For more than twelve years, the collaborative art practice of Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz has mined social histories, texts, and archives to create installations and actions that reflect the gravity and strangeness of contemporary cities. Their work reimagines the social and political structures written into our environments, combining research and lyricism to reveal the strange and uncanny in everyday experiences and overlooked histories. The duo’s recent work has been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Grand Central Art Center, and in Eighth Blackbird’s Chicago Artists Workshop series.
This series of events featuring Bielek and Schmalz is presented by the IHGC Race and Performance Lab in conjunction with The Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures and the Department of American Studies.
Monday, September 15
- Artist Talk: "It's right there before you"
- 3:30-5:00pm
- Wilson 142
Over the last twelve years, Chicago-based artists and writers Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz have combined research and lyricism in an expansive collaborative practice that reimagines the social and political structures written into our environments. Their projects have taken on subjects ranging from the barriers between hotels’ public and private spaces, to late-20th Century Chicago urban planning and eminent domain policies. Their work has manifested in forms ranging from an artist book embedded into a hotel reception desk, to a 20 x 20-foot drawing assembled from 350 sheets of paper, to a “neighborhood” of fiberglass sculptures of buildings rising above a city park. In this artist talk, Bielak and Schmalz will focus on two projects on the theme of migration and nationality.
Welcome (2023-24), responded to the palimpsest of colonialism, migration, militarization, white nationalism, resistance, and resilience in Orange County, California. Through painting, video, sculpture, text, and sound, Welcome highlights the limits of welcome and how environmental and social control coexists with joy and inclusion in Southern California. Their current work-in-progress, I am made to leave I am made to return, uses the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh as a platform for dynamic, speculative, and inclusive reflections on national identity, heritage, and belonging. For the project, Bielak and Schmalz are collaborating with writers affiliated with City of Asylum’s Artists and Writers in Exile program, a percussion ensemble led by Cuban artist Hugo Cruz, and an international ensemble of dancers under the direction of choreographer Laja Field.
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Tuesday, September 16
- Workshop: "every gesture"
- 11-12:15pm
- LGBTQ Center, 3rd Floor, Newcomb Hall
In this workshop, visiting artists Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz bring gesture into dialogue with their current work-in-progress, I am made to leave I am made to return. A project exploring nationhood in collaboration with writers in exile, dancers, musicians, and immigrants, I am made to leave… invites dynamic, speculative, and inclusive reflections on national identity, heritage, and belonging. Gesture is a tacit language, a way of communicating, “the weather between people,” “the thing truly expressive of the individual,” a means to align or differentiate from a group. I am made to leave… uses gesture to focus on the relationship between the individual and the state, the creases and gaps in language, the possibilities of drawing, and the communicative properties of physical movement. In this workshop, Bielak and Schmalz will guide participants through prompts to conceive and hone original gestures related to sense memory, community, and resistance. This workshop is being hosted by AB Brown’s Theater and Social Change class and is open to additional participants.
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- Screening and Conversation: I am made to leave I am made to return
- 7-9pm
- LGBTQ Center, 3rd Floor, Newcomb Hall
Join us as Chicago-based artists Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz share in-progress elements of their current work, I am made to leave I am made to return, a collaborative video, text, performance, and painting project that takes the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh as a point of departure for reflections on nationality, migration, and belonging. I am made to leave I am made to return maps journeys of exile in multiple languages, embodies the experience of dislocation through contemporary dance, uses watercolor painting to reveal the fault lines of memory, and uses visual poems to reimagine the archive. In this evening’s program, Bielak and Schmalz will screen videos-in-process, accompanied by live readings and underscored by music created for the project.
A welcome reception will be held at 6:30 pm, prior to the 7pm performance.
SUSY BIELAK responds to issues including migration, displacement, and disaster through drawing, installation, performance, photography, text, and video. Her work has been collected and exhibited widely, including by the International Print Center, Museo Tamayo, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and Walker Art Center. She has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and City of Chicago, and has been in residence at Ragdale and Oxbow. She received an MFA from the University of California San Diego. www.susybielak.com
FRED SCHMALZ'S primary medium is poetry. He is the author of Action in the Orchards (Nightboat Books), which explores intimacy and loss via encounters with contemporary art, as well as several chapbooks. His current writing explores the sanctioning of violence in American culture. His recent writing has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Zocalo Public Square, Places Journal, Poetry, and Oversound. He received an MFA in prose and poetry from Northwestern University. www.fredschmalz.com