Event: Five year project 2008-2012

EVIDENCE is a subscription-based project documenting a series of monthly performances by Nicole Garneau. Subscribers to EVIDENCE will receive a monthly color postcard containing photographs and text that document a performance that took place in the previous month. Subscribers pay $120/year ($10/month), and each month will receive postcards documenting twelve performances from January 2008 to December 2008.

Starting in January 2008, Nicole embarks on UPRISING, a series of monthly, site-specific performances broadly exploring the practice of revolution. Performances will be directed by Nicole Garneau and co-created by Nicole and performers. Events will be purposely live, public, temporal, and participatory. They will be stagings of possibilities for a humane world. They will be attempts at making the world in which we want to live, and then inviting people directly and immediately inside it. Performances will be marked by a commitment to flexible structure, ambitious intentions, and sense of humor.

EVIDENCE postcards throughout 2008 will document performances in the UPRISING series. In January 2009, Nicole will embark on a new series of monthly performances, also to be documented through EVIDENCE. www.nicolegarneau.com

UPRISING #1
January 2008: 1.26.08
“240 weeks of war / acts of love”
Polish Triangle: intersection of Milwaukee, Ashland, and Division with Fountain, 1pm

Instead of creating a performance of protest, Nicole Garneau and her collaborators attempted to make a political performance that emphasized world transformation through creativity and compassion -- practicing revolutionary strategies filled with love.

Instructions, from Nicole to performers:

“We will stand at the fountain. Each person will tell a brief story about a time when they felt the high of doing something to make the world better. The story is about that feeling of being filled with love for the world. When the performer is finished telling a story, they will take a cup of beet juice and instead of drinking it, pour it on their mouth and down the front of their shirt. (shirts provided). Then we’ll blow 240 kisses to the audience.

I have been working with beets and beet juice for a long time. I think the color is really beautiful. I think beets are delicious. I like the way they come out of the earth but seem to bleed. They are also used in liver cleansing to purge anger from the body. They are very meaningful for me.”

What happened, by Nicole:

“Within the performance, everything went as planned. I liked that I had never heard anyone’s story before, because I got to experience listening to them for the first time. After I finished my story and my beet juice, I just listened to other people. We made a point of having an intentional target for the kisses, and that made it feel very meaningful. I had the experience of genuinely sending love to people in the performance, in the audience, and on the street. People slowed down their cars on Milwaukee avenue and rolled down passenger side windows, and we blew them kisses. A couple of guys walked through the triangle, suddenly realized they were in the midst of something, and kissed us back.”

UPRISING #2
February 2008: 2.7.08
DePaul University Lincoln Park campus Quad, 8:30 pm
performers: 15 freshmen members of Chicago Women in Theater class

Instructions, from Nicole to performers:

“In 2008, I will create UPRISING: monthly, site-specific performance works broadly exploring the practice of revolution. 2008 is 40 years since 1968, a year of worldwide revolutionary activity. In 2008, activists, historians, and cultural workers are contemplating the meanings and implications of this 40-year anniversary. Many comparisons are being made between 1968 and 2008. Some call for “re-creations” of 1968. Rather than attempting to re-create 1968, UPRISING performances will create public demonstrations of the possibilities for a more loving, just and humane present and future.

Lately I keep returning to the words of poet Sekou Sundiata, who calls on artists to “uncover a ‘transcendent’ vision of society that lifts our visions to the highest possibilities of human conduct. What might such a vision be? What would it take to imagine, to create, and to ritualize such a vision? How can artists and activists and scholars and others take up this challenge?”

The more I become interested in these questions, the less interested I am in getting up on stage in a darkened theater with the audience safely out of reach to “perform.” Instead, I find myself questioning the possibilities of civic engagement through the creation of performative work in non-performance spaces and/or outside. Can the creation of structured improvisations that incorporate audience and volunteer participation actually create a template for people to participate more actively and humanely in our whole society? How can these participatory “performances” be structured as creative projects that feel meaningful and accessible to people who don’t identify as artists? Does this practice of creating scenarios for expression counteract prevailing beliefs that the voices of the people are meaningless?

What happened, by Nicole:

“We talked about performance art, we discussed the feminist principal “the personal is political,” we learned and practiced the Macarena, they gave reports on student revolutionary movements of 1968, we talked about DePaul and academic freedom, they wrote their radical truths, we rehearsed and figured out the shape of the performance, we assigned volunteers for such roles as “telling your truth out loud” and “getting beet juice poured over your head.” We got dressed, we got our documentation together, we dealt with an emotional breakdown, we walked out to the snowy quad and did a whole outdoor performance, we came back and got cleaned up and gathered documentation, we wrote reflection papers, and we had a post-show discussion. It was intense! But really even though it was so much work and energy to move everything forward, we actually did everything on the agenda.”

UPRISING #3
Sunday, March 30, 1:00pm
Experimental Station Community Garden,
6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637.

UPRISING #3 coincides with the spring kickoff of the gardening season at Experimental Station. Nicole and cast will perform simultaneously with the first 2008 gathering of community gardeners/neighbors in Hyde Park.

UPRISING #4
part of VERSION>08 Festival
April 17 - April 27,
960 W 31st St.