ANNEX — ROMAN SUSAN

Movement Studies for Berger Park Cultural Center presents screenings, performance, research, and workshops created by artists investigating social and environmental transitions.

Past events: In the Future Something Will Have Happened 9.1-9.2.23 Where yo Wurkz/Where yo Mental 8.18.23 *between the tongue and the taste* 4.19-5.17-6.21-7.19-8.16-9.20.23 The Collective Mending Sessions 3.25.23 Reading the Landscape 9.28-11.02-12.07.22 + 1.11-5.31.23 Ende, Taul, Yu 10.18.22 Screen Test 9.21.22 BOUNDARYMIND 5.28.22 Drift 9.25-10.16.21 In-betweening 7.23.21 Twin Cities 3.29-5.9.21

FRUTAS
Parque Cultural de Berger
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL

¡Unanse a la serie de charlas y lecturas con FRUTAS, el 23 de octubre, 13 de noviembre y 11 de diciembre! de 6:30pm a 8pm.

El próximo 23 de Octubre, daremos voz a la escritora y activista trans, radicada en la Ciudad de México, Laura Glover Riviera que nos compartirá su más reciente proyecto, Trans Y Fugas.

La lengua de intercambio en nuestras clases es desde el principio el español para permitir a los participantes de la comunidad LGBTQAI un contacto constante con el idioma en español. No importando el conocimiento previo del idioma de los estudiantes. FRUTAS ha sido un espacio (antes de la pandemia) para personas cuya lengua nativa es el español. Tanto si dominas el Español o eres principiante, aun así FRUTAS te da la bienvenida.

¡Ven a hablar sobre la obra de Glover con nosotros!

Tendremos bocadillos y bebidas; solo asiste.

Estos tres eventos son en colaboración con Sofía Moreno, artista plástica Mexicana, y el escritor blake nemec, con sede en Chicago. Estos eventos se comparten en el Centro Cultural Berger Park como parte de Estudios del Movimiento, una serie de programación que investiga las transiciones sociales y ambientales.

Join us at FRUTAS, October 23, November 13th, and December 11th! 6:30pm - 8pm.

On October 23rd, we’ll be discussing the writing of Mexico City based trans writer and activist Laura Glover Riviera and her project, Trans Y Fugas.

FRUTAS is a Spanish language only event working to elevate LGBTQAI+ Spanish language speakers. FRUTAS has been a place (before the pandemic) for people whose first, second, or third language is Spanish. Whether you’re fluent or beginning, FRUTAS welcomes you.

Come talk about Riviera’s work with us!

Snacks and beverages provided; just bring yourself and fruitiness.

These three events are in collaboration with Mexican artist Sofia Moreno and Chicago-based writer blake nemec. This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Screen Test
Berger Park Cultural Center (Coach House)
6215 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
October 18, 2023 at 7 PM

This event is an open mic for moving image – an open call for artists. Share a video that has never screened in public before, and we will debut the work together! Share a work with us: romansusan.org/screen-test-call-for-video.

Artists must be in attendance at the screening. Partial edits and work-in-progress are welcome. We’ll share one question each artist has for the audience, and a discussion of the works will follow. Total runtime will be approximately 60 minutes. All artists whose work is screened will be paid.

The first Screen Test on September 21, 2022 featured new work and work-in-progress by Crystal Beiersdorfer, Salome Chasnoff, Ben Creech, Laleh Motlagh, Klaus Pinter, and Elspread (Jane Tao X Hyeji Kang).

These events are being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Lucky Pierre
In the Future Something Will Have Happened
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60660

Friday, September 1 from 10 AM to 8 PM
Saturday, September 2 from 10 AM to 5 PM

If you could fast forward time and skip ahead into the future—a month, a year, or a decade—which would you choose? Two people sit in a room talking. Two people take a silent walk. The probable is sidelined in favor of the possible. By the time a letter from the future arrives, something will have happened.

This hour-long performance is for a single audience member and will be performed multiple times Labor Day Weekend. The performance begins and ends at the Berger Park Cultural Center and includes a short walk. Audience members of all abilities are encouraged to join. When registering for the performance, please indicate any accommodations needed.

Lucky Pierre is a Chicago-based art making collective working in performance, writing, objects, events, and education. Since 1993, they have collaboratively created numerous works and initiatives. More info at luckypierre.org.

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Where yo Wurkz/Where yo Mental
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL

Battles + Cyphers August 19 from 12-3 PM

Where yo Wurkz/Where yo Mental hosts footwork and all-styles battles, dance cyphers, and shares resources for mental wellness. To introduce this all ages event, organizer Diamond Hardiman aka Dreka will discuss her mental journey in dance and footwork culture. This will be followed by two rounds of battling, with $200 grand prizes for the footwork and all-styles battles. Sounds will be provided by DJ Mya Unique and DJ Stepz.

Dreka aka Diamond Hardiman was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago in the Austin. Dreka began dancing at the age of 10 and started battle footworking at the age of 13 and grew through legendary crews Aggression, 187/Nemesis, HA2(active), TerraSquad, and now House Of Wurkz. Today Diamond lives on the North Side of Chicago and represents Chicago footwork and HipRoll culture independently on platforms such as Red Bull Dance Your Style and Wala Cam throughout the whole country. During her journey of dance Diamond worked for Chicago Park District, where she worked with children and young adults, using dance to teach confidence and how to express in healthy matters during after school hours. Diamond is also a Dance Mom of a beautiful daughter who also loves to dance. Diamond wants to be able to give back to her community and start her own dance company and also own a dance space for all ages to express themselves in a safe manner!

The image above was created by @williamfrederkingphotography.

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

*between the tongue and the taste*
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL

Call for Art-Writers Waitlist
Sessions Wednesdays April 19, May 17, June 21, July 19, August 16, September 20 from 6:30-8:30 PM

The third assembly of the art-writing group *between the tongue and the taste* is now in session. The group meets to read, discuss, and offer helpful criticism of the writing of its members for six meetings, April through September 2023.

Joining the group at Berger Park are Lichen Bouboushian, Maddie Brucker, Deirdre Colgan Jones, Eliza Fernand, Laura Goldstein, Millicent Kennedy, Maya Lea, Annette LePique, Craig Neeson, Caroline Preziosi, Robin Reid Drake, Taylor Rogers, Sara Zalek, with guests Kayla Anderson and Amber Ginsberg.

The group interprets the idea of art-writing loosely, serving as a space for its members to receive feedback on writing that constitutes part of their artistic practice. The group encourages diverse forms, including but certainly not limited to: pieces of writing meant to be artworks in their own right, performance scripts, poetry, fictocriticism, statements, studio logs, etc. The purpose of this group is to give its participants access to an audience of critical readers—a rare resource outside academic institutions—as well as to further develop Chicago's strong community of artist writers.

Each monthly session features a guest art-writer, and three members volunteer to share a piece for the following session. Pieces are anywhere from loose ideas to final versions, and writers include a brief statement with each piece about the type of feedback for which they’re looking.

*between the tongue and the taste* is led by Mel Keiser and Matt Martin. The upcoming events are being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions. Previous iterations of the group in 2018-2019 were hosted at Wedge Projects.

Catherine Reinhart
The Collective Mending Sessions
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL

Workshop Saturday, March 25 from 1-4 PM

The Collective Mending Sessions is a series of socially engaged workshops led by artist Catherine Reinhart, centered on collectively mending abandoned quilts. This project cultivates care for cloth and community through the meditative process of slow stitching. Since 2018, Reinhart has led over 40 workshops both in-person and online, repairing seven quilts with hundreds participants from around the world. These workshops resemble a quilting bee where participants learn basic mending and textile care, while building community in a warm, inclusive environment. They cultivate care for cloth and community through mending together and discussions centered around the value of repair. The resulting quilts are transformed from unwanted textile objects into contemporary fiber artworks through the work of many hands, moving toward a more egalitarian model of work. Shared alongside the workshop is an extensive library of resources, ranging from instructional texts on mending to textile history to cultural and craft theory.

Catherine Reinhart is an interdisciplinary artist living in Ames, IA, U.S.A. Reinhart creates fiber work and conducts social practice with abandoned textiles around themes of domestic labor, connection, and care. She received her BFA in Integrated Studio Arts in 2008 from Iowa State University. In 2012, she completed her MFA in Textiles from the University of Kansas. Her works have been exhibited locally, regionally, and nationally. Catherine is the recipient of numerous grants and residencies. She was recently honored as a 2020 Iowa Artist Fellow, a 2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Terrain Residency in Springfield, IL, and an inaugural recipient of the Alex Brown Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence in Des Moines, IA (2022). The Collective Mending Sessions was recently selected for the "Mending and Making" Workshop presented by Endangered Material Knowledge Programme, The British Museum (London 2023). For more information, please visit collectivemendingsessions.com.

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Reading the Landscape
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
September 28 + November 2 + December 7, 2022
January 11 + May 31, 2023

Join us for an evolving reading group, named after our seed text Reading the Landscape by May Theilgaard Watts. The 1957 edition of this work carried the subtitle: ‘An Adventure in Ecology’ and this is what we wish our group reading and discussion to be – purposefully following where the text/landscape takes us.

You do not have to read a particular book to join or participate in this group. With Reading the Landscape as a starting prompt, we will chart and document the unpredictable path of ourselves reading, as the group spreads out to follow individual curiosities, and gathers together to share field reports on what we have learned. Broad themes under discussion are related to Chicagoland, Ecology, and Art. We have started a small give-a-book, take-a-book shelf in the library of Berger Park Culture Center to reflect and share related texts.

May Theilgaard Watts was a naturalist at The Morton Arboretum, and many of the ecologies examined in ‘Reading the Landscape’ are in close proximity to the City, including the Indiana Dunes, Rock River, Wisconsin lakes and forests, Wheatland prairie, Chicagoland highways, and elsewhere. For additional biographical information about May Theilgaard Watts, and to view samples of the diagrammatic and botanical drawing style which are found throughout her published texts, please visit The Morton Arboretum online archive.

Roman Susan will aim to have a handful of copies of Reading the Landscape we can loan to anyone who would like to participate. Right now we are reading the second edition of this work, Reading the Landscape of America, which was published 18 years after the first publication. This edition includes postscripts to chapters that revisit landscapes described decades earlier. You can start wherever you want – first version, revised, or something else entirely, in the spirit of ‘An Adventure in Ecology’ – let us know what you find!

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Movement Studies: Ende, Taul, Yu
Berger Park Cultural Center (Coach House)
6215 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
October 18, 2022 at 7 PM

Join us for a screening of films by Shir Ende, Paige Taul, and Cherrie Yu at Berger Park. The program features short works that reference and reframe canonical moving image by Bruce Nauman and Yvonne Rainer, alongside new narratives, choreography, and personal storytelling.

Shir Ende is a Chicago-based artist and educator. Ende received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has shown at University of Illinois Springfield, Riverside Art Center, Comfort Station, Chicago Artist Coalition, Hyde Park Art Center, Heaven Gallery, Gallery 400, Terrain Biennial, Mana Contemporary, Woman Made Gallery, and was a sponsored artist at High Concept Labs. She has participated in the Center Program at the Hyde Park Art Center and was a 2018 - 2019 Hatch Resident at the Chicago Artist Coalition. For more information, please visit shirende.com.

Paige Taul is an Oakland, CA native who received her B.A. in Studio Art with a concentration in cinematography from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Moving Image. Her work engages with and challenges assumptions of black cultural expression and notions of belonging. Her interests lie in observing environmental and familial connections to concepts tied to racebased expectations and expose those boundaries of identity in veins such as religion, language, and other black community based experiences. To view more work by the artist, please visit paigetaul.com.

Cherrie Yu is an artist born in Xi'an, China and lives in the US. They work in choreography, moving image, writing, and installation. They have been an artist in residence at ACRE, McColl Center, Yaddo, Monson Art, and Kala Art Institute. Their works have been exhibited at Contemporary Calgary Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Mint Museum, Links Hall, Wassaic Project, and Roman Susan. For more information, please visit cherrieyu.cargo.site.

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions. The first image above is a still from How to Make a Structure with the Horizon/How to Make Windows for the Horizon by Shir Ende, 2019; second image: still from What’s good bruce? by Paige Taul, 2018; third image: still from Trio A Translation Project by Cherrie Yu, 2022.

BOUNDARYMIND
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
May 28, 2022

Hi! We are Katie Young and Linda Jankowska, musical long-distance collaborators and creators of the multimedia project boundarymind. Much of the music comes from recordings of personally significant objects. You are invited to explore the sounds of your own object with personal significance. All you need to bring is the object! Any object! Childhood toys, tattered T-shirts or sentimental souvenirs. Anything! Without damaging the object, you can scrape, tap, bow, boing, ping, and otherwise resonate it. Play around. Explore the quiet details it offers. We will provide microphones and other tools so you can listen in to your object and the memories it holds. You will get a copy of the recording, and, with your permission and if you’d like to participate, your recording could be added to a database of sounds for participants and future iterations of boundarymind.

BOUNDARYMIND is a collaborative work which will culminate in an evening-length electroacoustic sound piece and aggregating installation that explores and transgresses the geographical, cultural, psychological, and musical boundaries that impact how we share our past, present, and future selves with others. Related events this season include community recording at PO Box Collective and a premiere performance at 6018North. For full project information, please visit boundarymind.com.

This event is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Mark Alcazar Diaz
Drift
Berger Park Cultural Center
6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
September 25 + October 16, 2021

Drift is a video documentation of a constructed native habitat situated in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. The camera lens surveys its prairies and woodlands and visual intimations of its very nature as a built environment. The focus slowly shifts to birdwatchers, as the area is a recognized resting place for migrating birds that traverse states, countries, and continents. Their behaviours and desire to track and identify borderless birds become the subject of observation.

Mark Alcazar Diaz, born in Manila and lives and works in Chicago, Illinois, is an artist, educator, and arts administrator. He works in a variety of media, including video, drawing, and object making, to examine issues around migration, memory of place, and natureculture. As an extension of his artistic practice, Diaz has facilitated youth art collaborations through several community arts organizations in Chicago. He also develops and leads interactive workshops for teachers and artists to form dynamic collaborations to explore the intersection of aesthetics and pedagogy. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Drift is being shared as part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions. This work is being shared at Berger Park Cultural Center in alignment with The Available City as a partner program of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson
In-betweening
Roman Susan to Berger Park Cultural Center
1224 W Loyola Ave to 6205 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
July 23, 2021

In-betweening is an animated listening tour about the tenderness of insecurity. Written text and imagery will be the flawed, wiggly guide for sensing how everything is in a constant state of change.

Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson focuses on what is habitually avoided. Her experimental animations are spells to transform violent cycles, expose the illusion of isolation, and celebrate each other as interconnected, weird phenomena. She has presented work at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Roots & Culture, Roman Susan, the Experimental Sound Studio, Constellation, Hyde Park Art Center, and 6018North in Chicago; St. Charles Projects in Baltimore; FRISE in Hamburg; and @ptt in Geneva. Her work has appeared in Newcity Chicago, Chicago Artist Writers, the Chicago Reader, and Chicago Magazine, and is included in collections at FRISE and the Institute of Contemporary Art Library in Baltimore. She holds a certificate in Deep Listening, is a member of the anti-racism collective Make Yourself Useful, and thinks all bios are deceptive. For more information, please visit gwynethvzanderson.com.

In-betweening is a part of Movement Studies – a programming series investigating social and environmental transitions.

Movement Studies, Twin Cities
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
March 29, 2021 - May 9, 2021

Initially planned for Berger Park Cultural Center, this selection of moving image works by artists from Minneasota was shared at Roman Susan during Spring 2021 – on view directly from the street after dark, while the space was closed to the public due to COVID-19. Works by Christopher Corey Allen, Ellie Durko Finch, HIJACK, Jordan Rosenow, Karen Sherman, Anna Marie Shogren will be shared again as a group presentation at Berger Park in the future as part of Movement Studies.

Ellie Durko Finch
And So Which / W*tching Body
May 3, 2021 - May 9, 2021