rises Zora: An Exploration of the Urban Labyrinth by Jamilee Lacy

A CHARLOTTE STREET FOUNDATION PROJECT

rises Zora AN EXPLORATION OF THE URBAN LABYRINTH AT LA ESQUINA & BEYOND • MAY 10 - JUNE 15, 2013 ORGANIZED BY CHARLOTTE STREET CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE JAMILEE POLSON LACY

K A N S A S C I T Y, M I S S O U R I • W W W . C H A R L O T T E S T R E E T . O R G

A CHARLOTTE STREET FOUNDATION PROJECT

rises Zora AN EXPLORATION OF THE URBAN LABYRINTH AT LA ESQUINA & BEYOND • MAY 10 - JUNE 15, 2013 ORGANIZED BY CHARLOTTE STREET CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE JAMILEE POLSON LACY

K A N S A S C I T Y, M I S S O U R I • W W W . C H A R L O T T E S T R E E T . O R G

A CHARLOTTE STREET FOUNDATION PROJECT

rises Zora AN EXPLORATION OF THE URBAN LABYRINTH AT LA ESQUINA & BEYOND • MAY 10 - JUNE 15, 2013 ORGANIZED BY CHARLOTTE STREET CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE JAMILEE POLSON LACY

K A N S A S C I T Y, M I S S O U R I • W W W . C H A R L O T T E S T R E E T . O R G

FEATURING KANSAS CITY ARTISTS / THINKERS: Barry Anderson Arboretum Todd M. Christiansen Chris Daharsh David Dowell / Jim Woodfill Jeff Eaton Lindsay Fernandez Gotch & Hansen Erika Lynne Hanson Caitlin Horsmon Laura Isaac / Maritza Ruiz-Kim Lindsey Griffith / Charlie Mylie Ghyman Johnson / Megan Mantia / Leone Reeves Ken Johnson Ezhno Martin / Jeanette Powers Mnemosyne Duo m.o.i. Jessica Palko Gerry Trilling May Tveit

This digital catalog was published to accompany the multi-venue visual and performance art exhibition rises Zora: An Exploration of the Urban Labyrinth, a project produced as part of the curatorial residency program at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri. Curated by Inaugural Charlotte Street Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy EXHIBITION FUNDER Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation ÂŠ2013 Charlotte Street Foundation 1000 West 25th Street Kansas City, MO 64108 www.charlottestreet.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS

12 Foreword and Acknowledgments Jamilee Polson Lacy 14 RISES ZORA : A Cultural History Through the Urban Labyrinth (as Kansas City Artists Move Through Another and Another) Charlotte Street Inaugural Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy 24 RISES ZORA plates 48 Movies in the Parking Lot: Notes from Academy Records Academy Records 54 RISES ZORA poems: “The Puzzle,” “Maze Builders,” and “Into the City” Jeanette Powers 60 RISES ZORA program itinerary 64 RISES ZORA artist biographies 68 RISES ZORA credits

Foreword and Acknowledgments

That this exhibition and publication have received such tremendous support is testament to the significance of Kansas City’s artists and urban culture. Charlotte Street and myself are indebted first and foremost to the artists, thinkers and city cultural workers who have magnificently committed themselves and their resources to making an ambitious, multi-venue project like rises Zora not only possible but successful. I also want to convey special thanks to the many rises Zora participants who created new, thoughtful, and challenging works just for the exhibition. For their immense generosity, we are additionally grateful to the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation for providing lead support for the exhibition and publication; to them we offer our deepest gratitude. For their kindness and assistance with rises Zora’s numerous public programs, warm thanks are due as well to Academy Records; Bill Haw and Bill Haw Jr.; Christopher Leitch and the Kansas City Museum; Crosby Kemper, Henry Fortunato and the Kansas City Public Library; Joni Cross and Copaken-Brooks; Lisa Cordes and Prairie Logic; Meghan Buum and City Market; Plug Projects; and Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas. Lastly, I thank Charlotte Street’s board for treating me to the opportunity to work with them and to become a steward of its organization. To Charlotte Street’s staff—David Hughes, Jr.; Kate Hackman; Jamie Braun; Jen Vogrin; and Pat Alexander—I personally extend my appreciation for the dedication and verve with which you have supported rises Zora and my curatorial and professional goals. It has been an exciting, challenging, and deeply satisfying year in Kansas City; thank you so much for inviting me into Charlotte Street’s wonderful community.

Since 1997, when the fledgling Charlotte Street Foundation made its first artist grant, a central aspect of the organization’s mission has been to bring the work of Kansas City’s artists—longstanding and rising—to public attention. Now a cornerstone of the Kansas City cultural community, Charlotte Street has, in addition to making countless cash grants to local artists, revitalized and reserved urban space to present major exhibitions and presentations of important contemporary artists destined to become cultural fixtures in Kansas City and beyond. In 2012-2013, on the occasion of its new curatorial residency program, Charlotte Street empowered me, the Inaugural Charlotte Street Curator-In-Residence, to collaborate with artists through full-on engagements with exhibition and other public spaces, streets, parks, rooftops, parking lots, and more in Kansas City. In total, I have curated four exhibition programs: Have I been here before?; Composite Structures (co-curated with Los Angeles-based curator Lee Foley); Focus: OK<->KC (organized in conjunction with Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition); and finally, rises Zora: An Exploration of the Urban Labyrinth, an exhibition and event series with accompanying publication that seeks to provide time and space that is both documentary and generative for Kansas City artists and that explores new juxtapositions, contradictions, and connections through multiple approaches to art and place making. Upon the culmination of these projects and my curatorial residency tenure, Charlotte Street has actually created yet another avenue that shows off the brilliant productivity of Kansas City artists: me! Moving forward, it is my privilege to take with me wherever I go Charlotte Street’s mission to cultivate and promote Kansas City’s artists and arts ecosystem. I will continue to think of and include Kansas City artists in my curatorial endeavors, writings, and other creative projects; I will continue to recommend them to other curators, galleries, and museums; I will continue to stretch their reach to cities near and far.

Jamilee Polson Lacy Charlotte Street Inaugural Curator-In-Residence

RISES ZORA : A Cultural History through the Urban Labyrinth (as Kansas City Artists Move Through Another and Another)

Charlotte Street Inaugural Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy

To the present day, the figure of the labyrinth has appeared around the globe as image, idea and physical reality, with an extensive range of interpretations and applications in craft and fine arts, architecture and design, dance and performing arts, the humanities and sciences, and other areas of human creativity and thought. The labyrinth provides a philosophical framework in that it expresses a state of mind that is constant and essential to human existence: the posing of questions when faced with life’s choices, and the challenge of making decisions that cyclically determine the course of reality and further contribute to our understanding of the relationship between humankind and nature. The Portuguese artist and writer Lima de Freitas put it well, saying that “What makes the labyrinth, in its wealth of analogical associations, so relevant today is that it is an emblem of the existential dilemmas of the modern urban man.” In the spirit of this emblem, rises Zora, a multi-venue visual and performing arts project, was an invitation to Kansas City artists from Charlotte Street Foundation to explore, in greater depth, the elements that make up urban reality, or as we are calling it, the urban labyrinth. Sporadically staging public events across the Kansas City metro area, artists activated and connected the city’s dynamic spaces in their efforts to understand, emphasize, and travel through the labyrinths of the city. Accordingly, this project featured a diverse selection of mental and

physical engagements with the so-called urban labyrinth—installations, performances, walks, screenings, and other experiences—, all gathered and presented in a way that linked together communities of active participants, spectators, and even passive bystanders, compelling them to see what exciting possibilities exist in this city beyond the routine. Let’s return to the urban labyrinth that is Kansas City in just a moment. First, what exactly is the labyrinth, and in this case, the urban labyrinth? What makes the labyrinth/urban labyrinth so valuable as a cultural construct? As its definition currently stands, the word labyrinth has come to mean several things at once. In everyday speech it operates metaphorically as an intricate, difficult, and overall confusing space or situation. As a representation or an allegory, labyrinth is used loosely, becoming synonymous with spiral, meander, concentric circles, and most often, maze, which is defined as a tortuous structure consisting of two openings—an entrance and an exit—and multiple pathways, some of which lead to forks, blind alleys, and dead ends. This lack of definition, which is a common characteristic in the transmission of any mythology, has meant that the labyrinth has become for art of all kinds a universal theme that has endured, metamorphosed, and generated new thought for centuries. For the purpose of this essay, labyrinth refers to all of its connotations interchangeably, which seems appropriate given that an 14

actual labyrinth, like all that the word potentially represents, presents a myriad of possibilities. The labyrinth also assumes a number of forms and conceptualities, with the one of ancient Crete on record as the earliest instance of either. Presenting itself at once as a narrative structure, visual motif, and literal form, the first documented labyrinth housed the Knossos Minotaur and was one of Athenian Daedalus’ many ingenious architectural designs. When hero Theseus goes inside the labyrinth to kill the blood thirsty Minotaur, he follows a thread left by his beloved Ariadne, who not coincidentally has been offered up to Knossos as a sacrificial snack. Theseus solves the labyrinth, saves Ariadne, and thus knows true love and the future that it holds. Following this tale, the labyrinth shows up around the world (though not very often in North America), as a metaphor for risk, human discovery, thought, memory, and experience—the sum of which is knowledge—because of its back-and-forth, pendulous swing between past, present, and future. We see, too, that knowledge and understanding shape the architecture of any and every city in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a fictional collection of cities as described to Kubla Khan by Marco Polo. Page after page, Calvino details Polo’s accounts of travels through a series of cities across the world that cannot be pinned down by the emperor Khan’s great atlases. With each city, thanks to the literary methods used by Calvino to design this novel’s prose and structure as well as its conurbations, Polo further expands Khan’s understanding of the world’s ineffable capacity to mysteriously create breathtaking landscapes and innovative cultures. Zora, one such breathtaking and innovative far-off place, Polo explains, is a city that no one, having seen it, can ever forget:

expunged from the mind, is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember… Between each idea and each point of the itinerary an affinity or a contrast can be established, serving an immediate aid to memory. So the world’s most learned men are those who have memorized Zora. (15-16) Zora, its streets adorned in all that comes with city life, embodies the urban labyrinth as a dynamic conception of space and impressions, rather than a set of static perspectives. Moreover, ample knowledge is accumulated when passing through this mesmerizing city. But above all, Zora illustrates the urban labyrinth as a structure for mental organization and creative method, wanderings and errors, passes and impasses, luminous breakaways and tragic seclusion. This urban labyrinth demonstrates that what is real and imagined makes no difference to the generalized mobility of the past, present, and future. At the novel’s end, the reader realizes that Polo has merely described Venice, his hometown, over and over again, but never as the same city because no one city, Venice nor Kansas City, ever repeats itself. Every time we walk through the door our city is anew; it has regenerated in some way or another, ready to challenge our memory and surprise our senses. Using Zora, an urban labyrinth “which cannot be expunged from the mind” analogously with Kansas City, a city too consisting of “patterns following one after another,” the rises Zora project takes up Polo’s agenda, demonstrating that Kansas City, like Venice or any metropolis, is never the same city twice. Kansas City is the urban labyrinth. At most, this visual and performance arts venture, along with the artists and urbanites who contributed to it, emphasized the infinite possibilities of Kansas City, a fine urban labyrinth if there has ever been one. Why, you might ask, is a metropolis-sprawling project like rises Zora appropriate for a Midwestern locale like Kansas City instead of a twisting, turning, nearly-impossible-not-to-get-lost-in city like Polo’s Venice? The answer to that question is as simple as it is complex: the grid. For ages, the grid has been used throughout the world as an urban development and organizational pattern. Hippodamus of Miletus first used it at Piraeus, Greece, in the 5th century BC. Fast forward some 2,000 years, William Penn utilized the grid in 1682 as the physical foundation for Philadelphia, and Thomas

Beyond six rivers and three mountain ranges rises Zora… Zora has the quality of remaining in your memory point by point… Zora’s secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns following one after another... The man who knows by heart how Zora is made, if he is unable to sleep at night, can imagine he is walking along the streets and he remembers the order by which the copper clock follows the barber’s striped awning, then the fountain with the nine jets, the astronomer’s glass tower, the melon vendor’s kiosk, the stature of the hermit and the lion, the Turkish bath, the café at the corner, the alley that leads to the harbor. This city, which cannot be 15

Jefferson subsequently employed it to systematize the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. These urban applications were deemed successful, so, like most cities organized as part of America’s 18th and 19th century westward expansion, Kansas City, at the behest of its merchant founders, adopted the Great American Grid system, also known as the Jeffersonian grid, in an effort to order streets set atop a terrain of hills, valleys, rivers, swamplands, and blue bluffs. As an organizational principle, the grid works fine. It is easy to navigate, and it makes buying, selling, and claiming property much easier tasks. However, countless urban activists, theorists and humanists—Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, Jane Jacobs, Pierre Rosenstiehl, and the Lettrist/Situationist International, to name a few—have discussed the grid as humanity’s unsuccessful attempts to order the labyrinth, control its unwieldiness, and, to varying degrees, derail the possibilities it permits for experimental urban activity. Making a bold move against Kansas City’s monotonous grid, George E. Kessler in conjunction with the City Beautiful movement, layered over the rigid urban plan an amorphous system of parks and boulevards that Kansas Citians know today, re-introducing organic principles that wield much more natural landscapes within the city’s limits. In combination with the last 100-plus years of added railroads and highways, as well as continuous social and architectural construction and destruction of different neighborhoods, the Kansas City we now interact with is composed of multiple aspects of labyrinthian and urban theory. The multifarious setting that now makes up the urban labyrinth that is Kansas City has long facilitated experimental activity, its artists and thinkers taking advantage of its many quirks and quandaries. The rises Zora installations and programs—FIELD WORKS, GARDEN PARTIES, MOVIES IN THE PARKING LOT, and WALKING THE URBAN LABYRINTH—provided artists and thinkers with a variety of avenues to produce and present publically engaged presentations that conjured and considered the wide implications of labyrinthian narratives, forms, and experiences specific to local urbanity. Cumulatively, these creative projects worked with the urban landscape to artistically reflect the philosophical and mystical implications of Kansas City, an urban labyrinth which by design determines singular and multiple courses of reality in its attempt to connect each part of the city to every other one of its parts.

For the duration of rises Zora, la Esquina’s entryway operated as a communication headquarters (pl. 12) where enthusiasts could delve into an informational hub, archive, and research center. Because the project incorporated several presentations and programs at multiple locations, this communication headquarters served as a centrally located collection of all things rises Zora, including event listings, documentation, literature, maps and more. It was maintained as a kind of central nervous system or brain (two other types of labyrinths) for the whole project, and became a place where the ephemeral and residual effects of rises Zora’s engagements with the urban labyrinth could be cohesively collated and re-presented for intellectual consumption. In addition to housing artful rises Zora advertisements, branding, and archives, the communications headquarters featured labirinto urbano (2013) (pl. 12 and 13), a limited edition of Xerox photo collages by Jessica Palko. Designed for the occasion of this project, Palko’s collages emphasized the overlaps of urban labyrinths on different sides of the world through the composition of whimsical adjacencies between Kansas City and the fantastical Venice recollected by Polo in Invisible Cities. A perfect jumping off point for the rises Zora project, labirinto urbano showed that Zora has risen right here on Midwest ground. The rises Zora installations within Charlotte Street’s la Esquina gallery space set up a series metaphorical scenarios illustrating rises Zora’s curatorial ponderings on urbanity. In the main gallery space, Gerry Trilling and Chris Daharsh presented bodies of work in tandem to investigate spatial and conceptual themes of the urban labyrinth. Though this gallery presentation was designed to expand on various components of the urbanity, there is much to discuss in regards to the individual qualities of each artist’s work. Trilling refers to her textile collages and digital prints as “constructed paintings,” which seems appropriate given that the color palettes, geometric designs, and materials used are inextricably linked to multiple historical trajectories of fine art and craft, including Op art, abstract painting, and traditional women’s work like quilting, needlepoint, and weaving. But it is quite obvious that the artist’s collages visually reference maps. From a distance each piece looks like an aerial view of some kind of architectural development, and up close, the works provide one or 16

more paths for the eye to wander down. Interestingly, this kind of visual understanding of labyrinths as architectural ground plans has a long history, which includes a 17th century engraving by Fischer von Erlach showing the Cretan labyrinth in perspective as a prison based on a Carthaginian medal and another Theseus story by Lucius Mestrius Plutarch. That throughout time our maps have operated as Ariadne’s thread, a guide to help us safely move through time and space, literally illustrates that the urban labyrinth must be recorded to memory if we are to attempt to understand it, especially before it changes again. Trilling’s collages, though not necessarily depicting real space, toy with our natural desire to follow a string or a map, to have a guide that gives an understanding of a place so that we may know its shape. Starting with a template or system derived from gridded compositions of varying complexities, Trilling arranges and layers small, cut squares of patterned fabrics and papers collected from her travels through urban labyrinths around the world to create intricate, illusionistic textile compositions like SQ111 Color Line (2011) (pl. 6), reminiscent of topographical urban plans. Eventually, the patterned textiles in pieces like Jitterbug: Taking Over The City (pl. 7) and Jitterbug: Hidden Minority (both 2010) visually overpower the image of the guiding grid, creating an analogy: the labyrinth cannot be controlled; its generation is random, infinite, unstoppable, and all-consuming. Trilling’s JSP 113 Stacked (2013) (pl. 5, right), a four by eight feet collage consisting of an orderly, barely-there black and white grid, contains three major insertions/deviations that disrupt what would be an otherwise flat picture of simple latticework: 1. 2. 3.

yield the clarity and order we have come to anticipate from the traditional grids and repetitive patterns of American craftworks or the clean shapes and lines of geometric abstraction. As a result, Trilling’s entire body of work presented within rises Zora, despite its ultimately two-dimensional limits and fairly modest scale, provoked our trust in organizational systems meant to create perfect order. Instead of resting assured in the works’ uniformity, we find ourselves looking for the spontaneous qualities of the labyrinth, where inevitable flaws of the artist’s hand signify humanity and where randomness makes room for chance. In this collection of Trilling’s collages and prints the viewer was confronted with unpredictability—a stock characteristic of life in the urban labyrinth—, which always predicates reality’s most interesting outcomes. Conversely, Daharsh provided a more obvious look into the labyrinth’s complications, impediments, and conundrums. Composed with materials of a distinctly urban nature, Daharsh’s sculptural installations came together to make up problematic spaces of visual puns and riddles. Carefully constructed to interact with and even become part of la Esquina’s industrial-style design and floor plan, each sculpture and installation encouraged viewers to try to decipher which part was art and which was the gallery’s structure, and therefore demanded audiences thoughtfully consider materials, layout and, oddly enough, language. And though his artworks rely on the finicky lexicon and rigid visual motifs of Minimalist work by the likes of Donald Judd and Agnes Martin, Daharsh’s overall practice springs forth with urgency inspired by the sensibilities of urban space and land art provocateurs like Gordon Matta-Clark and Robert Smithson. Daharsh, like these and many other artists before him, is a self-professed scavenger in and of the city. He accumulates (or in many cases, flawlessly replicates) remnants of Kansas City’s in-flux urban sites to then manipulate, juxtapose, and formulate a kind of object-based poetry that serves as homage to the beauty of the urban labyrinth’s many challenges. For rises Zora, the artist staged works as if they were props making up an obstacle course, the resulting floor plan of which was not unlike that of a field day game, playground, or mini-golf course in that it required patrons to move carefully, strategically even, to view each artwork. Works like Stumbling Block (2011/2013) (pl. 9) and Low Wall to Step Over (2013) (pl. 1, front right on the floor)not only had to be looked at, they

an equally well-ordered grid of off-white tiles that has been skewed diagonally and layered on top of the primary grid; the corrugated surface of the off-white tiles; and the handwritten numbers penciled in around the piece’s frame.

Though Trilling has set up a logical, systematic process for our eyes to follow, she continuously disturbs our expectations for this composition with the realities of opticality, imperfect surfaces, and signs of the human hand. Like JSP 113 Stacked, a number of her works find various ways to intentionally create perceptual doubt and ophthalmic uncertainty, neither of which necessarily 17

also forced viewers to convert images and objects into language conveying simple truths, like “pebbles in your shoe are annoying…steps are tricky… walls block the shortest route to your preferred destination.” The circumstances of these pieces created a back and forth, a sometimes rhythmic, sometimes sporadic canter reminiscent of the poetic verse found in John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” While ekphrastic experiences and epicenters were kept at a substantial distance in the exhibition, Daharsh’s sculptural contributions left traces of a number of art historical, literary, and temporal labyrinths. Evidenced in every artwork was the fact that he, a user and navigator of the urban labyrinth that is Kansas City, has taken a number of routes in search of a pathway of his very own. To sum up this two-person presentation: Daharsh’s leaving of traces is like constructing the labyrinth, whereas following the traces in Trilling’s collages is like solving that labyrinth. In Haruki Murakami’s acclaimed novel, Kafka on the Shore, the character called Oshima puts into his own words a version of the Kafka-esque world he is attempting to trace when he says “the principle of the labyrinth is inside you. And that correlates to the labyrinth outside. Things outside you are projections of what is inside, and what is inside you is a projection of what is outside.” This inner projection of the outer labyrinth was applied to a primary objective from the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century: the human brain. Accordingly, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed, “If we wanted to attempt an architecture modeled on the pattern of our soul… the labyrinth would be our archetype.” And some 30 years earlier, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that the only thing that was more intricate and complex than the Cretan labyrinth was the brain of its creator, Daedalus. An ingenious man who has been mythologized as a person who could solve any practical problems with his technical skill and design artistry, Daedalus’ brain signifies the honed intellect, methodical skill and ingenuity required of and applied for the good of all by his descendants— architects, city planners, and the like. After all, the people who fill these roles in contemporary society constantly construct, confront and try to solve the urban labyrinth, which is a major design challenge that tests the theory of nodes in mathematics and both creates and uses knowledge atop the slippery common ground between science, art and revelation. Continuously building on that slippery ground,

architect David Dowell of Kansas City-based architecture firm el dorado, inc and artist James Woodfill marked a ten-year anniversary of artistic/architectural collaboration with their contribution to the rises Zora. Their joint practice fit perfectly into the conceptual premise of the project since for over a decade the two have consistently collaborated with one another and with the cityscape of Kansas City. Together, they develop public artworks and architectural compositions that blur the lines between adornment, urban planning, and civic intervention. Indeed, projects like Pedestrian Strands, an image and light installation fixed on to four highway bridges repair the visual experience of a cross-city walk, and PULSE, a light and sound-based work that spans the stairwells of downtown’s Wolf Parking Facility, are both projects that reconceptualize, repurpose, and reactivate the city’s urban plan in ways that more appropriately reflect contemporary urban activity. Dowell and Woodfill invest in the possibilities of the city so that they may incorporate into their cooperative production a nimble ability to, in the end, help others more enjoyably move through the urban labyrinth’s expressways and dead ends, its subtle bends and sudden turns, and its inside and outside forms. Fashioning what they call a “Temporary Renovation” (2013) (pl. 10) for la Esquina’s neglected back room just outside the gallery restrooms, the duo devised a site-specific installation that focused on the nooks and crannies inherent in the urban labyrinth’s buildings. This improvised yet meticulously constructed artwork draws meaning from its materials, which imitate and subsequently honor those that make up the space— fluorescent lights, builder’s metal hardware and fasteners, and a few buckets for color’s sake. It is an entirely non-functional temporary renovation that emphasizes the entirely functional nature of this hidden interior space and stored objects. “Temporary Renovation” recognizes the tension between two sets of binaries: first, is a tension between the mysterious complexity of the urban labyrinth as a whole and the unique potentialities inherent in its many parts. Second, is that found between the contrasting yet equally creative roles of the artist—who experiments with and often relishes in the quirks and inconsistencies found within the urban labyrinth—and the architect—who utilizes creativity to solve problems and effectively eliminate those quirks. With “Temporary Renovation” 18

Dowell and Woodfill played with perceptions—both the viewer’s and their own—of what constitutes an overall working concept and what figures as a site of potential artistry or as a problem needing resolution. Brilliantly, however, “Temporary Renovation” staged a dialectical synthesis of such binaries in that it obliged architect Dowell and artist Woodfill to re-evaluate the classifications of problems and potentialities in their own fields and to trust, even embrace, the unfamiliar tools of their collaborating partner’s respective discipline. In turn, a collaborative, site-specific work like “Temporary Renovation” causes the artist and architect roles to become interchangeable. Such dualities also persist in histories and philosophies of both the labyrinth and modern urbanism. GARDEN PARTIES, one of rises Zora’s performance programs, attempted to reconcile another binary opposition: nature versus artifice. Urban parks and city gardens make for good compromises because such places bring nature into the ultimate built environment— the city—and they provide peaceful and safe space for imaginative play, respite, and privacy within and from the chaotic urban labyrinth. But, the melding of the built environment and nature to create sanctuary is not new. From the 15th century onward, an unprecedented creative leap took the unicursal, two-dimensional labyrinthine representations, which could be followed by the eye, to the multicursal hedge mazes that one had to walk through step by step without having an overall sense of the whole. In this typology of labyrinths an inevitable dialogue occurred between architecture and plant life, to the extent that the growth of trees used as walls had to be regulated patiently and constantly in order to achieve the rigorous geometry desired. Thus the labyrinth became an ordered chaos, a controlled complexity that tied in with nature subjected to the culture that governs the way water, stone and plants are arranged. These early modern syntheses of nature and artifice via the labyrinth first cropped up in Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque gardens, and then later in the more visually abstracted design of trails, pathways, and shrubbery or forestry found in parks like Kansas City’s Loose and Swope. The first of the GARDEN PARTIES (pl. 14-15) was held in the rooftop garden of the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Branch in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It featured two performance groups presenting various poetic works that considered not only the

aforementioned binary, but also the intersection of urban culture and the language used to convey the experience of that culture. In an improvisational music performance, Arboretum, a duet consisting of Rhiannon Birdsall and Joe Wheeler, performed a selection of folk-sounding tunes for which phrases sampled from a series of mind maps and word lists were turned into song lyrics on the spot. Songs included topics and stories of love chased and lost in a sprawling metropolis, of youthful conversation, of non-sensical journeys through urban theory, and more. The semi-improvisational performance gave off a stream-of-consciousness effect, yet was remarkably prolific, poignant, and humorous. Exploring similar themes, poetry duo Jeanette Powers and Ezhno Martin presented a micro-play1 exploring the various cultural obstacles one confronts in the urban labyrinth. The poets, dressed in complementary red and black garb that held no particular meaning but seemed fitting with the overall theatricality of their demeanor, moved constantly, choreographing the audience’s dizziness as they paced and chased one another in big circles within the checkered square of tiles on the rooftop’s patio. Delivering a seamless back and forth exchange of poetic verse, this male/female duo’s lyrical prose centered around three conflicts: the interaction of various cultures, the melding of different sexualities, and the blurring of low and highbrow artistic production, all inevitable products of the urban labyrinth. Understanding that the urban labyrinth’s difficulties sometimes wreaks havoc on those traveling through, Powers and Martin demonstrated that the maze of city life forces individuals to either find a place in the melee or to surrender to a life lost to the treacherous reality of the labyrinth. At worst, this forced choice or the lack thereof spirals into pervasive tensions and tragedies inherent in the theory of the labyrinth as well as urban culture. At best, the choice makes for interesting communities, fascinating intrigue, and strange pit stops as we pass through this thing called life. The fact that the labyrinth is considered to be architecture connected to the natural world, which is well illustrated in the human history of hedge mazes, gardens, parks and the natural versus artificial equation, also has a clear precedent in Claudius Aelianus. In his 1 See rises Zora poems by Jeanette Powers on p. 54 19

work On the Nature of Animals, the historian and cultural critic reproaches historians who celebrate the labyrinths of Crete and other ancient cultures while they ignore the “paths, twists and turns and circular trails of ants in the ground.” Ant hills and burrows, like the urban labyrinth, are a combination of artificial (because they do not occur naturally without the ants) and natural labyrinthine structures, which, in this case, are created by the animals that build them, live in them, and move through them. Aelianus’s argument provides further evidence that we must not forget that the essence of the urban labyrinth, and the nature, built environments, and communities within it, is movement. Despite the great number of labyrinths that impose their static presence around the world, movement is necessary in order to enter, interact with, and exit each of them; therefore, the urban labyrinth, like a network of ant hills and burrows, is composed by the numerous routes of its makers and users. rises Zora’s WALKING THE URBAN LABYRINTH, a series of on-foot walks/tours/adventures led by local artists and thinkers, used movement as an artistic medium to creatively explore the mythological and occult aspects of labyrinths in general as well as the unexamined collective histories and personal journeys contained within the urban labyrinth. For “Excavating the East Bottoms” (pl. 19) in Northeast Kansas City, local resident, historian, and community organizer Ken Johnson guided locals on a physically challenging hike that toured the storied area, Northeast Kansas City’s original but now overgrown downtown. Experiencing the sometimes treacherous and often random paths and occurrences that make up the urban labyrinth, hikers faced steep hills leading to 19th century and early 20th century architectural ruins, dodged suspect litter and debris left behind by contemporary sub-cultures, and finally, went through a ferocious rainstorm to catch sight of breath taking views of sunny skies from the crests of the East Bottoms’ now forested hills. To investigate the opposite end of the locational spectrum conceptual art pair Lindsey Griffith and Charlie Mylie coordinated “Quiet in the Castle,” (pl. 18) an adventure through the winding, cavernous spaces of Crown Center, Kansas City’s infamous 85acre complex mega-mall owned and operated by Hallmark Cards, Inc. This giant retail and entertainment complex has long stood in Kansas City as an economic center, tourist attraction, and multi-faceted beacon of

capitalist spectacle. Its complicated multi-level floor plan boasts countless hallways, corridors, stairwells, nooks, and crannies, not to mention a number of varied spaces for a hotel, a food court, multiple stand-alone restaurants and franchises, retail stores, specialty shops, service salons, and more, all of which don their own brand’s color palettes, create a clashing brand of sensory overload. In their efforts to both pay tribute to the place’s aesthetic qualities and to compete with its endless demands for attention, Griffith and Mylie required participants, who were not allowed to utter a word lest they be cast out of the group, to dress in monochromatically colored outfits, effectively spectacularizing the “Quiet in the Castle” group itself and its activities for the viewing pleasure, or maybe horror, of every Crown Center patron. Combining different aspects of group play and public presentation, including parades, charades, scavenger hunts, and games like Simon Says and Red Light Green Light, Griffith and Mylie orchestrated a strange adventure through this capitalist labyrinth, which is housed in the heart—just north of downtown Kansas City—of the urban labyrinth. As they walked single file through throngs of shoppers and their children, the group was clapping, holding hands, skipping, or even jumping in water fountains as their shameless leaders commanded. Eventually, the Center’s crowd became accustomed to the group’s shenanigans and without much thought shrugged the whole thing off as just another peculiar trip through the urban labyrinth. Perhaps the most epic of the WALKING THE URBAN LABYRINTH expeditions, “Exalted Forever” (pl. 20) was a blindfolded tour-cum-cultish ritual organized by Megan Mantia, Leone Reeves, and the fictional yet able-bodied character of Ghyman Johnson. Roughly thirty participants RSVP’d for directions to a secret place, and then showed up at a location that had been disclosed within a personalized invitation sent through the postal service. Some participants had their faces painted like dogs and cats; others did not. They all wore black hooded capes custom-made for them by “Exalted Forever” organizers. After a few minutes waiting and getting to know their fellow walkers, a white van pulled up, screeching to a sudden halt. An equal number of hooded figures jumped out and quickly paired themselves off with the participants, communicating that they were their “see-ers.” They blindfolded each participant, and explained that they 20

would be their eyes. With quietly calm, matter of fact voices, these see-ers informed their designated participant that they would guide and ensure the safety and comfort across the city to yet another undisclosed location. The guided tour proceeded across parks and boulevards, in and out of supermarkets, bars, and restaurants, through the urban labyrinth’s winding landscape of textures, sounds, smells, and more—some of which were reported to have been perceived as quite chaotic and disturbing, while others surprised, delighted, and mystified the participants whose non-visual senses intensified dramatically sans sight. Naturally, this parade of blindfolded, hooded people being led by the hands of other hooded individuals speaking in eerily soft and soothing tones prompted different comments and responses from onlookers; however, for the persons involved, confusion quickly faded away to be replaced by close, symbiotic relationships between see-ers and participants. Interestingly, due to the absolute trust required on the part of participants, strong bonds that will likely last forever were formed between two people who had likely never met. Recounting her experience as a blindfolded participant, Kansas Citian and artist Lynn Benson explains that:

cultural workers engage with the urban labyrinth. Indeed, artistic presentations made as part of FIELDWORKS, a programmatic platform that allowed artists to activate the urban labyrinth through a series of site-specific investigations and productions, highlighted the quirks, the intricacies, and the charming randomness of the constantly shifting city. Jeff Eaton’s “NON.IMG” (pl. 22) performance of assemblage and meta poetry centered around descriptive words culled from both stock photographs and the particularities of the performance setting—Andrew K. Dripp’s park, which is merely a bridge over I-35 on Kansas City’s West side. Inspired by the wanderings, errors, passes and impasses situated within Kansas City, Mnemosyne Duo’s “Relevant Sound” (pl. 26) transformed the underbelly of a Crossroad’s District I-35 overpass into a sonic cathedral of instrumentals and recycled urban sounds generated with the help of people passing under the bridge on foot or by car. Similarly relying on urban settings for content, performance duo Gotch & Hanson took an eight-hour journey through the urban labyrinth. As part of this journey and performed artwork titled “revelation is locked in motion,” (pl. 23) the twosome carefully considered the input and recommendations of their multiple audiences in order to choreograph a variety of artistic responses to specific sites and situations; they documented every aspect of their movements; and measured the endurance demanded by the multiple methods of transportation needed to traverse the city. Each FIELDWORKS event or program cast Kansas City artists and audiences in the interdependent and interchangeable roles of Ariadne (the guide) and Theseus (the conqueror), demonstrating that while artists often lead audiences on a quest for meaning, they usually depend on audiences to determine exactly what is worth making meaningful. Returning to the field of visual artistic representation, the moving image has made a hefty contribution to the iconography of the urban labyrinth, not just due to the alternating views made possible in the editing process, or the journeys along city streets using the subjective camera, but, in particular, by identifying with the narrators and characters that lead viewers to experience the full gamut of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that the experience of the urban labyrinth involves: disorientation, anguish, fear, desire, courage, search, persistence, prudence, despair, ingenuity, voyeurism… the list goes on and on. rises

Blind folded, it became all about concentrating and letting go at the same time. The sounds and terrain and smells and conversations and, for me, analogies to parenting, friendship, religion, community, alternate worlds, et cetera, rose to the fore. Barking dogs, traffic, the sound of lots of shuffling feet at once, [a] Les Miserable singer! I kept thinking about the phrase “sentinels in the night” as I proceeded on from that point… I held my see-er’s hand and enjoyed the trip. When the pairs reached a backyard decorated with twinkling lights, dripping candles, and a bonfire, see-ers unmasked their participants and initiated them. Initiated them into what, no one could say, but they knew, and not just because Mantia, Reeves, and Johnson told them so, that their shared experience was an adventure inspired by and attributed to the possibilities nurtured by the urban labyrinth. They feasted and they danced. And they were “exalted forever” as travelers through the urban labyrinth. The bulk of the rises Zora public events focused on the ways which Kansas City artists and 21

Zora’s MOVIES IN THE PARKING LOT, (pl. 21) a film series curated by Chicago-based Academy Records, did two things: first, by setting up huge inflatable movie screens around the Kansas City metropolitan area in various parking lots, which Kansas City proper averages more of per square mile than any other urban area in the United States, the program highlighted this unique aspect of the local urban labyrinth, allowing Art to transform sites into centers of cultural activity and renewal (after the cars had been driven home for the day). Secondly, the selected films and videos connected themes of the local urban labyrinth that is Kansas City with the rest of the world by extending the dialogue and comparing and contrasting Kansas City with other urban labyrinths near and far. In effect, MOVIES IN THE PARKING LOT enabled another kind of labyrinth—the network. In a network, each point can be connected to any other point, which makes it possible to travel around, presumably through an infinite number of labyrinths. In its conjunctive essays, Academy Records shows via MOVIES IN THE PARKING LOT that film, like literature, music, visual art in general, or the Internet, utilizes the transporting aspects of accumulated and newly acquired knowledge to illustrate the vastness of the network that exists between the world’s urban labyrinths. And that’s just it—the essence of the urban labyrinth is the surprisingly endless abundance of knowledge to be acquired within it. In order to truly learn from the urban labyrinth that is Kansas City, or any city for that matter, we have to get out there and move; we have to relentlessly explore, document, and apply creativity, imagining ourselves as contemporary Daeduluses, Theseuses, Ariadnis, and Marco Polos. rises Zora artists have done this, and they will continue to do so because they know that the labyrinth, especially the urban labyrinth, has no end. At its exit is the opportunity to move through another and then another and so on. The possibilities are endless.

-Jamilee Polson Lacy

Jamilee Polson Lacy Charlotte Street Inaugural Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy is a curator and writer based in Chicago. Lacy is the Inaugural Curator-In-Residence for Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, where she organizes exhibitions, educational programming and publications for Charlotte Street’s gallery, la Esquina. In Chicago, Lacy additionally operates as the founding director of Twelve Galleries Project, a transitory, collaborative exhibition experiment. She has engaged in solo and collaborative projects with many creatives and institutions, including A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, The Black Visual Archive, Chicago Artists’ Coalition & Hatch Projects, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Western Exhibitions and Quite Strong, among others. In addition to numerous catalogue essays, interviews and articles, Lacy has published Color: Fully Engaged, a book of interviews and essays, and written for Flash Art’s Umelec Magazine, Art 21 and Bad at Sports. Lacy holds two undergraduate degrees in studio arts and art history from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters of Comparative Literature and Arts from Northwestern University.

RISES ZORA plates

1. rises Zora, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

2. rises Zora, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

3. rises Zora, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

4. rises Zora, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

5. rises Zora, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

6. Gerry Trilling SQ111 Color Line, 2011

7. Gerry Trilling Jitterbug: Taking Over the City, 2010

8. Chris Daharsh Untitled (Pedestal Piece) (detail), 2013

9. Chris Daharsh Stumbling Block, 2011/2013

10. David Dowell and James Woodfill “Temporary Renovation,” 2013, installed for rises Zora in the tool room of Charlotte Street’s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

11. rises Zora Communication Headquarters, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Street’s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

12. rises Zora Communication Headquarters featuring Jessica Palko’s labirinto urbano, 2013, installation view at Charlotte Street’s la Esquina, Kansas City, Missouri

13. Jessica Palko labirinto urbano detail, 2013

14. Poets Ezhno Martin and Jeanette Powers at Garden Party #1, 2013, Kansas City Public Library Rooftop Garden

15. Musical Duo Arboretum at Garden Party #1, 2013, Kansas City Public Library Rooftop Garden

16. Performance group Hyperkewl enacted “The Relics Project” at Garden Party #2, 2013, Loose Park, Kansas City, Missouri

17. “The Relics Project” (detail) at Garden Party #2, 2013, Loose Park, Kansas City, Missouri

18. Lindsey Griffith and Charlie Mylie led â&#x20AC;&#x153;Quiet in the Castleâ&#x20AC;? for the Walking the Urban Labyrinth series, 2013, Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri

19. Ken Johnson led â&#x20AC;&#x153;Excavating the East Bottomsâ&#x20AC;? for the Walking the Urban Labyrinth series, 2013, Northeast Kansas City, Missouri

20. Megan Mantia, Leone Reeves, and Ghyman Johnson led â&#x20AC;&#x153;Exalted Foreverâ&#x20AC;? for the Walking the Urban Labyrinth series, 2013, Kansas City, Missouri

21. Movies in the Parking Lot #1 curated by Academy Records of Chicago, 2013, Downtown Kansas City, Missouri

22. Jeff Eaton performs “NON.IMG” for the Fieldworks program, 2013, Andrew K. Dripps Park, Kansas City, Missouri

23. Gotch & Hansen perform a small part of â&#x20AC;&#x153;revelation is locked in motionâ&#x20AC;? for the Fieldworks program, 2013, Kansas City, Missouri

24 and 25. Documentation from Laura Isaac and Maritza Ruiz-Kim’s “You are not here. Parts I an II” for the Fieldworks program, 2013, Kansas City, Missouri

26. Mnemosyne Duo performed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Relevant Soundâ&#x20AC;? for the Fieldworks program, 2013, undeneath I-35 at Southwest Boulevard and 25th Street, Kansas City, Missouri

27. m.o.i. performed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Unlearn: Ask an artist about scienceâ&#x20AC;? for the Fieldworks program, 2013, Crossroads District, Kansas City, Missouri

28. Erika Lynn Hanson set up â&#x20AC;&#x153;Manner of Looking at, or Regarding Somethingâ&#x20AC;? for the Fieldworks program, 2013, Stockyards District, Kansas City, Missouri

Movies in the Parking Lot

Curated by Chicago’s ACADEMY RECORDS

Kansas City is made up of a network of roads, boulevards, highways and other pathways for automobiles. Parking lots, too, are aplenty in here, and they tend to exist in a singular fashion: They are places to store cars. However, they could operate more like parks and gardens, as pit stops along the way through the urban labyrinth, as sites that facilitate community interaction and creativity. The Movies in the Parking Lot program moved towards repurposing parking lots throughout Kansas City by showcasing, on a grand scale, urban labyrinth-themed works by video artists and filmmakers—some contemporary, some past, some local, some international. Just like a movie in the park program, this series brought people together to take advantage of and consider the many possibilities of their city’s unique urban plan.

the needs of the many should outweigh those of the few. In Transfilm Productions Man of Action , we see how one person can lead a community of conscientious citizens to work together to provide for that greater good, thusly circumnavigating the many arms of policy. Created by HUAC blacklisted animators Maurice Rapf and David Hilberman, who both previously worked on Disney classics Snow White, Bambi, and the anything-but-PC Song of the South, this animation provides us here in the “comfy environs” of 2013 the much needed perspective on how to slow down our communities and make a more sustainable existence to benefit the majority. Transfilm contracted out the job to Rapf and Hilberman (whose name was named in McCarthy’s hearings by none other than Walt Disney), but due to political forces they were forced to complete this paen to American ingenuity in England, with the help of Digby Turpin and Frank Cordell.

Notes from Academy Records Program 1 May 22, 2013 Copaken-Brooks Parking Lot in Downtown Kansas City Man of Action Transfilm Productions, 1955

Niterover Barry Anderson, 2012

As a call, a herald of what one person can do when facing the colossus of urban planning and governmental oversight, this short animated film shows where and how

Although there is layered depth to these images composed by Kansas City-based artist Barry Anderson, Niterover is collaged stasis—we find ourselves 48

in place yet moving laterally through a long tracking shot of horizon that keeps us, the audience, distant from the menacing growth of fragmentation. Missing is the linear perspective needed for the impact of time to signal fully the outcomes of natural landscape and sprawl. We only have the overlap of these existing images to convey the weight of use, non-use, and possible re-use necessary to further the social contract drafted by the urban environment.

construction site, abandoned lot, or weakened structures of industry long lost. Rather, it is what awaits at the center—the machinations of man himself. Le Bled (Buildings in a Field) Jem Cohen with Luc Sante, 2009 With Jem Cohen’s Le Bled (Buildings in a Field), we listen as Luc Sante pulls us through this abstract city left undone. In Tangiers, miles away but not dissimilar to the American Midwest, we see the synthesis of the isolated countryside with a city, once optimistically in flux, now oppressed by the stasis of a number of mitigating circumstances.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth Chad Freidrichs, 2011 The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, Program 1’s feature film, provides real life context to the issues dramatized in the two preceding selections. Examining the impact of public housing and urban planning on a discrete community (unlike the anywhere cities and scapes in Man of Action and Nightrover), Pruitt-igoe asks a question of its viewers: as both community members and citizens of a greater group, can we effectively maneuver through political challenges and economic growth and still have the stamina to learn from history and embrace the urban labyrinth?

Practice Process: Classical Caitlin Horsmon, 2013

All the great explorers Are now in granite laid Under white sheets for the great unveiling At the big parade

Kansas City filmmaker Caitlin Horsmon presents a new work, Practice Process: Classical. This is an exposition on the harsh and geometric landscape of the Stockyard District, a part of town still in use by the cattle industry and now creeping toward revitalization and/or gentrification as artists and creative entrepreneurs move in. Turn of the century buildings designed for warehousing and transit are rehabbed into shops, lofts, and studios in hopes to bring about a newly energized economy. As reconciled landscapes emerge here, relics of past identities serve as constant reminders of what once was. Indeed, as Practice Process: Classical suggests, X marks the spot, or any spot for that matter.

- For the Turnstiles, Neil Young

Program 2 June 3, 2013 Livestock Exchange Parking Lot in Stockyards District If Program 1 was about citizens getting lost in growth and sprawl, then Program 2 presents the reverse with what awaits us in the labyrinth—the minotaur. As development spreads outward from the center, citizens become unwitting accomplices and confidants of corruption and neglect, bearing witness to the effect of said growth on the communal psyche. Through our gaze, the functionality of brick and mortar monoliths and paved avenues become monuments to tools long since left behind in the rise of technology and economic globalization. The danger zone here is not the

Hands Over the City Francesco Rosi, 1963 Our feature in Program 2 is the 1963 Francesco Rosi film, Hands Over the City. Starring Rod Steiger in a career highlight role as Edoardo Nottala, an advantageous suburban developer in postwar Italy, this film becomes an allegory wherein labyrinths of political largesse, 49

individual gain, and civic dreams collide into a nightmarish network of immorality. With Steiger playing ‘the Man’ as minotaur, the newly alienating landscape of a modernizing Naples casts the citizens as a sacrificial Ariadne lost inside the machinations of civic politics’ labyrinth. At the film’s end, we can only hope that a string, or something like it, will guide a hero, or something like one, through this tangled network to save the proletariat from the brutality of ‘the Man’ and his farce.

Untitled Lindsey Fernandez, 2013

Motion pictures on my TV screen A home away from home, livin’ in between But I hear some people have got their dream I’ve got mine

If ever there were a soundtrack fitting for a house, David Bowie’s Low would surely emanate from inside this home. The cold and delineated images that Fernandez constructs in Untitled’s sharp black and white scenes pair well with Todd M. Christiansen’s Eight Danger Zones. Fernandez brings us into the tactile through her constructed sets of a domestic interior that is being surveilled if not burgled. As such we the audience are not merely voyeurs, we are instead held in captivity as we monitor Modernist interior and exterior states from both beyond and behind bars.

- Motion Pictures, Neil Young

Program 3 June 7, 2013 Charlotte Street Foundation Headquarters Parking Lot in Crossroads District

Eight Danger Zones Todd M. Christiansen, 2012

The City American Documentary Films, 1939

In Eight Danger Zones, we venture into a possible approximation of what William Burroughs might’ve called ‘the Zone’, an ever-shifting space of hierarchy and authority. Though bleating surveillance blasts and makeshift digital structures, we continuously journey through the past as either inmates or homeowners in this short loop of a peeping Tom’s architectural/urban gaze.

Originally created for exclusive presentation at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, The City features a litany of proto-American modernes coming together to make a plea for the suburbs. With commentary supplied by Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker’s architectural critic, the film takes an odd stance: First, it romanticizes the not-sodistant past of pre-industrial revolution hometowns; then, it moves on to stress the problems of crowded depression-era cities. By the film’s end, we are brought full tilt into a clarion call for suburban epiphany thanks to the wonders of the culprits—technology and industrialization. Mumford, who later became known for his growing pessimism of technology (see his Technics and Civilization), sees through the suburbs’ sheen of perfection in this almost allegorical tale of treading lightly towards the “new and improved” industrial state. Interestingly, the suburbs would become Mumford’s barometer for a place that signified industry’s failure to produce lasting quality products in favor of built-in fragility and superficial fashion changes.

A Propos de Nice Jean Vigo, 1930 Whether taking an objective lens or a subjective stance, remember that while in transit through the various neighborhoods offered up by Program 3, we can always take a particular vantage point to see both sides at once. With A Propos de Nice, a short travelogue of the city in all of its French Riviera-ness, we can see Nice hasn’t changed much in the last 80 years—there is old Nice and older Nice. Somehow though, it all ends up feeling like Miami—the city is one big beach party. Like any good Mediterranean town, there is not much time spent indoors here, so the hierarchy of who uses the town versus who makes the town run is apparent. Enough so that it gives us a sense of not only the superficial 50

fashion changes brought on by those of us who can afford respite, but the fragility and impermanence of those that make it all possible.

Program 4 June 12, 2013 City Market Parking in River Market District

The Weak Bullet Tony Oursler, 1983

At its conclusion, the Movies in the Parking Lot program has explored various constructions of time. Time provides hindsight if not context to what the past presented and what the future may portend. If we isolate the shifting tide to just one day, alienation emerges within the landscapes in which we are so harshly placed. Here in the Midwest, the unreachable horizon is broken by trees, hills, and parks (both industrial and natural). The labyrinth of any given day can seem like a week or indeterminably more, and it is in those moments of forward looking/past searching realization that we find ourselves.

Returning to construction and suburbs, Tony Oursler’s The Weak Bullet gives us a scrawled public service announcement, or at least an invitation, to look upon the horrors and awkwardness that hides behind your neighbor’s walls. The constructed sets and awkward illustrations only reinforce The City’s plan for the future and the inevitable outcome of Eight Danger Zones. Surveillance might just be a simple re-telling, but there is certainly no Mr. Rogers placidly waiting for us to arrive back home to this neighborhood. Watch where you point that thing as you travel along the interiors and exteriors of this early Oursler piece.

A Room with the Walls Blasted to Shreds and Falling Jennifer Reeder, 2001

The Indian Boundary Line Thomas Comerford, 2010

In Jennifer Reeder’s 2001 video, we follow a travelogue of an average day in Ohio. The protagonists are many, yet they all operate sequentially. From dawn to dusk, the heaviness of time is played out by long avenues, expansive fields, and mundane tasks that are so common place in a Midwest small city or suburb. Though we can’t be sure how long it will take to actually cross the parking lot, we can find out that it sometimes takes a whole lot longer than mowing the yard. Each of life’s moments go on nearly forever here, and you get the sense that it’s still oppressively the same today.

For the feature selection, we have The Indian Boundary Line by Chicago’s Thomas Comerford. Seated directly on the fulcrum point of what’s coming and going, Comerford leads us through a historical shifting of where one thing is and where the other thing might have once belonged. The Indian Boundary Line ties up all the selections of Program 3 through the filter of history, the effects of industrialization on a neighborhood, and the ultimate out-moding and displacement that comes with all of it. We often hear a critique of gentrification, but it might actually be a built-in not foreseen 80 years ago as those first trucks left the docks with new goods to benefit the masses. In this masterful flick, time rather than industry shifts the power balance required for a neighborhood to provide an identity to its dwellers through a space of desire, development, and so-called progress.

I saw the movie and I read the book But when it happened to me I sure was glad I had what it took To get away

Product Placement Black Friday May Tveit, 2013 In a continuation of an ongoing series, Kanas City artist May Tveit gives us a bit of product placement. As we trudge alongside her to get these goods back to the promised land, we are annointed to the cult of Black Friday, the biggest shopping day. Take notice of the

- Sedan Delivery, Neil Young

edits here—in opposition to Reeder’s piece, Product Placement Black Friday’s shots compress time for the viewer while simultaneously amplifying the durational and physical task undertaken by the central figure of Tveit herself.

ACADEMY RECORDS is an aegis for live performance, recorded events, and printed ephemera. Producing works and scenarios that take on lives both immediate and enduring, Academy Records projects are often collaborative and inclusive, and many include different kinds of creators, including aural, visual, and performing artists, designers, writers and filmmakers. In the past, works have consisted of independently produced 7-inch records, live broadcast radio plays, 16mm films, performances and large-scale sculptural installations, curated screenings and multi-media events. Each having contained within them a printed element, every Academy Records’ project is concept, time, or sitespecific, and usually of a DIY nature to encompass various networks and participants offered up by smaller economies. Therefore, Academy Records’ productions purposefully utilize simple means, readily available resources, and experimental ideas spawned from local culture.

Last Year at Marienbad Alain Resnais, 1961 The feature film of Program 4 and the keystone film of Movies in the Parking Lot series is Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. Staying pretty true to the originally penned novel of the same title by Alain Robbe Grillet, the methodical style of the screenplay’s words miraculously convey Resnais’ acute sense of space and time. Marienbad’s fractured story line moves us away from our prior two selections’ ideas of sequence in that we are placed heavily in a disjointed love triangle that may be taking place now, then, or never. As in the legend of the Cretan Labyrinth, which Theseus travels in order to halt the sacrifice of Ariadne to the Knossos Minotaur, there is only one correct path though there are many to choose from. With the intense overlays of outcomes and results and the general uneasiness that comes with starting the venture, sometimes progress made seems futile. If the labyrinth produces anything, it surely must be time. Marienbad gives us with a protagonist who will stop at nothing to break the veil of time for love, while Tveit’s video contrastingly gives us more a sense of continuity as the reels of time roll on. Ultimately, our feature film, and the rises Zora Movies in the Parking Lot program in general, forces us to cross the threshold into the urban labyrinth, where we begin a journey that guarantees we will get stuck in the middle somewhere between here and there.

If somebody is haunting your mind Look in my eyes, let me hide you From yourself and all your old friends Every good thing, comes to an end Drive back, drive back, drive back

- Drive Back, Neil Young

RISES ZORA poems

- Selected works by Jeanette Powers

THE PUZZLE

quite treacherous.

I don’t know if you know this but the labyrinth made famous by a guy who couldn’t fly out of it without coming unglued was built by a king for one and only one purpose: to confine and confuse a half-ling man-bull who apparently only dined on teenage children whom the king naturally got from his neighbors.

Hedge mazes are made for fun dilly-dally, silly little rich lady Sunday parasol laughter on the afternoon air, same with the dime-store mazes with a silver ball encased in plastic or printed on newspaper grade puzzle books your grandfather gave you after a morning fishing or at the farmer’s market and the two of you traced the hidden path with a red crayon.

So that mythological maze was built and maintained as an elaborate prison for a man-eating he-beast.

These mazes— so much entrapment and escapism.

But mazes are built for more practical purposes, too:

You go in one side and out the other start at the outskirts and stop at the center sometimes you end where you begin

Egyptians took slaves by the millions and made those massive monuments which I don’t know if you know are no more than elaborate grave markers to make finding their dead kings and queens

are we the same, after, as when we went in?

I don’t know if I know.

we were presented with or born into and must find out way into or out of.

But we are enchanted. Each labyrinth lives on inside of us. Not because it is where Theseus killed the Minotaur or where Icarus flew free and then drowned away or where King Ramses sheltered his body and his curses and his hoard of treasure. They are more than a symbol of our excess or our leisure more than the memory of a man who raised you, whiskers and warm hands.

who put it here? Who laid the stonework? Who designed this? this, which is less maze and more city with cul-de-sacs and other nice ways of saying dead ends and ways to get lost or feel lost and overwhelmed

They are the stories we tell, they are a puzzle we could solve. and it’s literal and it’s a metaphor and it’s where we live and what we create because the great secret is MAZE BUILDERS

that we are the maze builders continuing the construction of constricting corridors of consciousness and cause

We are here because of an idea— the idea took form and theme a puzzle a labyrinth it seemed, which

we are building buildings and agendas to keep out and keep in

to punish and pleasure

and find our way out again then hunt the next mind game because it’s too terrifying to admit under the wide horizon of truth where her gaze guarantees there is no guarantee

laboring over the labyrinths of soul and mind and city and the gutter and the ivory tower are connected whether we like it that way or not

but that we built the puzzle, the trap we navigate our way to where we turn back

and to stay on one side or the other is to say I’m happy with never seeing past this limited vision of the corner I’ve come to know so well

and it seems to me that the reason to build all these walls is so that we might draw a nice solid line which shows us

We are the maze builders adding wings to the Remington Mansion building more walls on top of what we were born into We are the maze builders we are the city founders the writers of law and lore the architects of confusion in the name of clarity or protection

INTO THE CITY You enter the city and don’t even know what you don’t know

creating a convolution because at the heart of every maze is a solution and still we are never satisfied we get to the center

you’re like that guy from the turnip truck who just fell off and chews on a blade of grass after it’s lost its whistle

all happy go plucky at the corner of 10th and Broadway.

the nightlife, the jazz dive, the symphony, the flamers, the crossdressers, the alienated artists all drinking their way to something to say and taking the bar home to the afterparty.

If you go North, you’ll hit the river with its underside of bridges and burning abandoned tables and chairs for warmth and light to see your hands and her face by.

The turnip truck seems a long way from home, now and you’ve woken up again on a stranger’s couch.

And if you go West, the hum of salsa and fish and the men in their moustaches keep the women in the kitchen speak when spoken to and the children all speak two languages.

So you head South, into the tidy outposts of order: those well-heeled and wool coated out-to-lunch nine-to-fivers where the tables and chairs are forever set for guests who never arrive, because they were never invited.

And East, east past Troost, where if the windows aren’t barred they are boarded up, abandoned, condemned and the youth are the only ones whose voice you hear but their words are a threat and the best advice is to turn back.

You enter into the city all brand new and unaffected and then are thrust face first into every extreme you didn’t know you didn’t know existed and you won’t leave unscarred.

You realize, you’ve lost your whistle, too. so you retreat into the city

RISES ZORA program itinerary

RISES ZORA COMMENCED AT LA ESQUINA WITH A SERIES OF INSTALLATIONS

through the winding, cavernous spaces of Kansas City’s infamous mega-mall. Participants were dressed monochromatically as they walked single file along corridors and through shops, restaurants and more.

May 10 - June 15, 2013 A two-person exhibition featuring Chris Daharsh & Gerry Trilling

Excavating the East Bottoms Ken Johnson Saturday, June 15 from 1 - 4pm at Kansas City Museum

A temporary renovation by David Dowell & James Woodfill

In Northeast Kansas City, local resident and historian Ken Johnson led a hike through the historical East Bottoms, Northeast Kansas City’s original but now overgrown downtown. RISES ZORA FIELD WORKS

The rises Zora communication headquarters featuring labirinto urbano by Jessica Palko and an informational hub containing research, literature, maps and more. RISES ZORA WALKING THE URBAN LABYRINTH

NON.IMG Jeff Eaton May 14 at 9pm at Andrew Dripps Park Walking Bridge (Belleview and 16th Streets)

Exalted Forever Ghyman Johnson, Megan Mantia and Leone Reeves Thursday, May 23 at 7:30pm in a Secret Place (location disclosed to participants only)

Jeff Eaton’s “NON.IMG” performance of assemblage and meta poetry centered around words culled from lived urban experience as well as descriptive passages derived from images which documented that lived urban experience at a remove.

“Exalted Forever” was a blind tour of the Valentine neighborhood, where the urban labyrinth’s magic and mystery united to demonstrate the rewards of group adventures. Quiet in the Castle Charlie Mylie and Lindsey Griffith Sunday, June 9 at 2pm at Crown Center

You are not here. Parts I and II by Laura Isaac and Maritza Ruiz Kim May 24th and 25th (an on-foot journey relayed to audiences over Twitter, Facebook, and www.risesZora.virb.com)

Griffith and Mylie coordinated a silent adventure 60

For “You are not here. Parts I and II,” Laura Isaac of Kansas City and Maritza Ruiz Kim of San Francisco virtually guided one another on walking tours of their home cities, all the while documenting the trials and tribulations of guided experience through various online and social media platforms.

endurance demanded by the multiple methods of transportation available in one’s own city. RISES ZORA GARDEN PARTIES Garden Party #1 Thursday, May 16 at 6pm at Kansas City Public Library Central Branch rooftop garden, 14 West 10th Street, top floor

Manner of Looking at, or Regarding Something by Erika Lynne Hanson May 29 from 7 - 8:30pm in the Stockyards District near Genessee and 16th Streets

Arboretum With lyrics composed from travel phrases and word maps, this male-female folk band’s songs conjured up visions of a fantastical city ever-ready for experimental activity.

For this installation in the Stockyards District, Erika Lynne Hanson set up a series of props conveying numerous metaphorical scenarios typical of any labyrinthian narrative.

Jeanette Powers + Ezhno Martin With back and forth exchange of individual poetic verse, Powers + Martin presented a micro-play exploring the various cultural obstacles one confronts in the urban labyrinth.

Unlearn: Ask an artist about science m.o.i. aka Minister of Information May 29 from 7 - 8:30pm in the Stockyards District near Genessee and 16th Streets June 7 from 6 - 8pm in Downtown Kansas City near McGee and 10th Streets

Garden Party #2 Saturday, June 8 at noon at Loose Park near the Battle of Westport Cannon

For “Unlearn: Ask an artist about science,” m.o.i. aka the minister of information displayed graphics which conveyed a series of conceptual geographies exploring the transitional labyrinths of language, image and understanding.

Hyperkewl Amidst the trees and history of Loose Park, artist collective Hyperkewl set up “The Relics Project,” a costumed performance event investigating the residual effects of urban navigation.

Relevant Sound by Mnemosyne Duo June 7 from 6 - 8pm on the Westside under the I-35 overpass at Southwest Boulevard and 25th Street

RISES ZORA MOVIES IN THE PARKING LOT Movies in the Parking Lot #1 Wednesday, May 22 at 8:30pm in Downtown Kansas City at Copaken Brooks parking structure on Baltimore Avenue and Petticoat Lane

Directly referencing the wanderings and errors, passes and impasses of the urban labyrinth, Mnemosyne Duo transformed the underbelly of this overpass into a sonic cathedral made up of instrumentals and recycled urban sounds.

Featured Kansas City video artist Barry Anderson’s Nightrover. Additionally showed The Pruitt-Igoe Myth by Chad Freidrichs and Man of Action by Transfilm.

revelation is locked in motion Gotch & Hanson June 9 from 11am - 7pm, (an all-day performance broadcast to audiences via Twitter, Facebook and www.risesZora.virb.com)

Movies in the Parking Lot #2 Wednesday, May 29 at 8:30pm in the Stockyards District at the Livestock Exchange parking lot on Genessee and 16th Streets

Together, unconventional sound and movement duet Gotch & Hanson took an eight-hour journey through the urban labyrinth, documenting and measuring the

Featured Kansas City video artist Caitlin Horsmon’s Practice Process: Classical. Additionally showed Hands 61

Over the City by Francesco Rosi and Le Bled (Buildings in a Field) by Jem Cohen with Luc Sante. Movies in the Parking Lot #3 Wednesday, June 12 at 8:30pm in the Crossroads District at Charlotte Street’s headquarters’ parking on 25th Street and Southwest Boulevard Featured Kansas City video artists Todd M. Christiansen’s Eight Danger Zones and Lindsay Fernandez’s Untitled. Additionally showed Indian Boundary Line by Thomas Comerford as well as The Weak Bullet by Tony Oursler, A Propos de Nice by Jean Vigo and The City by American Documentary Films. Movies in the Parking Lot #4 Wednesday, June 12 at 8:30pm in the City Market parking lot at 20 East 5th Street Featured Kansas City video artist May Tveit’s Product Placement. Additionally showed Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais and A Room with the Walls Blasted to Shreds and Falling by Jennifer Reeder.

RISES ZORA contributor biographies

Barry Anderson

City, Missouri, and at Carnegie Arts Center in Leavenworth, Kansas. Daharsh holds a BFA in painting and art history from the Kansas City Art Institute.

Barry Anderson is an artist living and working in Kansas City, Kansas. His work has been show in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, St. Louis, and internationally in Arab Emirates, Canada, Cuba, England, Finland, and Thailand, among other places. Anderson holds a BFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin and a MFA in photography and digital media from the University of Indiana - Bloomington. He now teaches as an associate professor of fine art at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.

David Dowell / JamesWoodfill David Dowell is an architect and educator living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Dowell joined el dorado, inc as a partner in 1998. His projects have been recognized in Architect Magazine, Architect’s Newspaper, Architecture Record, Art in America, Detail China, Dwell, Interior Design Magazine, Kansas City Star, Metropolis, and Space Korea, among other publications. In 2008, he received an Award for Distinction from Washington University’s Sam Fox School in St. Louis. Dowell currently sits on the University of Kansas Architecture Department Advisory Board. Dowell co-founded a graduate design/build studio at Kansas State University with el dorado partner Doug Stockman, and has also taught at the University of Kansas and Lawrence Institute of Technology, both in Lawrence, Kansas; Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; and the Technical University in Dresden, Germany.

Arboretum Arboretum is an experimental acoustic musical duo consisting of Rhiannon Birdsall and Joe Wheeler, who both live and work in Kansas City, Missouri.

Todd M. Christiansen Todd M. Christiansen is an animation and video artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Chris Daharsh

James Woodfill is an artist and educator living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Woodfill’s work has been reviewed in Art In America, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, I.D. Magazine and Sculpture Magazine, among other publications. He has received a Charlotte Street

Chris Daharsh is an artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. His work has been shown at City Ice Arts Project, H&R Block Artspace at KCAI, Paragraph + Project Space, and Spraybooth Gallery, all in Kansas 64

Foundation award and was awarded a multi-year studio grant from Review Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Woodfill holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and now teaches there as an assistant professor in the painting department.

Kansas CIty Art Institute and a MFA in fine art from California College of Arts. She now teaches as an assistant professor of fiber and social practice at Arizona State University.

Caitlin Horsmon Jeff Eaton Caitlin Horsmon is an artist, curator, and scholar living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Her films and videos have been shown at film festivals and in galleries around the world and are distributed by The Collectif Jeune Cinéma in Paris.

Jeff Eaton is an artist and curator living in Overland Park, Kansas. Eaton’s work has been shown at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; SIGNAL and Terminal Projects in Brooklyn, New York; Mass MoCA in Boston, Massachusetts; and Smith-Stewart and Bortolami Gallery in New York City, New York, among other venues. In 2010, he was a curatorial fellow at the Neuberger Museum of Art. Eaton holds a BFA in photography and art History from the Kansas City Art Institute and a MA/MFA in studio art and art history from SUNY Purchase College.

Laura Isaac / Maritza Ruiz-Kim Laura Isaac is an artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Her work has been shown throughout the US, including in Miami, Florida; Grand Rapids, Michigan; New York City, New York; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds a BA and a MA in studio art from the University of Missouri – Kansas City.

Lindsay Fernandez Lindsay Fernandez is an animation and video artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Gotch & Hansen is an unconventional movement and sound duo consisting of Jane Gotch and Shawn Hansen, who both live and work in Kansas City, Missouri.

Maritza Ruiz-Kim is an artist living and working in San Francisco, California. Her work has been shown at Compound Gallery in Oakland, California and Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco, California, among other venues in Brooklyn and New York City, New York; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Miami, Florida; and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Ruiz-Kim holds a BFA in new media genres from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Erika Lynne Hanson

Lindsey Griffith / Charlie Mylie

Erika Lynne Hanson is an artist living and working Pheonix, Arizona. Her work has been shown at Dean’s Gallery, UMKC, H&R Block Artspace, Town Pavilion, Spray Booth Gallery, Paragraph + Project Space, City Arts, Dolphin Gallery, The Fahrenheit Gallery, The Vault Gallery, Destination Gallery, and Plug Projects, all in Kansas City, Missouri; Tompkins Projects in Brooklyn, New York; Monument2 in Chicago, Illinois; Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio; Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; North/South Gallery and Oliver Art Center in Oakland, California; and Bruce Galleries, Candystore Collective, Fishspace, and Make Hang Gallery, all in San Francisco, California. She has also received a Charlotte Street Foundation award in Kansas City, Missouri. Hanson holds a BFA in fiber from

Lindsey Griffith is a conceptual artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Gotch & Hansen

Charlie Mylie is a conceptual artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ghyman Johnson / Megan Mantia / Leone Reeves Ghyman Johnson is a conceptual artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Megan Mantia is a conceptual artist and photographer living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Leone Reeves is a conceptual artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. 65

Ken Johnson

The Kansas City Star, and Review Magazine. Her work has been shown at Review Studios Exhibition Space, Belger Art Center, Gallery Village, H&R Block Artspace, and Avenue of the Arts, all in Kansas City, Missouri, and at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, among other venues. She has received a Charlotte Street Foundation award and was awarded a multi-year studio grant from Review Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Tveit holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a MID from Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Domus Academy. She now teaches as an associate professor in the design department at the University of Kansas.

Ken Johnson is a local historian and community organizer living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ezhno Martin / Jeanette Powers Ezhno Martin is a poet and performer living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Jeanette Powers is a poet and visual artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Her first book of poetry, Absolute Futility, was published by Write The Future Press in 2012.

Mnemosyne Duo Mnemosyne Duo is an experimental music and sound duo consisting of Russell Thorpe and Brad Van Wick, who both live and work in Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri.

m.o.i. m.o.i., aka the Minister of Information, is an artist and environmental scientist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jessica Palko Jessica Palko is an artist, arts administrator, and historian living and working in Lawrence, Kansas.

Gerry Trilling Gerry Trilling is an artist living and working in Kansas City, Kansas. Her work has been shown at Byron Cohen Gallery, H&R Block Artspace at KCAI, Jan Weiner Gallery, la Esquina, and Massman Gallery at Rockhurst College, all in Kansas City, Missouri; Carnegie Arts Center in Leavenworth, Kansas; and Craft Alliance Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, among other venues. Trilling holds a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute.

May Tveit May Tveit is an artist and educator living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Tveitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Papers, National Public Radio, 66

RISES ZORA credits

About Charlotte Street

rises Zora Sponsor

Over 16 years, Charlotte Street has challenged, nurtured, and empowered thousands of artists, distributed almost $900,000 in awards and grants to artists and their projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. Charlotte Street—with its community of artists—strives to be a primary catalyst in making Kansas City a vibrant, creative metropolis, alive with collaboration, passion, ideas, and surprise.

Lead support for rises Zora and corresponding publications has been generousely provided by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Documentation Credits Cover images by Jamilee Polson Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy First title pages image courtesy of artists Mnemosyne Duo; reproduction rights belong to artists, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy

For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org. rises Zora was presented as part of Charlotte Street’s Curatorial Residency Program

Second, third, and fourth title page images by Jamilee Polson Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy

Through its new Curatorial Residency Program, Charlotte Street Foundation is creating opportunities for outstanding emerging curators from around the country to immerse themselves in the arts ecosystem of the Kansas City region. The program provides multifaceted support for an annually selected curator-in-residence to develop and present original contemporary arts programming responsive to and inclusive of the work of Kansas City-area artists. Teaching partnerships with the Department of Art at University of Missouri-Kansas City and Kansas City Art Institute further connect the curator-in-residence with area art students.

Plates 1 -12 photographic documentation by E.G. Schempf; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 13 image courtesy of artist Jessica Palko; reproduction rights belong to the artist Plates 14 -17 photographic documentation by Jamilee Polson Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 18 photographic documentation by Stephen Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street 68

Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 19 courtesy of artist Megan Mantia; reproduction rights belong to artist, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 20 photographic documentation by Leon Jones; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City Museum, Leon Jones and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 21 photographic documentation by Stephen Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Academy Records, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 22 photographic documentation by Jamilee Polson Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 23 courtesy of artists Gotch & Hansen; reproduction rights belong to artists, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plates 24 -25 courtesy of artists Laura Isaac and Maritza Ruiz-Kim; reproduction rights belong to artists, Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 26 courtesy of artists Mnemosyne Duo; reproduction rights belong to artists, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 27 photographic documentation by Jamilee Polson Lacy; reproduction rights belong to Charlotte Street Foundation and Jamilee Polson Lacy Plate 28 courtesy of artist Erika Lynne Hanson; reproduction rights belong to artist, Charlotte Street Foundation, and Jamilee Polson Lacy Nightrover video still on page 39 courtesy of artist Barry Anderson; reproduction rights belong to the artist Practice Process: Classical film still on page 40 courtesy of artist Caitlin Horsmon; reproduction rights belong to the artist Untitled video still on page 41 courtesy of artist Lindsey Fernandez; reproduction rights belong to the artist Product Placement Black Friday video still on page 42 courtesy of artist May Tveit; reproduction rights belong to the artist