Reckless Rolodex Access

Introductory Wall Text and Verbal Description

EXHIBITION WALL TEXT

Applied to the wall is black vinyl text. Above two columns of text is a heading. The heading reads:

January 13 – March 18, 2023 in smaller letters then Reckless Rolodex in large bold and italics letters

The left column reads: Curated by Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson, and Caroline Picard

Susan Anderson

Lilli Carré

Edie Fake

Max Guy

Barbara Kasten

Young Joon Kwak

Devin T. Mays

John Neff

Betsy Odom

Derrick Woods-Morrow

Cherrie Yu

With performances by ATOM-r, Sky Cubacub, and Matthew Goulish and Natasha Mijares

The column on the right reads:

This exhibition highlights the lasting influence of Lawrence Steger, described as “one of the most important, and most influential, performance artists in Chicago during the late 1980s and 90s.” In performance, Steger explored desire and sexuality until his early death in 1999 due to AIDS-related complications. A skilled director, writer and performer, Steger relied on the disciplines of theater and a community of collaborative artists to realize his intricately constructed performances that reflected his deep knowledge of a wide range of sources. Steger’s legacy is shared here primarily through works by contemporary artists responding to, or evoking, his work and research practice.

Support for Reckless Rolodex is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; and the School of Art & Art History, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.

AUDIO FILE OF OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL

Sketch for Sock and Buskin, Max Guy Text and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics and short contextual text

MAX GUY

Sketch for Sock and Buskin 2022

Enamel paint on Rives BFK paper Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description:

Two painted chrome paper masks hang on the wall five feet from the floor. The faces are stylized and ungendered but human. One half smiles and the other frowns. The two masks are suspended by an intertwining red and white piece of thread. The faces are composed of 6 horizontal cut outs and 10 vertical cut outs that interlock through a grid. Standing directly in front shows the grid infrastructure while the profile view of the face is more prominent when standing on the left or right side of the chrome mask.

Extended label Information:

Sock and Buskin refer to the comedy/tragedy faces of theatre. In ancient Greece, tragic actors wore a buskin boot, while comic actors wore a thin-soled “sock.” Guy, who has created numerous mask and silhouette works, is more fascinated by the tools used to make traditional masks, often diagrams and silhouettes, than characters and stories. The artist made these two masks by digitally developing a lattice of intersecting silhouettes protruding in the third dimension of what is more typically a flat image of a face. Lawrence Steger, secret about much of his private life, extended that privacy into his creative work, working to obscure what lay behind the mask.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Crown Hall 1, Barbara Kasten Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics and short contextual text

Barbara Kasten

Crown Hall 1, 2018-2019.

Digital chromogenic print.

Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery, New York

Verbal description:

A vertical photograph in a silver frame is mounted on a white wall at six and a half feet from the floor. In the foreground of the photograph are rectangles and triangles of neon orange, chartreuse, and hot pink fill the frame. The colors are made from layered and stacked translucent acrylic that form abstracted geometric shapes and bright straight lines. Behind the acrylic, are black metal frames that are a support system for the translucent acrylic. On the bottom right of the photograph is a patch of a black tile floor speckled with white. This gives the photograph dimension and reveals the frame and colored acrylic panels to be in an interior environment.

Extended label Information:

This photograph and two others elsewhere in the exhibition stem from the artist’s investigation of color, surface, and line in materials in the active architectural studios inside 20th century modernist architect Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology. A later exhibit by Kasten used the title Architectural Fiction. The idea that one can cloak fiction in forms borrowed from architecture echoes Lawrence Steger’s interest in the inherent warp of obsessively perfected structures. Steger seemed drawn to formally refined spaces like S. R. Crown Hall as portals to imaginary worlds or private fantasy.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

At Rest, a vessel, Devin T. Mays Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics and short contextual text

Devin T. Mays,

At rest, a vessel, 2022,

Vessels, water

Courtesy the artist

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

Three water vessels, one made of clear crystal glass in the shape of a round bowl that is 6 inches high; one made of white plastic in the shape of a rectangle that is 5¾ inches high; and one made of green plastic in the shape of a round bowl that is 3¾ inches high, are placed in different areas of the gallery’s floor. The glass vessel is placed against the back wall of the main gallery room, the white vessel is placed against the north wall in the main gallery room, and the green vessel is placed next to a cylindrical white column. Water levels inside these containers fall during the exhibition depending on evaporation rates, and are refilled by gallery staff members, according to the artist’s instruction.

Extended label Information:

Mays has said,

I believe my role as an artist is to punctuate: interrupt, accentuate, emphasize, etc. Linguistically, the placement of a comma or period can radically change the meaning or intention of a sentence, phrase or statement. I guess I’m trying to do the same thing visually.

In this dynamic work, dispersed throughout the gallery and among the other artworks, imperceptible evaporation is conjoined with the gallery staff’s maintenance of the water levels. Lawrence Steger was interested in the openness, fluidity, and porosity of Fluxus performance operations, characterized often by an unfinishable gesture, a gesture that allows an unfolding to continue.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Lawrence Steger, St. George’s Ct., Chicago, 1992, Susan Anderson Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics and short contextual text

Susan Anderson

Lawrence Steger, St. Georges Ct., Chicago, 1992, 1992/2022,

Light jet print on silver gelatin paper, mounted on Dibond. (c) Susan Anderson Photo.

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

In a white frame, a large black and white photograph features a ¾ profile of a white man with short brown hair in a soft spot light, wearing a large suit, tie, and vest. He is looking up and to the right with his left arm bent at the elbow, hand resting on his left hip though concealed behind his jacket. His right hand is raised to his right ear. Behind him is a blurry backdrop of all-white vintage patterned wallpaper. The edges of the print bear the signs of production and distortion that frame the portrait.

Extended label Information:

Anderson frequently created publicity photographs for Lawrence Steger’s work, especially for the performances STAVE (1992) and The Swans (1995), and the series Crimes of Reckless Youth (1989). About this photograph, which came to be Steger’s definitive portrait, Anderson says:

I can still remember the day we made that portrait, in his loft off of N. Milwaukee. The space had that tin ceiling material on the walls. In fact, as I recall, he told me that day that he was HIV positive. He wanted this portrait to be the way he would be remembered.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Open Moment, Edie Fake, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics and short contextual text

EDIE FAKE, Open Moment, 2022-2023. Plywood, acrylic latex paint. Courtesy the artist and Western Exhibitions.

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal Description:

An 160 square foot wooden platform stands off the ground with the sides exposed. The surface of this stage consists of 15 plain wooden panels with a colorfully painted abstract pattern. An 80 square foot ramp slopes from the top of the stage until it hits the floor near the gallery’s entrance. The pattern includes a blue stripe that starts at the bottom of the ramp parallel to a black and mint green checkered “L” shape, extends beyond it, past half of a light yellow circle, and ends in the center left of the stage in an inverted “C” shape.

Where the ramp meets the stage, a muted green line runs parallel to the blue stripe. The muted green stripe is shaped like an L and occupies the stage’s top right corner. Here, a quarter of a red circle lies at the center of the wood panels. The dark green and black checkered line also continues here and outlines half of a box in the top corner of the stage.

A plum purple circle occupies the center of the top right stage panel. The middle right floor panel includes a quarter of a muted green circle in its left top corner. The stage’s bottom right has a dark green zig-zag line that runs parallel to the side of the stage. The black and mint green checkered line appears here too, snug beside the end of the dark green line; this checkered line makes another half square shape, running into the last two lower central panels which contain a fully described red circle.

Extended label:

Open Moment adopts the conspicuous utopianism of the everyday board game, scaled to human size. Over the course of the exhibition, it operates both as its own object and as a hosting platform for scheduled performances and events. The design carries forward themes in Fake’s Memory Palaces (2013-2014) project, a series of vibrant drawings reimagining Chicago’s queer history through the creation of detailed storefronts and about which the artists says,

Thinking of the body as a building is very easy for me to do. The queerness is in the nitty-gritty construction. I think the interesting thing to think about buildings and architecture is that they are just shells for people to occupy and it’s impossible to assign a gender to that. Memory Palaces was a mix of things. A couple of buildings were based on empty spaces around Chicago that already looked like a ready-made queer space, and I figured I wanted to composite and draw that because it is a space I would want to have. A lot of them were spaces that existed once as a queer space but don’t exist anymore and are reimagined. It’s always been about tapping into knowing that these things existed as a source of power in the future versus a nostalgia trip. Less “Boo hoo, that doesn’t exist anymore,” and more like, “We have agency in the present to create a world.” It’s an ecstatic drawing of space and bodies.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Brown Rainbow Eclipse Explosion, Young Joon Kwak, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

YOUNG JOON KWAK.

Brown Rainbow Eclipse Explosion, 2017.

Cast aluminum, welded aluminum rods, resin, glass mirror tiles, acrylic mirrors, epoxy putty, acrylic paint, motor, steel chain and hardware, custom LED light, shadow.

Courtesy the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

A large, silver disco ball that has exploded is suspended by a metal chain on the ceiling. It hangs approximately six feet high from the floor. On the disco ball’s surface are mosaic pieces of a mirror reflecting light. The fragmented pieces of the disco ball expose its rough textured insides and are held together by individual aluminum rods welded together at the center. The thick aluminum rods vary in their length, some are long while others are short.

The disco ball slowly spins and is illuminated by a multicolored light source secured on the ceiling. The light emits bright red, purple, and green and hits the disco ball. It’s reflected on a white wall where the colors are more vivid and brighter. On the wall, is the disco ball’s enlarged shadow.

Extended label Information:

Brown Rainbow Eclipse Explosion is part mirror ball, part event, staging an object becoming something other than itself. It presents what the artist has described as,

an open-ended sort of choreography, expanding our sense of what our bodies can be, what they can do, how they can feel. I think of how sculpture can be active; that matter is an actor; and how it can take up space and create space for non-normativity. I often look at materials as surrogates for transitioning marginalized bodies into a space of greater recognition.

The sculpture recalls three chandeliers, two in Steger’s work and one created for his memorial by artist Mary Brogger. Brogger’s huge metal sculpture suspended a constellation of skewered dripping ice cubes and dominated the memories of so many who attended the memorial.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Wüsthof Knives, Betsy Odom, Text

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

Betsy Odom,

Wüsthof Knives 2012,

Graphite, fur

Courtesy the artist

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

Three smooth black knives carved out of graphite lie on a piece of soft white fur. Each of the knives show marks of being fabricated on the handle with drawn circles for the handle bolts and the branding mark.

Extended label Information:

A passage from Lawrence Steger’s 1992 STAVE script reads,

Depending on the script, you may be holding a hunting knife, a carving knife, a penknife, a letter opener, an ice pick, an icicle, a hatpin, a spindle, a shard of glass, or whatever long, sharp instrument … For our purposes it does not matter. In all of these cases it looks like a knife. It is being handled like a knife. It will have the same effect as a knife.

Across their practice, Odom subverts traditional craft practices creating intricate objects that appear functional yet are purely aesthetic. Odom’s Wüsthof Knives evoke the Baroque aspects of Steger’s work in which the actual and its illusion converge.

Trisha and Homer Video, Cherrie Yu, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

Cherrie Yu

Trisha and Homer 2018

Video, 9:05 mins.

Courtesy the artist.

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

Color film begins in a two-channel format featuring two women in either frame cropped at the waist. Found footage of the dancer-choreographer Trisha Brown’s 1986 performance, Accumulation with Talking Plus Watermotor, plays on the left. In this frame the artist, Trisha Brown—a white woman with shoulder length brown hair in a loose cream sweat suit, performs a series of movements in a dance studio, speaking slowly. On the right, is the contemporary artist Cherrie Yu, an Asian woman with short black hair, a loose black shirt and black pants. Yu replicates Brown’s dance and the two figures produce the same series of movements simultaneously. Brown’s voice alone is audible, even after the video switches to a single-channel format, showing Yu notice a rip in her pants. She exits her nondescript studio space shortly thereafter. In the next scene, the video resumes a two-channel structure. Brown’s voice remains audible. The left-hand frame features a public stairway running between two escalators (one up, one down). As people pass up and down the passageways, the camera remains centered on the back of Homero Muñoz mopping the stairs with a mop. Muñoz has short brown hair, wears navy pants, a loose navy jacket, sneakers, and appears to be at work. In the right-hand screen, the camera centers on the back of Yu in a kitchen. Yu wears the same black shirt and pants from the earlier sequence. The tear in her pants is still visible. She has no mop but reproduces the actions of the Muñoz in time with his own. Her wedged shoes stand out when Brown’s voice mentions wearing “four-inch wedgies” to receive an award because accepting it barefoot would be unacceptable. The film cuts again when Brown’s voice says “stop, stopped, stopping,” after which Brown is no longer heard. The final portion of the film depicts Yu and Muñoz seated against a wall. They face the camera without speaking and move very little. Yu, on the left, wears a white shirt over a black tank top and glasses. Muñoz wears a black button up shirt with a white undershirt. They appear to be watching the same film,Trisha and Homer. Although Yu and Muñoz do not speak in the frame, subtitles capture their audible discussion about dance, labor, music, and performance.

Extended label Information:

In collaboration with Homero Muñoz, a former maintenance worker, Yu methodically unfolds notions of identity and pedestrianism inscribed in dancer/choreographer Trisha Brown’s 1986 solo work Accumulation with Talking Plus Watermotor. Yu’s reenactment examines Brown’s notions of authenticity, skilled and deskilled movement, and audience participation.

In the context of Reckless Rolodex, the video gestures toward a form of lip-sync in which the performer wears the material lightly and transparently. The enactments shared by Lawrence Steger and Iris Moore in Rough Trade (1992), of Yoko Ono’s song Hirake (Open) and of an emblematic interrogation scene from the 1992 film Basic Instinct, operated in this offhand style.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Gravity Pleasure Switchback, Derrick Woods-Morrow, Text and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

DERRICK WOODS-MORROW

Gravity Pleasure Switchback 2023,

Used mattresses, natural stains, subwoofers, balloons filled with human breath and helium, looped 8:57 mins. audio track, as well as empathy, patience, and time occurring unnaturally

Courtesy the artist and ENGAGE Projects

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description: Three used freestanding twin XL mattresses are bent over each other in the form of a rainbow. The structure is stable, not tipping, and houses a subwoofer that produces a subtle, muffled booming sound. Several light cream balloons are scattered around the mattress’s immediate vicinity.

Extended label information:

Lawrence Steger rendered the final climactic scene of his performance The Swans (1995) as a “film sequence” narrated on stage and titled As If Beating A Featherbed Against A Wall. Woods-Morrow’s Gravity Pleasure Switchback, evocative of a materialized array of desire, rest, vulnerability, intimacy, and possession, echoes the disconcertingly specific imagery and hyper-personal formal innovation of that haunting climactic scene.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

https://soundcloud.com/user-710361049/derrick-woods-morrow-gravity-pleasure-switchback?in=user-710361049/sets/reckless-rolodex&si=10c1286526224579954241d50ebe8b68&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Crown Hall 2, Barbara Kasten, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

Barbara Kasten

Crown Hall 2, 2018-2019.

Digital chromogenic print.

Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery, New York.

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal Description:

A horizontal photograph in a silver frame is mounted on a white wall at six and a half feet from the floor. In the foreground of the photograph are rectangles and triangles of neon orange, chartreuse, yellow, blue, and hot pink. The colors are made from layered and stacked translucent acrylic that form abstracted geometric shapes and bright straight lines. A black metal frame that runs diagonally across the photograph’s plane supports the colored acrylic panels. Some of the acrylic goes behind the frame while others are in front of it. On the bottom right of the photograph is a patch of a black tile floor speckled with white. This gives the photograph dimension and reveals the sculpture to be in an interior environment.

Extended label Information:This photograph and two others elsewhere in the exhibition stem from the artist’s investigation of color, surface, and line in materials in the active architectural studios inside 20th century modernist architect Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology. A later exhibit by Kasten used the title Architectural Fiction. The idea that one can cloak fiction in forms borrowed from architecture echoes Lawrence Steger’s interest in the inherent warp of obsessively perfected structures. Steger seemed drawn to formally refined spaces like S. R. Crown Hall as portals to imaginary worlds or private fantasy.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

https://soundcloud.com/user-710361049/barabra-kasten-crown-hall-2?in=user-710361049/sets/reckless-rolodex&si=10c1286526224579954241d50ebe8b68&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Crown Hall 3, Barbara Kasten, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

Barbara Katsen

Crown Hall 3, 2018-2019.

Digital chromogenic print.

Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery, New York

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

A vertical photograph in a silver frame is mounted on a white wall at six and a half feet from the floor. In the foreground of the photograph are rectangles and triangles of neon orange, chartreuse, and hot pink fill the frame. The colors are made from layered and stacked translucent acrylic that form abstracted geometric shapes and bright straight lines running diagonally and vertically. The image gives no sense or illusion of depth. In the background of the entire photograph is a tile floor speckled in white. The tile flooring is a dark color that becomes saturated by the colored acrylic panels. On one of the orange, rectangular panels on the bottom half of the photograph is a blurry reflection of a metal frame and a light source, perhaps a window.

Extended label Information:

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

https://soundcloud.com/user-710361049/barabra-kasten-crown-hall-3?in=user-710361049/sets/reckless-rolodex&si=10c1286526224579954241d50ebe8b68&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Beaver & Shark, John Neff, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

John Neff

Beaver & Shark 2023 Paint, FM radio transmitter, portable radio, vinyl

Courtesy the artist

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

On a 10 foot gold painted wide wall is a white silhouette of a human swimming above a white silhouette of a great white shark. Their side profile shows them in motion and the great white shark is parallel and looks up towards them. Hanging on the wall on top of the human silhouette is a small white radio with an antenna broadcasting a recording of the artist John Neff reading “Never Realized” by photographer Robert Blanchon. Hanging at the top part of the shark is a white power horn speaker emitting the theme song to the 1975 film Jaws. Resting on the bottom right corner of the floor is a white paint palette with different paint colors that have been mixed to achieve the gold color of the wall.

Extended label Information:

Neff has reconfigured two wall paintings by conceptual artist and photographer Robert Blanchon (b. 1965–d. 1999), a contemporary of Lawrence Steger’s. In the 1990s, Steger and Blanchon rethought creativity under the shadow of their HIV positivity. Blanchon’s 1995 video Let’s Just Kiss + Say Goodbye was a touchstone for Steger’s later work.

Through color and sound, Neff refers to a mid-90s Blanchon exhibition at Chicago’s Randolph Street Gallery that featured walls painted with a color named “Beaver” and Blanchon’s 1994 Carcharodon carcharias (Jaws) exhibited in Artists Space, New York’s AIDS Forum series. The second work reconstructed the famous 1975 illustration for Jaws depicting a swimmer above the ascending shark with a portrait of a nude Blanchon substituted for the original swimming figure.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Loose Lock, Lilli Carré, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

Lilli Carré

Loose Lock 2019

Terracotta, underglaze

Courtesy the artist and Western Exhibitions

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

An unglazed terracotta chain 2 feet long hangs vertically from the 10 ¾ X 4 inch terracotta slide lock, mounted to the wall. The pin that connects the chain to the lock has a slight bubblegum pink glaze. This object resembles a standard household door chain lock, although it is made of clay and oversized, giving it a cartoon-like character.

Extended label Information:

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Road and Memories, Lawrence Steger, Text and Audio

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

LAWRENCE STEGER

Road

Episode 50: Shoulda Been Dead, This American Life, January 17, 1997

Audio, 10 mins.

Text of verbal description of the artwork

MEMORIES OF LAWRENCE STEGER

Compiled here are audio messages of short vivid memories

of Steger. The exhibition curators asked Steger’s friends and colleagues to contribute. You can contribute, too. If you have

a memory of Lawrence Steger, please call 773-669-4459 and leave a one-minute-long voicemail of your memory. UIC Gallery 400 staff add contributions to the compilation every week.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Soundtrack to The Swans, Lawrence Steger, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

SOUNDTRACK TO LAWRENCE STEGER’S THE SWANS

1995

Robert Coddington, composer Audio, 34:08 mins.

1. Swans Main Theme

2. The Grotto

3. Feathers

4. Persian Twist

5. Ludwig’s Walk (Water Planes Over Rust World)

6. Swans Theme (midnight mix)

7. One More Down the Hole (vox)

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Performance Ephemera, Lawrence Steger, Text and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

THE SWANS PERFORMANCE EPHEMERA

The Swans (re-mix) touring laminated crew badge and lanyard

The Swans (re-mix) touring laminated luggage tag #3 and chain

The Swans (re-mix) poster from Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1998

The Swans (re-mix) poster from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1996

The Swans poster from Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, 1995

The Swans incense censer prop

The Swans François Prelati costume by John Darmour, worn by Douglas Grew

All items courtesy Douglas Grew

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

Hanging along the left wall of the room are a number of objects related to Lawrence Steger’s 1995 performance, The Swans. Closest to the entrance is a gray metal chain with a black laminated badge on the end; the badge reads “crew.” Next to this lanyard hangs a shorter metal chain with a square laminated luggage tag featuring The Swans logo. Next to the tag hang three black and white posters advertising various performances of The Swans. In the corner, a tarnished silver incense censer hangs from a long chain. Next to it hangs a long gray robe with round gold buttons and a hood.

Extended label Information:

Lawrence Steger wrote, directed, and starred in the theater performance The Swans. He described it as, “An exploration of the desire for solace and ecstasy based on the lives of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Gilles de Rais.” It premiered at Chicago’s Randolph Street Gallery in 1995 and toured internationally through 1998 under the title The Swans (re-mix).

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

Crimes of Reckless Youth Performance Ephemera, Lawrence Steger, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

CRIMES OF RECKLESS YOUTH PERFORMANCE EPHEMERA

Crimes of Reckless Youth: A Series calendar, 1990

Four copies of the tear off calendar

Return of Reckless Youth poster, 1991

Club Lower Links publicity calendar, 1991

All items courtesy Douglas Grew

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal Description:

Along the back wall of the gallery hang four black and white tear-off calendars. Each calendar has a tear off section with a picture on top and another tear off for the date on the bottom. The date sections also include information for various performances in the Crimes of Reckless Youth series. Next to these calendars hangs a traditional calendar opened to September of 1991 and featuring photographs of two models cropped from the hips down, each wearing ripped jeans. Above this calendar is a black and white poster reading “The Return of Reckless Youth” above the event details.

Extended label Information:

Crimes of Reckless Youth: A Series (Boys Behind Bars) (1990) and The Return of Reckless Youth (1991) were each a month- long series curated and hosted by Douglas Grew and Lawrence Steger and presented at Chicago’s Club Lower Links. The press release described Crimes of Reckless Youth as, “A weekly cabaret with film, video, poetry and performance art about Juvenile Delinquents, Deviants, and All-American Social Outcasts.”

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK

1. Rough Trade performance collaboration with Iris Moore, 1994. Photograph by Alan Crumlish. [MG]

2. Rough Trade performance collaboration with Iris Moore, 1994, closing monologue handwritten manuscript by Lawrence Steger. [MG]

3. “STAVE Nov. ’91 — Photo D. Travers Scott (S. Silver & L. Steger)” handwritten inscription on reverse of photograph. [MG]

4. Lawrence Steger performing STAVE solo work, 1992. Costume by John Darmour. Photographer unknown. [MG]

5. Virus magazine Mutations issue, September-October-November 1998 Number 4 “Lawrence Steger” by Davide Grassi, featuring photographs of Incorruptible Flesh, performance collaboration with Ron Athey. [DG]

6. Onobox complete CD box set by Yoko Ono signed lyric book, “To Lawrence, Love X. Yoko Ono Chicago ’97.” Autographed on the occasion of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Spring 1997 commencement ceremony when Ono received an honorary degree. [DG]

7. F*** Troupe business card. “Works-in-progress and installation/

performances in various Chicago nightclubs.” [DG]

8. Lawrence Steger at writing desk at night. Date and photographer unknown. [MG]

9. The Swans (re-mix) Cankarjev Dom program in Slovenian, 1998. [DG]

10. Randolph Street Gallery 10th Year Benefit Auction May 6, 1989, Home

Entertainment Liberation Front (HELF) Menu inner page. [DG]

11. “Excerpt from Sarajevo Journal Entry, April 27, 1998,” by Lawrence Steger, P-form, a journal of interdisciplinary and performance art, number 46, Fall 1998. [MG]

12. Draft solo performance program, Lunar Cabaret, Chicago, 1998. [DG]

13. Lawrence Steger arrives at airport, Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1998. Photographer unknown. [MG]

14.The Swans performance program, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, 1995 (two sides). [DG, MG]

15. The Swans (re-mix) benefit performance postcard, 1998. [DG]

16. The Swans prop origami gold swan with note from King Ludwig. [JL]

17. Draft solo performance publicity postcard, Lunar Cabaret, Chicago, 1998. [MG]

18. P-form, a journal of interdisciplinary and performance art, number 47, Summer and Fall 1999. Cover image of Lawrence Steger in STAVE solo performance with costume by John Darmour. [MG]

19. Babble, week #24, June 15-21, 1994, Steve Lafreniere, “Visions of Excess,” interview with Lawrence Steger. [DG]

20. Crimes of Reckless Youth: A Series press release, December 27, 1989. [DG]

21. Performance 3002 001 Performance Theory and Practice; Instructor: Lawrence Steger; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; course syllabus, Spring 1995. [DG]

22. Crimes of Reckless Youth: A Series at Club Lower Links, Chicago. Publicity photo by Susan Anderson, 1990. [SA]

23. “Notes form the underground, a visit to Club Lower Links, Chicago’s hippest basement,” by David McCracken, Chicago Tribune, Sunday April 14, 1991. [DG]

24. Lawrence Steger performing “Remote Music” by Larry Miller at Chicago’s N.A.M.E. Gallery, Homage to Fluxus exhibition curated by Jeff Abel, September 12 & 13, 1986. Photograph by Jan Ballard, courtesy of Jeff Abel. [MG]

25. “Believe it: Steger’s performance art not what it seems,” by Justin Hayford, Chicago Tribune, 1998. [DG]

26. Backstage with Laura Dame, Lawrence Steger, and Douglas Grew, I Love the Dead (Alice Cooper lip sync) performance at Chicago’s Randolph Street Gallery, 1997. [DG]

27. ACT-UP Chicago Sex Positive Show benefit performance program and flier, Berlin Nightclub, November 15, 1990. [MG]

28. “In performance: the mortal passions of Lawrence Steger,” by Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader, December 6, 1996. [MG]

30. Faux Show program, November 10, 1998. [DG]

31. Faux Show program/postcard, December 8, 1998. [DG]

32. Faux Show program/postcard, January 12, 1999. [DG]

All objects and documents courtesy of Susan Anderson [SA], Matthew Goulish [MG], Douglas Grew [DG], and Jeanne Long [JL].

Verbal description:

A large, rectangular wooden table in the center of the room is covered with various print materials related to Lawrence Steger’s life and performances. There are multiple black and white photographs of performances, bright pink flyers, a yellow magazine spread, newspaper articles, a black and white CD signed by Yoko Ono, a shiny gold origami swan surrounded by a loop of twine, black and white performance notes, programs, and postcards.

Fruitcake Baked with the Ashes of Lawrence Steger, Texts and Verbal Description

Exhibition Wall Label with artwork specifics

FRUITCAKE BAKED WITH THE ASHES OF LAWRENCE STEGER

Text of verbal description of the artwork

Verbal description:

A donut-shaped brown cake, 12 inches in diameter and six inches tall, hardened and cracked with a patina of eighteen years, and embedded with dried fruits that could be raisins, sits atop a tin box with a gold curlicue design. Around the box a small display has been arranged of five photos of the youthful artist Lawrence Steger, one cartoon religious booklet titled “Somebody Goofed” with a drawing of demons laughing in hell, a packet of three miniscule religious figurines, and a recipe page for Mimi Gabor’s White Fruitcake.

Extended label information:

Shortly after his death in 1999, Lawrence Steger’s Antioch College community of friends and colleagues gathered at a memorial event to divide their portion of his ashes among themselves. A former teacher proposed baking some of the ashes into a large fruitcake as a memorial gesture in the spirit of levity that had so characterized their relations with Lawrence. The confection has since traveled among this community, accruing mementos, as each person in turn kept it for one year. With the blessing and permission of family and friends, the fruitcake makes its first public appearance in Reckless Rolodex.

AUDIO FILE OF VERBALIZED EXHIBITION WALL LABEL WITH ARTWORKS SPECIFICS, SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS, AND VERBAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTWORK