Thinking about our program in the form of a program, the Logan Center Gallery becomes a TV studio, hosting visionary conversations about contexts and possibilities in anticipation of the public launch of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts.

A range of formats will be explored, from intimate exchanges between long-time dialogue partners to topical conversations with a larger group of colleagues, as well as a speak-easy for one night only. For the most part, there will be no studio audience, as priority is given to achieving a quality recording for a larger broadcast audience. Edited episodes will be made public via broadcast outlets such as CAN TV, YouTube, and the Logan Center’s website.

In developing this highly constructed tele-visual environment, there is a sense that conversation has the potential to be shaped and practiced as a form of art. Furthermore, this recording endeavor highlights the vital, if often overlooked, role of oral traditions in shaping vision and culture.

Emphasizing collective construction and the spirit of improvisation, TELEVISIONISM is a chance to reflect and to ask fundamental questions that will shape the Logan Center Exhibitions program in the future. 

TELEVISIONISM GUESTS INCLUDE: Naomi Beckwith, Zachary R. Cahill, Arnold Davidson, Dana DeGiulio, Hannah Givler, Michelle Grabner, Adam Green, Emily Hooper Lansana, George E. Lewis, Haki R. Madhubuti, Faheem Majeed, Natalie Moore, John Preus, Heather Mullins, Megha Ralapati, David Schutter, Catherine Sullivan, and Hamza Walker, among others.

THE SET (on view to public when recording not in session) features works by Hannah Givler, Faheem Majeed and Catherine Sullivan.

CAMERA, LIGHTING AND SOUND by the Logan Center’s Digital Media Center led by David Wolf, Mike Gibisser and Benjamin Chandler.

EDITING by Lauren Beck.

SPECIAL SCREENING IN THE GREEN ROOM of Stan Douglas’ works for television: Television Spots (1988) and Monodramas (1991).  

The set is composed largely of Sculpture for Televisionism (2012) by the artist Hannah Givler, whose practice often involves the construction of spaces for gathering. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Givler has recently joined the staff of the Logan Center as the Shop Manager. The structure she has devised uses simple materials configured into dynamic geometries that highlight the constructed nature of space and remain open to the further constructive activity of conversation.

Covering part of Givler’s construction is a wallpaper work by the artist Faheem Majeed entitled Black Venus (2011). Majeed, whose work was recently seen at the Logan Center as part of the culminating exhibition for the inaugural year of the Artists’ Residency co-sponsored by University of Chicago’s Arts+Public Life Initiative and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, has based his wallpaper pattern on a print by Dr. Margaret Burroughs, an artist, cultural pioneer, and founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History. Majeed’s use of the decorative means of wallpaper is charged with questions of the visibility of cultural heritage and subtly broadcasts a fascinating intersection between matriarchy and modernity.    

Sharing her experience with large ensemble casts and her experimental attitude towards film and video production, artist Catherine Sullivan, Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts, is developing a set of guidelines for behavior on camera which our guests are welcome to follow. Her text work continues to evolve over the course of September and will persist as an artwork.

 

In the Green Room, parallel to the area of production activity, we are very pleased to present two related series of works for television by Stan Douglas: T.V. Spots (1988) and Monodramas (1991). The Canadian artist has gained international acclaim for his ability to weave historical reflection with the exploration of specific, and often specifically dated, media idioms. Douglas is no stranger to Chicago, having been honored with solo exhibitions at the Renaissance Society (1995) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2000). His large-scale installation, Evening  (1994), is in the collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. 

The works featured in the Logan Center Gallery’s special presentation are some of Douglas’ earliest experiments with the television medium and have never been shown in Chicago. Taking up the format of the commercial, but refusing to sell a clear product or even a resolved narrative, Douglas constructed these absurd scenarios with an aura of often-hilarious deadpan refusal. Originally meant for broadcast, the Television Spots appeared in the midst of regular television programming in Saskatoon and Ottawa in 1988. Similarly, the Monodramas appeared in Vancouver and Toronto in 1992. Today, situating the works in a gallery, and viewing one spot after another, brings out the ghost of commercial television in video art, a dialectic which has been somewhat suppressed after a period of energetic cross-pollination in the 1970s. Perhaps, in the unique context of TELEVISIONISM, we might imagine the Monodramas and Television Spots becoming the non-commercial breaks for the program under construction.