Three Chairs at 48.70 degrees N by Marilyn Volkman; courtesy of the Department of Visual Arts

It seems one way to do this is to include the audience in the artistic process. Erik Wenzel, an MFA student displaying this week, takes particular pleasure in asking us what we are doing, literally. His piece, “Convincing People,” consists of a blank canvas with at least a dozen questions that prod at exactly that idea. In a statement about his work, Wenzel writes he is interested firstly in art, “and then all the things around art that happen…the conversations people have about the art, the museum, the gallery, the exhibitions space.” He is intrigued by the meta-world that lies within, but is not limited to, the gallery walls, and his fascination is contagious in his mixed-media show, “Warm for your Formalism.”

Less inclusive, but equally interesting conceptually, is Vanessa Ruiz’s “Selections From Another Norm,” an exploration in portraiture that is most concerned with using art to make sociological observations about gender. In seven color photos, identical in their bluish crystalline texture, Ruiz documents the elegant poses of various female models, each one representing a different religious character of ambiguous sexual identity, except for several biblical examples.

The point is the ambiguity, or “blur,” according to Ruiz. “Christianity has an impact on society’s view on homosexuality,” she explains, in that it forces us to make gender distinctions where non-Abrahamic religions don’t. Protesting this notion, Ruiz “queered” certain religious figures that were originally represented as heterosexual, such as the ancient Judaic “Sophia.”

The idea of using esoteric religious texts to make a statement about modern America is both startlingly astute and appropriate, but Ruiz may struggle to communicate her thoughts through this show. While the authoritative gaze and pose of many of her subjects imply power, there are not enough allegorical cues to point the viewer in the esoteric direction that the artist indicates. Consequently, her show just seems like appealing portraits arranged without logic. Ruiz could do more to confront the viewer visually with what she is trying to say conceptually.

Kimmy Noonen returns the audience’s attention to the space immediately surrounding them by cleverly drawing attention to common but often overlooked social interactions. With the piece “Untitled (Map),” Noonen converts the immaterial into the material and then back again. What might look like a schizophrenic attempt at a treasure map is actually an intensely objective documentation of the movements of 20 people in a confined space by connecting circles affixed with words such as “move” or “talk” with arrows and dotted lines.

Not a single dashed line lacks an endpoint, but such connections become irrelevant as they themselves obscure the invisible interaction that they’re intended to document. Using what she calls “the language of ability (scientific structure),” Noonen’s quirky exploration proves to be a useful window into the way we mentally process our own lives.

DOVA Temporary, 5228 S. Harper Ave. Through June 5. Saturday-Tuesday, noon-5pm; openings Fridays 6-9pm. (773)753-4821. Schedule of exhibitors at dovatemporary.uchicago.edu

Using an intrusive shock therapy-type method, Noelle Mason created the show “What makes a man start fires” with the intention of getting people “to act, to really metaphorically start this fire—to cause change towards something that is better for us as a society.” Much of her work in the show serves to demonstrate how inured the audience is to what she calls “mediating objects,” and force viewers’ participation in ideas from which their culture tends to distance itself.

In “Bob and Weave,” for example, the audience witnesses a video of a fistfight between Mason and a large man projected onto a wall. As the tussle progresses, Mason’s bloodied face bumps in and out of the camera’s frame, the back of her opponent’s head impeding our view most of the time. The viewer is confronted with an image physically too large and too loud to avoid.

Mason’s other visual work is geared to achieve a similarly jarring response. She explains that, normally, “the television is kind of a wall, but also a window in some ways.” The television screen, like a car’s windshield or a white picket fence, is a “mediating object” in that it serves to separate the viewer from what it portrays. The show, however, compels the viewer to transgress these divisions and in so doing makes the audience more aware of the gap created by such mediating objects.

After taking part in “Mise en Scene,” another work that creates understanding by involving the viewer, one cannot help but wonder how many television screens it takes to make us savages. During “Mise en Scene,” the screens serve as a visual gateway to the interior of a white eight by eight foot cube, within which a barely clothed performer stands on a box with wire electrodes attached to her legs and arms. The viewer watches and listens to a television video of other viewers pressing a red button and observing, on another television set, the woman convulsing in pain.

The video-recorded audience members sought to connect with the woman inside the box, but as one of the audience members shrewdly observed, “the only way to communicate with her is to shock her.” In a telling shot a man with black-rimmed glasses repeatedly jabbed the button while looking at the screen, and turned to an off-camera friend while laughing and pointing at the television.

Mason also uses mediating objects to explore the transformation of traditionally cherished American individualism, which she describes “as a very noble kind of effort that got mangled and turned into [a] fearful position where you lock yourself inside of your tract home.”

In the piece “Open House,” the viewer is treated to posters of the detailed architectural plans of “Cul de Sac,” which the program says was made “using prefabricated building materials” such as plastic siding, and then watches a video performance of Mason and several others who built themselves inside this suburban equivalent of Thoreau’s house on Walden pond. It might take more than an axe and some whiskey to change the new individualism they are fighting, but at that moment that’s all it takes to destroy the pristine house from the inside out.

antena, 1765 S Laflin St. Through May 24. Saturday, 12-5 pm, or by appointment. http://www.antenapilsen.com/current.html

I could see why this was a woman that a movement could get behind. She had a remarkable ability to engage a crowd and impart her thoughts, but at the same time be so down to earth as to almost give the impression of being part of the crowd. At 74, she was still energetic and fit, donning form-fitting clothing and—as some later noted—high-heeled boots. Steinem’s words galvanized the four-hour Progressive Gala, noting that the many activist associations in the world are united like “spokes on a wheel” with the common goal of change at its center.

Elevation and unity were naturally the dominant themes of an event that was sponsored by over twenty organizations throughout Chicago. So was partying: Hollie Gilman, president of the University of Chicago Democrats, described the Gala as “a night to celebrate what we share together and work to strengthen our progressive identity.”

As a Gala volunteer, I handed out tickets to college students as well as community activists from across the region. Our backgrounds were varied, but once at the Smart Museum for the latter part of the event, we all discoursed within the two panel forums presented by the Organization of Black Students and the Feminist Majority. We stood transfixed by the same performances and together consumed delicious food.

Perhaps the most unifying factors were the conceptual threads that ran throughout the night. Amina Norman-Hawkins, in her poem “I Think,” expressed a kind of sticky-thought syndrome probably common to the activists in the crowd, especially the words: “These thoughts / they never fade away / they just twinkle.”

At times, the Gala felt more like a large progressive support group than a party. Feminism is not as popular today as it once was, to say the least, and during the Question and Answer session with Steinem, inquirers seemed to primarily be after advice and motivation, asking questions about everything from how to educate anti-feminists to her thoughts on high-heeled shoes. Though at times expressing concern about the fact that people might take some of her advice too seriously—“once I got older, people think I’m telling them what to do” —Steinem answered every question meaningfully and with great humor. She emphasized that every great movement takes massive amounts of time and that every revolution is ongoing, giving every activist in the room hope with the words: “Don’t let them tell you that it’s over.”