The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape
An Opera by Mark Booth
Feb 06 – Mar 13, 2016
with an opening reception on Sat, Mar 06 from 6-9pm
Sector 2337 is happy to present Mark Booth’s evolving project The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape as an on-going month long production with focused occurrences of the work happening every Saturday in February at 2:30. The basis of Booth’s opera is an unfolding chain of metaphors that slowly describe a world of surprising, yet effortlessly entangled images. The intuitive resonance of each juxtaposition—how the sea could be represented by space, and space represented by carbonated water—manifests throughout the month-long performance as sound, written text, and paintings. These multivalent metaphors strike the audience as a tangent strikes a parabola; as the constantly changing performers read their way through the metaphors the supreme stillness of Booth’s formal decisions highlight the work’s strangely conscious inward movement. Cosmic in scope and stoic in its ethics, The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape is an opera for our ecological age.
This performative installation is produced by The Green Lantern Press as part of IN>TIME 2016, a Winter Long, City Wide, Multi Venue Performance Festival for Chicago (January 29th – March 4th).
Performances will occur on:
February 13th at 2:30
February 20th at 2:30
February 27th at 2:30
March 5th at 2:30
March 12th at 2:30
Mark Booth is an interdisciplinary artist, sound artist, writer, and musician. His work in text, image, and sound explores the material qualities of language, as well as the ways that language functions (and does not function) to describe human experience. Having learned to read and navigate the world as a dyslexic, Booth uses his work to make sense of his own disjointed experience with words and meaning. His art is simultaneously grandiose in scope (attempting (and failing, of course) to describe the entire spectrum of human existence) and comically quotidian. Booth is on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited and performed his work in Chicago, nationally, and internationally in a variety of known and obscure venues.
The 4th edition of IN>TIME Festival is a convergence of performance practices in Chicago. IN>TIME collaborates with 18 venues that range from museum to gallery to DIY spaces. It is borne from deep engagement: engagement with local performance practices, with friends and artists internationally, with structures and concepts of performance itself. It has evolved from a biennial to a triennial festival, encompassing venues all over Chicago, and pieces ranging from dance to performance art to experimental theatre. It’s IN>TIME because it comes just in the dead of winter, when things seem bleakest; because it provides a snapshot of what is happening in contemporary performance right now; because performance is a time-based medium that required that we all be present with one another. IN>TIME is a coming together for a moment within performance.
Installation View:
Mark Booth, “The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape,” 2016. Installation view, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape,” 2016. Installation view, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “MIGRATORY SHAPES,” 2016. Steel and wood, 12 units. Installation view, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “MIGRATORY SHAPES,” (detail) 2016. Steel and wood, 12 units. Installation view, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “The Sea is Represented by an Irregular Shape,” 2016. Installation view, Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “‘THIS representing ‘THAT’ ( 59 units) and IS (third person singular of ‘be’) (5 units),” (detail) 2016. Acrylic and ink on paper. Sector 2337, Chicago, IL. Photo by Clare Britt.
Mark Booth, “POLYP,” 2016. Acrylic and ink on paper. Photo by Clare Britt.
