And So Which / W*tching Body
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
May 3, 2021 - May 9, 2021
Video works improvised and posted to social media from 2018-2021, projected each afternoon and evening, visible directly from the street at 1224 W Loyola Ave while the space remains closed to the public. And So Which / W*tching Body is being shared as part of Movement Studies – a series featuring artists in Chicago and across the Great Lakes region.
Until I Vision: Reflections on Ellie Durko Finch’s “And So Which / W*tching Body” at Roman Susan by Stevie Ada Klaark (PDF)
Ellie Durko Finch (she/her they/them) is a Non Binary Transgender Femme artist and a 2005 alumnus of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Department of Theatre Arts & Dance. From 2005 to 2013 she performed in, co-created, & executed design for numerous Twin Cities live performance & dance works. She contributed to hundreds of performances & other events as a hourly employee of Bryant Lake Bowl Theater from 2008 to 2012, and became a cog in the Minneapolis' 20 year running queer performance group, Dykes Do Drag. Together with Kristin Van Loon they co-curated secret fARt Fest video nights in the "New Smuda Theater" at BLB.
Ellie received a 2006 Jerome Foundation Naked Stages Performance Art fellowship and received a 2015 Sage Award for Dance with the design team for Megan Mayer's 2014 work "Soft Fences." In 2019 she contributed as a community member on the City of Minneapolis Trans Equity Council and wrote her pre-Covid-19 2020 essay Where Will You Dance as part of dance-analog-digital-real-time-ness series at MNartists.org by guest editor Kristin Van Loon. In 2021 she is focusing on roller skating, personal practices, ritual, and witching the trans dancing body.
Can be reached for questions via @ellie.bloodofstars.biz.biz on Instagram and earlamyfinch at Gmail. Thanks to Roman Susan, Kristin Van Loon, Stevie Ada Klaark, Leah Krizak, Allison Aye, and myriad Instagram followers for offering support of this work.