NO BRAKES

A SHORT FIVE-ACT DRAMA BASED ON THE FOUNDING
OF FUTURISM BY FILIPPO TOMASSO MARINETTI IN 1908

“One hundred years ago, on February 20th 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the first Futurist Manifesto. In the same year, Henry Ford put into operation the first assembly line in his car factory in Detroit. Both events can be considered as the inauguration of the century that placed trust in the future. Making the mass production of cars possible, the assembly line is the technological system that best defines the age of industrial massification: the mobilisation of social energies is subjected to the aim of speeding up productivity.”

— Futurism and the Reversal of the Future, 2009
Franco “Bifo” Berardi

On October 15, 1908, Italian poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, after leaving a soiree, flipped over his brand new Fiat convertible while trying to avoid two cyclists. The crash inspired him to invent the art movement “Futurism” and later pen the Futurist Manifesto.

NO BRAKES is a five-act dramatic performance executed by the artist Brandon Alvendia with the Trunk Show organizers, the extended community and random passersby. The ongoing community performance will be staged at multiple points along a predetermined circular/cyclical route and documented in Vine video loops. En route and at each stop, numerous actions will occur including: sonic and visual interventions, vocal performances and readings, costumes and refreshments, the signature TRUNK SHOW bumper sticker installation ceremony and other great surprises (no Tokyo drifting unfortunately). A limited number of guests will be invited along for a ride in the TRUNK SHOW car or join the caravan in another vehicle, motorized or otherwise.

The performance and bumper sticker edition satirizes the futurists’ excitement around speed, intensity, exhilaration, violence, war, masculinity, aggression, adrenaline and technology with a slow, relaxing Sunday afternoon of play and mildly productive goofing off.

Join us Sunday, March 16th, 2014 at the Pulaski Park Field House parked outside the Multiples Fair starting at 1 o’clock. Tours leave periodically and last under 30 minutes.

ABOUT BRANDON ALVENDIA

Brandon Alvendia is a multi-, multi- artist, curator, educator and publisher. Present ongoing projects include The Storefront (2606 N. California), a multipurpose exhibition space, and Silver Galleon Press, an art-publishing house producing and distributing artist books and critical texts. His work has shown throughout the world in a variety of contexts. For the first two months of 2014, this has meant a catalog for the Block Museum, Links Hall as part of the Extinct Entities festival and unique, hand-made email signatures for every email. Concerned with ownership, paratexts, collaboration, the cultural lineages of art and the things just outside of art, the work is playful and smart, slyly utopian and ever expansive. A native of Chicago, Brandon earned degrees from SAIC (BFA) and UIC (MFA) and teaches at Columbia College.

ABOUT TRUNK SHOW

TRUNK SHOW is a mobile exhibition space often located near Chicago’s Eckhart Park. Following in the rich tradition of Chicago’s apartment, alternative and creative exhibition spaces, Trunk Show is committed to challenging exhibition forms through its unique program. We feature monthly solo shows for which artists are commissioned to design a limited edition bumper sticker. The sticker lives, rides along with, and helps propel the medium beat up 1999 forest green Ford Taurus owned by Raven Falquez Munsell and Jesse Malmed. In addition to the month-long exhibitions, the editioned bumper stickers are sold (from the trunk) for a collector-friendly price and by annual subscription (SOLD OUT! Stickers are still available à la carte). Openings follow a nomadic, symbiotic logic and include a public affixing, radio jams, and road snacks.

Newcity named it The Best New Gallery on a Car Bumper and F News recently profiled the project.

Upcoming artists include Laura Hart Newlon and Eric D. Watts.

Essay quoted http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_bifo8.htm

Official Website

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Tags: Brandon Alvendia, Chicago, trunk show