As part of the global community event World Listening Day under the theme “Listening With”, the soundwalk “Walking With the Limits of Gender” will celebrate the act of sonic awareness in our environment.

The soundwalk led by Amanda Gutierrez focuses on the public spaces of, primarily imagined and adapted for the bodily needs and rhythms of non-conforming bodies. The sound walk will discuss the ongoing relationships with residents, through psychogeographic analysis of alternatives in urban models for public space. The exploration around the park is aiming to engage the critical question of why urban cities mostly consider bodies who are capable to work and function in the rhythm of production, and how that affects the everyday experience of the non-conforming bodies as well as increasing the vulnerability of female individuals. In the soundwalk, participants can experience the park surroundings through sensing the soundscapes, architecture, public access, pedestrian rights, gender safeties while imagining tools to empower transients who are challenged by the conditions of the current urban design. The soundwalk will begin at the Eckhart Park Fieldhouse and conclude at the Nightingale Micro Cinema where the VR screening of Flâneuse>La caminanta will be open to the public. The VR environment exposes the perspective of participants navigating urban landscapes in Mexico City, Abu Dhabi, NYC, and Brooklyn through short conversations while we walk in their space. The locations selected by participants and have personal meaning in their everyday journeys on the relationship of inclusiveness, safeness, vulnerability, and empowerment.

Amanda Gutierrez Artist Statement as an educator

As a teaching artist, radical pedagogy is an important tool to create dialogue. These dynamics, helped my artwork to be developed as a constant learning process, taking into consideration the site-specific qualities. My teaching experience in Chicago, Mexico City, and New York gave me valuable lessons about the dynamics of power in the collaborative process, taking decisions with students and mentors as the creative team. These lessons were applied in several projects, where I had a clearer idea of my relationship with space, the community to work with, and my peers. I learned to trust in my fellow collaborators but also in the culture of the space where is presented, respecting their own aesthetics as well as the cultural dynamics with the public space, community center, museum, or public school.

Amanda Gutiérrez (b. 1978, Mexico City) explores the experience of home, belonging, and cultural identity by bringing into focus details of everyday practices whose ordinary status makes it particularly hard for us to notice their key role in defining who we are. Trained and graduated initially as a stage designer from The National School of Theater, Gutiérrez uses a range of media such as sound art and performance art to investigate how these conditions of everyday life set the stage for our experiences and in doing so shape our individual and collective identities. Approaching these questions from immigrants’ perspectives continues to be of special interest to Gutiérrez, who completed her MFA in Media and Performance Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently elaborating the academic dimension of her work as a Ph.D. student at the University of Girona, Spain. Accordingly, these techniques also constitute the core of the pedagogical practice Gutiérrez has developed over a decade of teaching in diverse settings ranging from high schools on Chicago’s South Side to a senior center on New York’s Upper West Side, including academic institutions such as the SAIC, Connecticut College, and Columbia University. Gutiérrez has held numerous art residencies at FACT, Liverpool in the UK, ZKM in Germany, TAV in Taiwan, Bolit Art Center in Spain, and her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as The Liverpool Biennale in 2012, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. A recipient of a grant from the National System of Art Creators, in Mexico, Gutiérrez is currently the President of the Midwest Society of Acoustic Ecology.

This event is organized in partnership with The Midwest Society of Acoustic Ecology and Nightingale Micro Cinema.

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Tags: Amanda Gutierrez, Chicago, eckhart park, MSAE Summer Soundwalks: Walking with the Limits of Gender, The Nightingale, West Town