MAKING OUT turns the SITE gallery into a space of playful resistance. The work will center around a large installation of bleachers that suggest a high school football field — the kind of bleachers that provide a refuge for clandestine kissing. MAKING OUT fosters radical imagination by constructing a particular, touchable, sometimes functional site for envisioning tenderness. This show is a collaboration by a group of artists known as HIVE.

The work is a site of negotiation between power and intimacy. It aims to clarify the question of whether tenderness can resist and alter systemic power structures. This work encourages and explores the practice of making out in the context of institutional subjugation. HIVE intends to remain hopeful via this exploration. HIVE intends, at every step, to acknowledge the possibility that if we keep kissing, we may alter the conditions of our subjugation. At the same time, paradoxically, we humbly acknowledge our helplessness in the face of power: we make out all the same.

Several programs and happenings will take place as we explore these ideas with the gallery’s visitors. Some programs take place under the refuge of the bleachers. Some will be available to stream online, as this show is both local and dispersed. In addition to the bleachers, this show includes interactive sound and touch installations, as well as a limited quantity of free zines.

MAKING OUT is the first exhibition in SITE Galleries by students in SAIC’s Low-Residency MFA program, which was established in 2014. It is a joint effort by HIVE, a group comprised of class of 2018 Low-Residency students Maggie Wong, Nancy Murphy-Spicer, Morris Fox, Morgan Green, Brendan Getz, and C Alex Clark. We are grateful to the faculty, loved-ones, and remote collaborators who join us in this work.

OCTOBER 5 — Exhibition Opening & Reception, 3:30 – 6:30 PM

OCTOBER 11 — Kissin’ and Kiss-in
4:00 PM Kiss-In
We encourage those who are curious about affectionate touch as a form of resistance to attend this event. We will model methods of consent before practicing them though kissing. Participants can kiss in whatever way they are comfortable: on the hand, on the cheek, or more intimately. Here we actively support careful touch, tenderness and communication. Participants may also choose at any time to watch, rather than participate.
This action is a sincere and hopeful attempt to evaluate the gallery’s potential as a space of resistance, of inclusion rather than exclusion. It looks to the 90s kiss-ins staged by ACT UP, an AIDS direct action advocacy group that included our program director Gregg Bordowitz. Our action takes tactics that have been historically effective in the street, and enacts them in the space of the gallery — in the shelter we have built there. We are using these tactics in this case to build notions of empowerment through intimacy, and to fortify tools of consent. We thank our program director for the conversations that suggested and enabled this action, and we hope that it serves both as a way to try something new and as a way to honor history.
5:00 PM We Won’t Get Bored Kissing Because Time Will Be a Mobius Strip
In this lecture, Morgan Green will seriously consider alternative conceptions of time as tools of resistance. She will draw from queer theory and popular media as she clumsily attempts to simulate (pedagogically) the experience of making out forever. A supplementary zine will distributed after the talk.

OCTOBER 18 — Digitally Intimate
Maggie Wong, MC
4:00 PM Safer Space Talks
A series of video-cast talks curated by Morris Fox, in which experts from different arenas discuss strategies around creating safer spaces.

5:00 PM Bedsheet Poetry Readings (40 min, two poets each reading for 15 min and a Q and A at the end for 10 min)
A series of video-cast poetry readings curated by C Alex Clark, in which poets Bailey Schaumburg (St. Louis, MO) and Katie Johnson (Santa Fe, NM) Skype in from their bedrooms, in whatever state of dress they choose.

ONGOING
Soft/Resist Happenings
During the first ten days of the exhibition, Morris Fox will be performing sporadic, interactive acts of poetry around campus and on campus radio. Check out SITE’s Facebook and Instagram accounts for details as they come.

Gallery naps, snacks, and lunches.
You might come by the gallery and find one of the artists eating or napping under or next to the bleachers. If you do, you’d be welcome to join them! Whether or not artists are present, feel free to come by to enjoy a nap or a meal. Tuesdays and Fridays, noon to one, throughout the duration of the show

Zine distribution
Come by the gallery for limited free distribution of these two zines:

“Soft/Resist” by Morris Fox. Available for a limited time. The zine is to interpret the question of what safe space is, it is to navigate poetically or visually the delineation of intimacy and institutional resistance, it is an attempt to curate a collection of works that speaks to the issues mentioned without disregarding other forms of agency

“We Won’t Get Bored Kissing Because Time Will Be a Mobius Strip” by Morgan Green. Zine containing text of Morgan’s October 11 lecture, as well as some other surprises. Available in gallery from October 12.

Official Website

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Tags: Bailey Schaumburg, Brendan Getz, C Alex Clark, Chicago, Gregg Bordowitz, HIVE, Katie Johnson, Loop, Maggie Wong, Making Out, Morgan Green, Morris Fox, Nancy Murphy-Spicer, SAIC, SITE Galleries, SITE Sharp