Join us on April 27 1-4PM for a closing celebration of “Sticky and Sweet” plus Judith Brotman’s The Reading Project.

For this installment of Judith Brotman’s Reading Project, curator and occasional writer, Shannon Stratton has assembled three readers to read a chapter from Djuna Barne’s Nightwood: “Watchman, What of the Night?”

In this incredible, poetic, meandering selection, Nora Flood visits Doctor Matthew O’Conner in his tiny, decrepit apartment to lament the loss of her lover Robin Vote “to the night.” The Doctor begins their exchange by posing the question to Nora:“Have you ever thought of the night?”

Each reader will read, and subtly reinterpret this chapter, altering its meter and emphasis. Choosing readers with deep or resonant tones, based on a vague similarity to her own voice, Stratton inserts vocal doppelgangers into the process of The Reading Project. The voice has been studied as a means to attraction, and the way people can discern healthy mates and symmetrical faces, however, in the case of same sex attraction the idea of the voice as an attractor, has less of a biological imperative. Rather, as a partner to Barnes’ text, a book that has been considered by many to be one of the first depictions of gay love, particularly between woman, the readers chosen for Have You Ever Thought of the Night? have voices that capture the night itself, or perhaps become it.

Shannon Stratton is the Executive Director of Threewalls, a visual arts organization she co-founded in 2003. She curates and writes independently and with Threewalls and teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Current projects include: Slow Frequency at Or Gallery, Berlin & Vancouver, Threewalls, devening projects + editions and PLHK through 2015 and A Chain of Conspicuous Absences in conjunction with Zach Cahill and the Open Practice Committee at the University of Chicago in March 2015.

Judith Brotman is an artist and educator from Chicago. Her work has included mixed media installations and theatrical immersive environments which occupy a space between sculpture and drawing. Recent work includes language/text based conceptual projects which are meditations on the possibility of transformation.

Brotman has exhibited extensively in Chicago & throughout the US. Exhibitions include: threewalls, Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Gallery 400, Illinois State Museum, NIU Art Gallery, the DeVos Art Museum, Hampshire College, Smart Museum of Art, SOFA Chicago, The Society of Arts & Crafts, Boston, & The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Tags: Judith Brotman, Oak Park, Shannon Stratton, Sticky and Sweet, Terrain, The Reading Project, Zach Cahill