Defibrillator Gallery + Zhou B Art Center proudly present

I Want to Give You Flowers But As a Matter of Precaution I Cut Off Both My Hands

Performance Art by Elana Katz + Exildiscount
Concept by Elana Katz + Philip Kojo Metz

A techno DJ and a runner on a modified treadmill define comprise the foundational structure of this conceptual performance by visiting artists from Berlin, Elana Katz and Exildiscount. This collaborative work pertains to unfulfilled dreams, (self) sabotage, dysfunctional rationality, and things that never existed.

The event will close with a set by visiting Berlin DJ, Exildiscount.

FRI 20 SEP | 8PM | 3RD Friday at Zhou B | Main Floor
Zhou B Art Center | 1029 W 35TH ST | 60609 | Free!

I Want to Give You Flowers… is part of a larger project called In The Other Room featuring exhibitions, performances, and discourse with Performance Artist In Residence, Elana Katz. A companion exhibition on the Lower Level featuring the performance film Running on Empty will be on view for the 3rd Friday Opening and during regular gallery hours through October 11th.

There are three other events associated with this project:

FRI 20 SEP | 7-10PM | Lower Level | In the Other Room: Visual Art Opening featuring Running on Empty | Gallery Hours: MON>FRI | 10AM>5PM | Closes FRI 11 OCT

SUN 22 SEP | 2-8PM | Main Floor | DISCUSSIONS: Running on Empty | The body, landscape, and society in relationship to trauma.

SUN 29 SEP | 6PM | Main Floor | Upheavals: Performance art by Elana Katz, Sami Hussain Ismat, and Patricia Nguyen.

Running on Empty is a site-specific performance for which the artist ran the 15km historic route of the “gas van” – a mobile gas chamber used during the Holocaust in Serbia during a 3‐month period in 1942. The piece deals with memory, postmemory, and dissociative tendencies, using the body to reactivate a landscape of trauma that has been integrated into the mundane local urban and suburban surroundings. A film has resulted from this performance that works with imagery and sound to both document and distort the performance action.

Discussions | Centered around the performance film Running on Empty, guest speakers deepen the analysis of this project and the topics that it triggers regarding collective trauma, memory, and contemporary art. The program will bring together an important selection of participants from Belgrade and Berlin to converse with local artists and scholars.

2PM | A discussion by the Berlin-based visiting artists Exildiscount and Elana Katz about their collaborative performance film project, Running on Empty. Moderated by visiting scholar from Serbia, Milica Lapčević.

4PM | Contextualizing ideas behind Running on Empty that deal with collective trauma and cultural memory. Speakers include Sami Hussain Ismat, Patricia Nguyen, and Elana Katz, moderated by Nora Taylor.

6PM | Considering art as a means of addressing the social and psychological consequences of historical happenings related to both individual and national violence and trauma. Moderated by Roberto Sifuentes in conversation with Elana Katz and Aram Han Sifuentes.

b i o g r a p h i e s

Elana Katz [www.elanakatz.eu] is a conceptual artist working primarily in the medium of performance art. Katz’s work confronts cultural conventions, critically examines the complexity that lies within contradictions, and thus aims to create an experience of unlearning the assumed. Her work concerning memory culture and instances of historical erasure in the Balkans, Spaced Memory (2011- 2018), has been realized in Romania, Moldova, and the region of former Yugoslavia, in cooperation with, among other supporters, the Goethe Institute of Bucharest and the Trust for Mutual Understanding of New York. Katz has exhibited/ performed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (2011), Diehl CUBE Berlin (2013), P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York (2013), DNA Berlin (2015), ROCKELMANN& Berlin (2016, 17, 18) and KWADRAT Berlin (2017,18,19). She studied in New York at the Parsons School of Design and earned a Meisterschülerin title from the Berlin University of the Arts (Class of Katharina Sieverding). Katz has been based in Berlin since 2008 and is represented by gallery KWADRAT.

Exildiscount [www.soundcloud.com/exildiscount] is a composer, sound engineer, producer and DJ from Berlin. Whether it is in working alongside video artists or in compiling a techno set, Exildiscount’s work always operates along the same tenets: exploring, challenging and recontextualising the different narratives, disciplines, identities, perspectives and discourses that inform both a work itself as much as our understanding of it. In this, he draws on his formal training as much his biography. Born to Christian cultist parents, he spent his childhood playing music in pedestrian malls of Germany with his family band. Escaping the ideological confines of religion and prescriptive masculinity as a gender non-conforming teenager, Exildiscount first pursued training as an events technician, then studied at Humboldt University of Berlin, majoring in Musicology and Media (Studiengang „Musik und Medien“), and minoring in Cultural Studies. He started out DJing in 2003 and now regularly plays at parties across the queer scene of Berlin, such as House of Red Doors, Gegen and as a longtime resident at SchwuZ. His work is driven by a belief in idealism rather than ideologies.

Defibrillator Gallery [www.DFBRL8R.org] is an international platform for Performance Art known for bold and courageous programming that aims to provoke thought and stimulate discourse surrounding genre defying time-based practices. DFBRL8R actively contributes to a global dialog surrounding conceptual, ephemeral, or enigmatic modes of expression, aiming to raise awareness, appreciation, and respect for the discipline of Performance Art. Based at Zhou B Art Center in Chicago’s historic Bridgeport neighborhood, DFBRL8R LTD is a 501c3 arts organization made possible with support from The Tanne Foundation Award; Reva and David Logan Foundation; Elizabeth Morse Genius Charitable Trust; Martha Strutters Farley and Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation; Zhou B Art Center; DFBRL8R Board of Directors; and generous contributions from our loving community.

The production of Running on Empty was sponsored by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York, and realized in cooperation with REX Cultural Center of Belgrade and DFBRL8R Performance Art Gallery of Chicago.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Aram Han Sifuentes, Bridgeport, Chicago, Dfbrl8r, Elana Katz, Exildiscount, I Want to Give You Flowers But As a Matter of Precaution, In the Other Room | Four Programs, Milica Lapčević, Nora Taylor, Patricia Nguyen, Philip Kojo Metz, Roberto Sifuentes, Sami Hussain, zhou b art center