projects are expressed in a variety of forms, from archival projects and techno-critical writing to performative lectures and resource sharing. Seu’s ongoing Cyberfeminism Index (cyberfeminismindex.com), which gathers three decades of online activism and net art from 1991 to the present, was commissioned by Rhizome and presented at the New Museum in its online form. Its print form, published by Inventory Press, is a recipient of a Graham Foundation grant. Her work is both technological and interdisciplinary, marking the ways that online environments intersect with issues of race, gender, culture, and power. She is regularly invited to present on alternative archival projects and contemporary feminism by cultural institutions (Barbican Centre, New Museum), academic institutions (Columbia University, Central Saint Martins), and mainstream platforms (Google, Pornhub, SSENSE). Seu has been a resident at MacDowell, Sitterwerk Foundation, Pioneer Works, and Internet Archive, and holds an M.Des. from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in design media arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently assistant professor at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and critic at Yale School of Art.

Lee Blalock is a Chicago-based artist and educator presenting alternative and hyphenated states of being through technology-mediated processes. Interested in how technologies support the idea of impossible anatomies, behaviors, and performances, her work is an exercise in body modification by way of amplified behavior or "change-of-state". Lee’s interests include embodied cognition, anatomy and biomechanics, bionics, mechatronics, human/non-human entanglement, and computational abstraction. She has presented work domestically, internationally, and virtually at many institutions including Ars Electronica, the wrong biennale, NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), ICA (Philadelphia), 205 Hudson Gallery (NY), and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and practices various forms of embodiment as an everyday athlete.

Cyberfeminism Index is published by Inventory Press and distributed by Distributed Art Publishers and funded by the Graham Foundation, Rhizome, and Feral File, and is made possible in part by the Rutgers University Research Council, Pratt Institute, Pioneer Works, and Cita Press.

Related Graham Foundation supported projects:
2021 grant to Mindy Seu for the publication Cyberfeminism Catalog

The Graham Foundation is pleased to partner with the Chicago Architecture Biennial to host the Chicago Design Summit, led by the Floating Museum—artistic team for CAB 5, the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, This is a Rehearsal, opening September 2023. The Summit convenes leading practitioners to explore emerging ideas in contemporary architecture and design and serves as a forum for research and the development of the CAB 5 program.

Introduction by the Floating Museum
10:30 a.m.

Session 1: Rehearsing Critique
11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of systemic and structural critique—living with and within systems to identify what has been overlooked, unconsidered, and uninvestigated—to establish a duty and standard of care as a prerequisite to performative, political, organizational, or environmental engagements or actions.

Panelists: Ionit Behar, associate curator, DePaul Art Museum (Chicago); Andrea Carlson, artist (Chicago); Ibrahim Mahama, artist (Tamale, Ghana); Anjulie Rao, journalist (Chicago); Florencia Rodriguez, director, School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago)
Facilitator: Kerry Cardoza, journalist (Chicago)

Lunch Break
12:30–1:30 p.m.

Session 2: Rehearsing Relations
1:30–3 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of individual and collective attunement to build organizational power through mutual understanding.

Panelists: Jha D Amazi, director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab, principal, MASS. (Boston); Skyla Hearn, cofounder, The Blackivists (Chicago); Erin Harkey, commissioner, Department of Cultural Events and Special Affairs (Chicago); Asad Jafri, cultural producer/artist (Chicago); Ujijji Davis Williams, landscape architect, founder, JIMA Studio (Detroit)
Facilitator: Megha Ralapati, program director, fellowships, CEC ArtsLink (Chicago)

Session 3: Rehearsing Production
3:15–4:45 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of production through improvisation, speculation, and iterative development in response to social and climatic change.

Panelists: Meida Teresa McNeal, artistic/managing director, Honey Pot Performance (Chicago); Dan Peterman, artist, founder, Experimental Station (Chicago); Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, anthropologist (New York); Chris Reed, landscape architect, founding principal, STOSS (Cambridge); Feda Wardak, architect, director, Aman Iwan (Paris)
Facilitators: Karla Sierralta and Brian Strawn, cofounders, Strawn Sierralta (Honolulu)

Closing performance and reception
5 p.m.

The Summit is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Graham Foundation.

Click here to learn more about the Chicago Architecture Biennial

PREVIOUS POSTS NEW POSTS