RSVP | $10 [or pay what you can]

featuring performance art by visiting artist
Wojtek Siwik [Poland]
alongside local artists
Charlie Arsenault
Sara Zalek

Wojtek Siwik [Poland] instagram.com/szary_pudel is an intermedia artist born on the polish-german border in 1999, student of cracow’s academy of fine arts. ambient girl, introvert rockstar, occasional troglodyte. score composer since 2020, music journalist since 2016, straight edge since 1999. fascinated by street folklore and the way it shapes across the different places and identities. likes movies where nothing happens and poetry. dislikes police.

Sara Zalek [@01saratonin] is an interdisciplinary artist, maker of situations and curious objects. Rooted in physical investigations of trauma, resilience, and transformation, their work is intimate, raw, poetic. They create learning situations, workshops, and sensing environments to encourage thoughtful interpersonal connections. Zalek performs often in both live and online situations; they most currently took residence at Elastic Arts Foundation, they were a 2015 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, a 2017 3Arts Make a Wave Awardee, and Ragdale Foundation Fellow. The City of Chicago named them an Esteemed Artist in 2022. They have performed and curated performances at the Chicago Cultural Center, High Concept Labs, Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Links Hall, Lumpen Radio, DFBRL8R, No Nation, Big Marsh Park, Urban Guild in Kyoto, Japan, and so many more. Through Butoh Curious/Butoh Chicago [www.butohchicago.com], Zalek creates opportunities for positive communication and arts integration through workshops, performances, and conversations about personal and collective body.

Charlie Arsenault [@grotextures + @lumpsnorgans] received a Bachelors of Fine Arts with honors from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. After completing the Apprentice Program at Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Charlie helped facilitate many of their exhibitions including documenting four iterations of Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival and performing one of his own works in their show P*ss and Vinegar. Charlie co-founded and co-directed the curatorial collective The Neighbors, where he began making intricate online exhibitions. In 2019 he performed at Power Ouch Performance Festival at Links Hall, a show highlighted by See Chicago Dance. More recently, Charlie has been crocheting wearables for Wolfbait and B Girls as well as drag performers across the City of Chicago.

SITE/less [siteless.org] is a guerrilla storefront overseen by Zephyr Dance [zephyrdance.com] artistic director Michelle Kranicke and architect David Sundry. Positioned as an experimental architecture, movement, and research center, SITE/less seeks to rethink the relationship between the typical model of most performance venues and how the organization of those venues inevitably limits and conditions the curatorial practice. One focus of SITE/less is to develop a space that is, in itself, performative and to make use of an architectural approach that serves to stage a program of expressed activities while, at the same time, employing a structure that is open to unplanned social interactions and chance events.

Defibrillator Gallery [DFBRL8R.org] is a roving venue founded in 2010 as one of only a handful of organizations worldwide with a focus specifically on Performance Art. Recognizing a demand for spaces that adeptly present time and body-based visual art, founder and director Joseph Ravens created an international platform known for bold and courageous programming that aims to provoke thought and stimulate discourse surrounding experimental time-based practices. DFBRL8R actively contributes to global dialogues surrounding conceptual, ephemeral, or immaterial expressive forms. Based in Chicago but presenting projects when and where opportunities arise, DFBRL8R energetically bridges local and global communities while raising awareness, appreciation, and respect for the medium of performance art.

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Tags: Charlie Arsenault, Chicago, Defibrillator Gallery, Sara Zalek, SITE/less, THIS&THAT, West Town, Wojtek Siwik