Towards the end of the fall season at Sector, Patrick Durgin (Kenning Editions) and Devin King (The Green Lantern Press) joined forces to curate a Festival of Poets Theater. What follows are some photographs from those four jam-packed and wonderful days. You can also download a PDF of the newspaper publication we produced in tandem with the festival here. In that lush, tabloid you’ll find cover art by Trauma Dog, poetic essays by Eleanor Antin, Carla Harryman, Roberto Harrison, David J. Getsy and Judith Malina writing about Scott Burton’s Behavior Tableaux, + centerfold art by Mark Booth, all tied up in a bow of color and typography by dream team design duo, Sonnenzimmer.

Devin King introducing the first night of Festival of Poets Theater at Sector 2337. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“The ordinary flows itself together over forms.” Ingrid Becker and Hannah Brooks-Motl perform “Ordinary Isadora,” still from performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Ingrid Becker and Hannah Brooks-Motl perform “Ordinary Isadora,” still from performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“Where were you born? A shrimp cocktail? A lamb chop? Do you know Robert?” Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, “I Am American: I Speak English, ” still from performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, “I Am American: I Speak English, ” still from performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, “I Am American: I Speak English, ” still from performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Patrick Durgin, co-curator of the Festival of Poets Theater, introduces Eleanor Antin, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Eleanor Antin, “The Adventures of a Nurse” (1976), still from screening, The Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Caroline Picard.

Emily Hooper Lansana (director), “The Walmart Republic,” still from a performative adaptation of of Quraysh Ali Lansana’s book of poems, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“We laughed in the face of history.” Emily Hooper Lansana (director), “The Walmart Republic,” still from a performative adaptation of of Quraysh Ali Lansana’s book of poems, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“We laughed in the face of history.” Emily Hooper Lansana (director), “The Walmart Republic,” still from a performative adaptation of of Quraysh Ali Lansana’s book of poems, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“This is a story about protecting the nation from foreign invasions.” Daniel Borzutzky, “El Gato Pussycat Proteja Your Gringo Cheese,” still from a neo-benshi performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“There’s a man outside our bodies making comments about our perspective.” Daniel Borzutzky, “El Gato Pussycat Proteja Your Gringo Cheese,” still from a neo-benshi performance, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Sharon Lanza (director), “Who Is React?” still from the staged reading of a Flarf piece by K. Silem Mohammad, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Sharon Lanza (director), “Who Is React?” still from the staged reading of a Flarf piece by K. Silem Mohammad, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Devin King and John Tipton, “Nero’s Ghosts,” performance still from Seneca (with combined translations  by Kristina Chew & John Tipton), Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Devin King and John Tipton, “Nero’s Ghosts,” performance still from Seneca (with combined translations by Kristina Chew & John Tipton), Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Devin King and John Tipton, “Nero’s Ghosts,” performance still from Seneca (with combined translations by Kristina Chew & John Tipton), Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

avery r. young (director) “Home On the Range,” still from the play by Amiri Baraka, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

avery r. young (director) “Home On the Range,” still from the play by Amiri Baraka, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“I am a prostitute of the 21st century, metaphors are not enough.” TRAUMA DOG (Cassandra Troyan & Rachel Ellison) , “The Arm Collector,” performance still, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

“When you dream of appliances, who do you think made you?” TRAUMA DOG (Cassandra Troyan & Rachel Ellison) , “The Arm Collector,” performance still, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Patrick Durgin, “Interference,” still from a remote controlled performance piece inspired by Scott Burton’s infamous “Behavior Tableaux,” Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Patrick Durgin, “Interference,” still from a remote controlled performance piece inspired by Scott Burton’s infamous “Behavior Tableaux,” Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Joel Craig (director), “The Gunfight,” still from a play by Brent Cunningham, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015.

Joel Craig (director), “The Gunfight,” still from a play by Brent Cunningham, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Joel Craig (director), “The Gunfight,” still from a play by Brent Cunningham, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Joel Craig (director), “The Gunfight,” still from a play by Brent Cunningham, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Ira S. Murfin, “Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought (re-visited): Encounters from David Antin’s 80 Langdon Street talk re-performed,” still from a David Antin reenactment , Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Ira S. Murfin, “Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought (re-visited): Encounters from David Antin’s 80 Langdon Street talk re-performed,” still from a David Antin reenactment , Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Ira S. Murfin, “Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought (re-visited): Encounters from David Antin’s 80 Langdon Street talk re-performed,” still from a David Antin reenactment , Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Richard Foreman (director), “The Birth of the Poet,” still from a screening of performance documentation of a play written by Kathy Acker, with music by Peter Gordon, and sets by David Salle, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

Richard Foreman (director), “The Birth of the Poet,” still from screened documentation of a staged play by Kathy Acker, with music by Peter Gordon, and sets by David Salle, Festival of Poets Theater, Sector 2337, 2015. Photo by Amelia Charter.

On February 26th, 2013 Caroline Picard conducted an interview with Jeremy Bolen, who kindly agreed to donate work to our 2015 auction. Here are some excerpts from “The Stage of Scientific Reproduction:”

CP: That sort of leads me to my next question—this idea of the photograph as a performance. I feel like you tend to you use photographic film as a membrane that records its own experience. You bury film underground, or use a lake as a camera—can you say more about that? And what does it mean to capture an image or trace of anti-matter?

JB: Yes, I love the idea of the photograph being a record of a performance, and in many instances [my pictures] function in that way. Diving into a lake to use that lake as a camera, digging holes to bury film to record radiation; there are modes of recording through performance and interference used in a lot of my work. The water shifts in Lake Geneva actually alter the shape of the LHC, so that performance of sorts is exactly what I am talking about here. Much of this work merges the trace of a performance with the document of a space or non-space.

I am drawn to working with photography as it can act as an extension of our human senses, and when that can be taken a step further, where it becomes an extension of perception, and a collaboration with the environment it is recording, there is a completeness that I really enjoy. And the film does act as a membrane of sorts, a malleable membrane that can record interactions with light, invisible phenomena and material simultaneously. Creating work in this way creates this really interesting play between planning and chance. Robert Smithson once said, “Planning and chance almost seem to be the same thing,” which is something I have been considering lately.

Jeremy Bolen. “41.70230º -87.91234º (buried at site a, with the first nuclear reactor) #7,” 2012. Archival pigment print with dirt from site, 20 x 25 in. Courtesy the artist.

CP: My last question is about authenticity. You also add material to your photographs—dirt from the site the image was taken, or you’ll wash a photo in a bath from Lake Geneva—how important is it that the material (the grass, the dirt, the water) be taken from its site of origin? And why?

JB: It is imperative that the material is taken from the site of origin. Absolutely. I want there to be an actual presence from the site: the smell, the entropy of the material, the way it interacts with the photographic image. I want there to be a first order experience, and a tension between the real and simulated, the actual and the representational. So I guess I do have some of my own rules.

On January 17th of 2011 I conducted an interview with Ellen. Here are a couple excerpts from, “How To Stretch an Arm Through a Gap.” Ellen Rothenberg has kindly agreed to donated work to our 2015 auction; she also had a solo exhibition at Sector last spring called elsetime, and participated in Field Static, an early Devin King/Caroline Picard curatorial endeavor at The Co-Prosperity Sphere in 2011.

While Ellen Rothenberg works in a range of scale and material, there is a tactile quality to her work–a directness that calls attention to the body. I always think of organic bodies, bodies that don’t recognize an essential authority in our human structures. Like a climbing vine or water, her work seems to stretch through and around expectations. There are cracks in the street where weeds grow. The roof boasts an almost mystical, wandering leak. Ellen investigates literal and psychological structures, delving into the tension between what we take for granted and what has been overlooked. She activates the porousness of an assumption, nestling into its marginalized areas in order to produce new, self-reflexive spaces.

Caroline Picard: I’m interested in how you choose the material you work with–whether that is text, fiber, performance, or installation?

Materials aren’t neutral — they carry meaning along with their histories of production and use. Perhaps this preoccupation with materials is a pre-digital sensibility?   I’m interested in the inflection of meaning that occurs through the materials’ specificity.  In Berlin this past summer, I exhibited Constellations, an installation which employed 5 and 10 cent store price tags from the 40s. At the gallery the price tags were arranged in loose clusters along with arrow signs indicating direction or possible locations. The work referenced economies – – an economy of scale, of transport (the work could be packed in a small suitcase and brought to Europe in an overhead rack) but most importantly, the work spoke to this moment of global economic crisis and the oblique and often indecipherable relationships between interwoven economic forces that shape our options on the most elemental level… the price of bread.  With their archaic prices: 7 cents, 11 cents, 29 cents, 12 for $1.79, the bright red tags with their worn surfaces and minute sums arranged in seeming infinite clusters spoke to me of the indecipherability of the global economic crisis.

I don’t think of performance or installation as a material, but a methodology or a form necessitated by the content of the work.

Ellen Rothenberg, “Constellations,” Schalter, 2010, Berlin

CP: Do you feel like there are expectations for an “artist” in the world? How have you/do you negotiate/d those?

ER: Expectations are directed at artists from both outside and within the art world; the artists’ job is to address and challenge them. Some expectations are historically inflected — during college there was a common assumption that the “real” or “best” artists were men and  just working against this assumption was political. One of the most radical acts in my career was to have a child, because family doesn’t figure into most notions of who artists are and how they’re supposed to live.  With the relentless, myopic cultural focus on youth and the “new,” just continuing to work as an artist is an ongoing act of resistance.

Looking back over the years it seems amazing to have interviewed so many of incredible artists about their work. Always, I’m reminded by the cultural wealth of this city. In this case, I had the chance to talk to Cándida Alvarez not only about her show at The Hyde Park Art Center, mambomountain, but a number of preceding projects as well. Alvaraz kindly agreed to donated work to our 2015 auction, and this interview provides a little context to Alvarez’s practice. What follows is an excerpt from an interview between Alvarez and myself,  “Mashed Up and Shredded into Space,” originally published on the Art21 blog in January 2014. (Check out an overview of our auction here)

Caroline Picard: Can you talk a little bit about how you think about a painting’s relationship to space? Partly, I ask because I read about your show, For Sol Lewitt, where the work seems to intervene marginalized space directly, whether by placing works in an upper corner, or by projection beams of light. (Is that accurate? I only saw photos.) Your show at Hyde Park Art Center is taking similar factors into consideration, even though it might be less apparent as the works are primarily large canvases hung on the wall.

Candida Alvarez: My paintings intervene within a space. They participate and bring into conversation what lies between, above, below, behind, and in front. It is the excitement of taking paintings out of the studio and leading them towards a conversation that can be totally unexpected.

At the Hyde Park Art Center, I created a study room. By adding color and suspending two overlapping portable walls, the dimensions and the mood of the room changed as it heightened a sense of intimacy, which juxtaposed against the larger viewing space, gives those paintings more breathing space.

On the outside wall of the front gallery, there is a monitor that locates me inside my studio space, as you hear me talking about my painting process. I wanted to create an alternative to a wall text in order to possibly grab the attention of the teenagers that roam this community space, who are mostly indifferent to what is on the walls.

Mambo Mountain is an imaginary place, as are these paintings. I grew up in the projects, I rode the elevators up to the 14^th floor, and I loved to look out the windows. That is where my mountain started and it has spread to the mountains that my parents grew up on, and live on to this day in Puerto Rico.

“DaDaDahlia,” 2005-08. Acrylic on canvas. 6ft x 7ft. Courtesy of the artist and Hyde Park Art Center.