062 Gallery is pleased to present Mev Luna’s first solo exhibition in Chicago, IL.

“Look, what I want is to be fully present in my life – to be really where you are, contemporary with yourself in your life, giving full attention to the world, which includes you. You are not the world, the world is not identical to you, but you’re in it and paying attention to it. That’s what a writer does–a writer pays attention to the world. Because I am very against the solipsistic notion that you find it all in your head. You don’t, there really is a world that’s there whether you’re in it or not.”

– Susan Sontag, The Complete Rolling Stone Interview

Unlimited talk and text as low as $30[1]. Witty commercials in which the person making the phone call to a customer service line is the one answering the call[2]. American deportees answering questions, responding to complaints, and re-directing calls from across the border[3].

This is the state of communications, with much of the emotional labor behind a phone call displaced in text messages, emoticons, and undetectable accents serving an American public whose customer satisfaction survey answers do not account for the geographical dislocation of those they evaluate and the cost of that service.

With this reality in mind, CALL A MOM PHONE BANK invites the audience to make a difficult phone call. Taking place within a semi-private space with the guidance of the performer, the installation will serve as a new environment to approach a lingering or unaddressed topic. It is up to the discretion of the participant to define difficult for themselves.

CALL A MOM PHONE BANK welcomes all calls in all languages to those living or deceased. Appointments can be made via our online scheduler, walk ins welcome during the opening and select windows of time. Please be advised that the call center is BYOD (bring your own device).

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[1] metroPCS ®
[2] “Live Customer Service” Discover it card commercial, 5,448,812 views, YouTube.com
[3] Blitzer, Jonathan. “The Deportees Taking Our Calls.” The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/the-deportees-taking-our-calls. Accessed 1 April 2018.

MEV LUNA is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Drawing from autobiography, critical race theory, and corporate self-betterment training programs, Luna’s work engages history to underscore the fictions that hold power over contemporary experience and dominate speculative futures. They use video installation, lecture-performance, 3-D rendering, and writing to propose alternative ways of how we understand subjugated bodies. Luna’s works have been exhibited in group exhibitions at Oficina de Arte, México City, PRIZM Art Fair, Miami, ThreeWalls@Rational Park, Chicago, and Oliver Arts Center at California College of the Arts, Oakland. Luna’s time based works have screened at Artists’ Television Access, San Francisco and MIX Queer Experimental Film Festival in New York, and their lecture performances have been presented at SFMoMA and Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago. Luna has contributed to Bad at Sports and is co-founder of online contemporary media publication Public Excess. They have just been named a P.O.W.E.R. Project facilitator by the Chicago based Art Leaders of Color Network.

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Tags: 062, Bridgeport, CALL A MOM PHONE BANK, Chicago, Mev Luna