Un-resting and Re-verbing / by Traci Kelly

Symposium panel at InDialogue 2019

Derby Theatre 19 Nov 2019 4.00 - 5.30

Goat Island was a seminal performance group based in Chicago who also presented much of their body of work throughout Europe. Between 1986 and 2009 they devised nine touring works, which entwine historical and contemporary themes through movement, text and arresting images. Constructed through open processes and shared activations with a strong investment in pedagogy, they continue to shape the cultural landscape through generations of creative practitioners, cultural theorists, social philosophers and educators

In 2019 Goat Island had a major exhibition at Chicago Cultural Center: “Goat Island Archive- we have discovered the performance by making it.” A major strand of this exhibition was to invite selected artists to make a response to an allotted Goat Island work, undermining the presumption that archives are static, enclosed and solely historical windows. hancock & kelly were invited to respond to Soldier, Child, Tortured Man 1987 and subsequently made their dialogical work An Extraordinary Rendition 2019.

The Un-Resting and Re-Verbing panel comprised of Goat Island member Mark Jeffrey (SAIC), Curator of the Goat Island archival exhibition Nicholas Lowe (SAIC), Professor of Art History Jennie Klein (Ohio University) and artists Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly will discuss the dialogical nuances within the inter-generational works, and how archives ‘speak’. The panel will also consider the dialogical aspects of site that have shaped the works and yet rendered the boundaries porous and malleable.