Ryan Thompson’s “Oranges in Winter” will be part of the program March 12 and 19.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Public parking lots, flying carp and the mysteries of crop circles will be among the environmental themes explored in an upcoming arts festival that focuses on how we shape the land and how it shapes us.
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DIRT – a three-weekend festival of performances, dances, readings and videos – will be held March 5-21, at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield Ave., Chicago.
Curating the festival is Deke Weaver, a faculty member in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois. As a writer, performer and video and graphic artist, Weaver has garnered numerous honors, including a Creative Capital grant in 2009.
Also in 2009, Weaver was named an artistic associate of Links Hall, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that encourages artistic innovation and public engagement. The Artistic Associate Program annually selects three proposals from curators for three-week festivals, providing curators with a $3,000 budget and free rein to engage local, national and international artists in their work.
“The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl feel uncomfortably close,” Weaver said about DIRT. “We’ve got melting icecaps and a present-day mass extinction of species that some can only compare to the catastrophic dinosaur die-off of 65 million years ago.
“What’s art got to do with it? Subtle, intertwined and passionate, the art in DIRT starts to reveal the deep connections among economics, imagination, our bodies and the natural world.
“The work is hilarious. It’s uncomfortable. It’s dark, hopeful, desperate, ironic and absolutely sincere.”
Six performance programs (two different programs each weekend) will be offered in conjunction with a series of post-show “talk backs,” which will involve dialogues among audience members and prominent people in the environmental community.
During the opening weekend, festivalgoers will explore changing landscapes in “The Mountains of Illinois,” an event that will comprise performances, readings and a walking tour of public parking lots in Wrigleyville, the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field. “The Mountains of Illinois” will feature work by School of Art and Design faculty members Kevin Hamilton and Ryan Griffis, who works under the pseudonym “Temporary Travel Office;” Audrey Petty, a professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Illinois alumni Alan Fleming and Michael Fleming and current student Bonnie Fortune.
“Water,” a workshop to be held the second weekend of the festival, will feature work by Jennifer Monson, a performer/choreographer and faculty member in the department of dance at Illinois, and BD Collier, a U. of I. alumnus and visual artist whose projects focus on nature in human-dominated environments. Monson’s “Mahomet Aquifer Project,” a multi-phased dance project about the extensive underground water system that serves 15 Central Illinois counties, will be performed, along with a seriocomic lecture by Collier about the flying carp invading Illinois’ waterways.
The festival will conclude the third weekend with “The Land of Plenty,” a video-sound performance by Weaver, dancer/choreographer Jennifer Allen and composer Chris Peck that will look at crop circles, cowboy songs and evil bunnies.
DIRT is supported by a Creative Research Award from the College of Fine and Applied Arts and sponsored by Openlands, a conservation organization based in Chicago that is dedicated to protecting the natural and open spaces of northeastern Illinois and the surrounding region.
For the complete festival program or to purchase tickets or festival passes, visit the Links Hall (click on “performances” then “March”).
