“Art Works,” the slogan National Endowment for the Arts chair Rocco Landesman was spouting during his quick visit to Chicago two weeks ago, is shorthand for the theory he was touting—that art is good for the economy, and especially for urban redevelopment. The stuff is supposed to work like Botox on failing neighborhoods: inject a few artists and, presto, the ugly disappears. People flock, and commerce flourishes.
The Outlet was created this spring, after the CAC—which has been programming pop-ups for the CLA—invited Links Hall to curate a performance-art venue. Links director Roell Schmidt says she was thrilled to do it. “It was a chance to give artists exactly what they need: free space, a deadline, and an audience.” The deal was to put three or four artists at a time in the space for six-week stints.
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Ravens was part of the first group of artists in residence at the Outlet. In addition to a series of brief performances, he planned to exhibit two installations and a triptych of photos conceived by him and shot by Alan Rovge. The installations included a costume consisting of a large, hot-pink, faux-leather intestine equipped with a pair of amorphous spandex organs. Among the performances were Wantitis—a “statement about the economy,” Ravens says, in which he dons a giant molded replica of his head and feeds dollar bills into a shredder strapped to his chest—and Is My Liver Showing?, an exploration of gluttony and consumption in which he rides a stationary bike while expelling pieces of his “liver” (actually, pillows) from an opening in his costumed torso.
Three days later, Coate e-mailed the other performance artists who were in residence along with Ravens at the Outlet—Erica Mott, Sentell Harper, and the team of Matthew Nicholas and Eric Warner—to tell them that they would have to go, too.
Lord adds that he considers his run-in with Ravens just an “incident that has come and gone,” and the only thing he objected to was the presence of a nude man in the window of the storefront.
One of those performance artists, Matthew Nicholas, who was a member of the same Outlet group as Ravens, says he doesn’t believe this was “an issue of censorship because the landlord had the ability to say what was okay or not.” But Lord maintains he was never asked about the photos and never gave a verdict on them. “I didn’t see them,” he says, “I don’t know anything about them,” He also says he never made a comment one way or the other about whether performance art could continue at the 220 S. Wabash.
It had better be abstract.
