This month we will be Re-Framing Community (facilitated by Baraka de Soleil) exploring issues and challenges artists face in the creative process. Topics to be explored include community, gender politics and artists vulnerabilities. Participants will also get the chance to experience the process of Re-Frame.

Last month artists participating in Re-Frame: A Gathering, a D UNDERBELLY initiative curated & co-facilitated by Awilda Rodríguez Lora and Baraka de Soleil, sought to create a communal space for rigorous experimentation and investigation of an expansive performance aesthetic. They offered three unique showings of their process in partnership with Insight Arts, Rumble Arts Center and Links Hall.

We also invite you to join us in Rogers Park on Saturday, January 21 for a critical discussion on Re-Framing Community from 4:30 to 6:30 PM at the Center for New Possibilities (1505 W Morse Ave).

Artist participants, witnesses and co-sponsoring organization affiliates will be present to engage in fertile dialogue surrounding what it means to re-frame creative process within community.

Artist participants from Chicago’s 2011 Re-Frame project:
Victoria Martínez
Ching-In Chen
Iman Crutcher
Michael Johnson
Rebecca Kling
Anansi Knowbody
Sojourner Zenobia Wright
Isaac Fosl Van-Wyke
Eboni Senai Hawkins

reframeagathering.blogspot.com for more details on Re-Frame: A Gathering

It’s meant to shine your interior.

Across cultures, disciplines & neighborhoods in Chicago, from various aesthetic backgrounds, 9 dynamic artist participants communed inside the vastness of an “open space”. Asked to bring all of who they are into the room and challenged to speak & create into existence what they felt came from their creative lineage, these artists listened, offered each other feedback through a rigorous protocol, were provoked, sometimes frustrated and took risks exploring, experimenting and excavating their ‘body of work’. Sometimes their task was to simplify, other times to layer, juxtapose or interrupt their way of routinely developing art. 5 components will be reflected from this journey: Food (we always ate together) Featured moments (3 artists will be highlighted each gathering) Installation Interaction ( a chance to participate in and/ witness other dimensions of their unique experience) Response (engage with us in dialogue surrounding the creative work witnessed) Re-Frame ( a chance for the artists to engage in collaborative moments with each other. a chance for all to experiment!) Now this evening they have gathered with you to share what it means to Re-Frame creative process within community. reframe: a gathering in Chicago

Artist Participants:
Victoria Martínez
Ching-In Chen
Iman Crutcher
Michael Johnson
Rebecca Kling
Anansi Knowbody
Sojourner Zenobia Wright
Isaac Fosl Van-Wyke
Eboni Senai Hawkins

Facilitated by Baraka de Soleil & Awilda Rodriguez Lora
A Project of D UNDERBELLY

sweetly

swaying  hips that were never meant to be forgiven

only to be rephrased over and over

and over once again.

the coiling of arms intertwine with scents of her lust and

beneath her tongue’s subtle ebb & flow

a spraying of mist exists

shifts

up and down

side to side

out and in

between her lips

all while she’s

singing.

no other sounds are realized

except the willfullness of  breath

exposed as she share woes for only those present to absorb

and carry with them this un-finished song long after she’s gone

she gone

gone

gone.

lulled by the calm of  the fall, we sit gazing.

embracing quietude and what the morning beholds.

stillness.