salons & talks

threewalls hosts a variety of public programs aimed at engaging audiences in a conversations about the visual arts. In past seasons, the salon program was an open, topical conversation, where the public is invited to participate in a moderated conversation around current issues in contemporary art practice. For Spring 2013, we are changing up the format and inviting a guest programmer to conceive a series of programs that are responsive to our spring exhibitions.  

SALON SPRING 2013: 

Knocking on Doors, Waking Sleeping Dogs

By clearly distinguishing and specifically presenting the different participants (work crew, curator, artist) that make an exhibition possible…, I wanted to show how these necessary but separate functions are equally essential for the constitution of a work.”

--Michael Asher, 1977

Invisible, immaterial, intangible, ancillary, hidden, shadow, affective, alienated, contingent and emergent – this series of programs will inquire into the dimensions of making and presenting art work that tend to go unseen, or lie just beyond the main frame. We will approach potentially elusive, yet integral, topics such as the relationship between an artist's non-material and material work, how a preparatory process intended for one project can generate others, the invocation of the invisible, the labor of locating discourse, and the role of communication in setting a stage. How does invisibility impact an understanding of labor, and the value ascribed to that labor? 

These ideas will be explored through other forms—performances, live readings, reading seminars, installations, and others still to be discovered—in the events occurring throughout the spring. 

Events are currently scheduled on the following dates, starting at 7 PM:

March 22, (Note: this event starts at 6 PM) The Reading Score by Millie Kapp, and the presentation of Cleanings, the first of four videos by John Henderson to be shown over the course of the program series. 
March 27: Monika Szewczyk speaks about “the blank,” with a screening of Commute by John Henderson
April 24: lecture with Geiger counter by Benjamin Pearson; reading by Jesse Malmed; and No Title by John Henderson
May 22: Tim Nickodemus and Mike Gibisser invoke Alvin Lucier; viewing of the final John Henderson video, Rehersal

This series is organized by Samantha Topol

Samantha Topol is a writer, editor, and artist based in Chicago. She is co-founder, with Benjamin Chaffee, of Original Features, a project-driven collaboration invested in supporting multiple forms of artistic and discursive production. With Original Features, she curated and presented Nearer to Know Less, two evenings of performances hosted by Alderman Exhibitions in 2012, and co-presented Georgia Wall’s exhibition Dedication to this View with Document. Her interest in supporting the release of new work has led to a growing interest, and critical investment, in arts organizing and modes of presentation. She earned dual MA/MFA degrees from The School of the Art Institute, and her essays and reviews have appeared in The Believer, Art Lies, The Architect's Newspaper, and the essay collection Theorizing Visual Studies, recently released by Routledge. 

Image: Michael Asher, 1977