The actual result of the mapping experiment at Art in Action, however, was much more free-form than it’ s organizers had envisioned—rather than a chart of the physical or political geography of the city, the maps gave subtle hints at how different people understand the same environment. One impressive twelve-year-old submitted a detailed map of the El, while another participant mapped out good South Side coffee spots, explaining in a note, “I added Powell’s because it’s nice to browse books after you’ve had coffee at Istria.”

Mark Hopwood, a third-year UofC graduate student in philosophy from northern England, started thinking about common University perceptions of the neighborhood when he, like so many UofC students, was cautioned against walking from campus to 65th and Cottage Grove. Being the “kind of person who’s always been curious about my local neighborhood,” he did it anyway. In February of this year, Hopwood attended a presentation by the Counter Cartographies Collective (3Cs) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where they displayed the alternative maps they’d created of their campus. Hopwood cited the 3Cs as the impetus for the Chicago project and found maps particularly appealing for this kind of experiment because, as he noted, “representing something visually lets people find their own entry point.” Because they are visual tools, maps present multiple perspectives and allow viewers to interpret and form their own impressions. For this reason, maps have an incredible potential to influence social consciousness. Hopwood references both the Mercator Projection and the iconic London Tube map as examples.

The ultimate goal of the project is to visually represent different sides of the local community and challenge the assumptions behind them, with a particular emphasis on life at the UofC. Hopwood’s vision of the project is fairly nebulous, and he hopes that in time, an organizing principle will arise through the project.

An incredible number of people from both the University and the broader community around it have expressed interest in the mapping project. Commenting on the impressive response, Hopwood says, “I love maps, and it turns out I’m not the only one.” The participants bring diverse perspectives to the project, and include both campus and local residents, activists from the Southside Solidarity Network and Southsiders Organize for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), geography majors, and artists, who have come together as a group of people that Teddy Kent, a first-year at the UofC, describes as “absolutely passionate.”

During a mapping brainstorm session, the group proposes ideas for maps, such as foreclosures on the South Side, where StreetWise vendors sell and stay, and the extent of the University’s land ownership. During these discussions, the group grapples with the issues of access to information and controversy. Particularly with regard to the land ownership map, Kent has had trouble locating in public records the information necessary to create the map and anticipates pushback from the University if he pursues the subject further. Hopwood concedes that controversy might be inherent to this project because these maps could serve as an alternative to the image that the University of Chicago presents of itself and the surrounding community He elaborated, “The University produces…perfectly accurate, perfectly serviceable maps of Hyde Park. What’s also true is that they produce a narrative of the community that’s not exactly false, but it’s not exactly the whole picture, either. All of us have the sense that our community is healthier when people have a wider range of perspectives to draw.” The first major project Hopwood hopes to put together will consist of several physical maps that will assist incoming UofC first-years in interpreting the many sides of their new home.

More than controversy, Hopwood wants to encourage residents of the South Side, particularly students, to learn about the community around them and reevaluate their impressions of neighborhoods that are—and in some ways are not—their home. As Hopwood says, “Maps are never just maps—they’re stories, they’re landscapes, they’re histories. They’re a way of accessing those stories.”

A fragment of Vita’s centerfold. (Tuncay Esref)

In her last days as a University of Chicago student, fourth-year Jackie Todd hopes to revive “Vita Excolatur,” the sex publication made by and for students that contains questionably pornographic material. Taking its name from the University’s motto, the magazine attempts to show “the life enriched” by sexuality. Although “Vita” has been short of writers, photographers, models, and a leadership structure since the magazine last made it to print in 2007, Todd has a strong interest in carrying out the project she inherited after her first year at the College. Many have expressed interest in “Vita” since then, but Todd says the problem has been students’ fears of commitment. Getting people to lay bare their bodies and thoughts about sex has proven difficult, even in a periodical that anticipates selling only 200 printed copies and will not be posted online, and editors have received last-minute requests to use pseudonyms or pull nude portraits. Contributors to the magazine cite anxiety of potential discovery by future employers or law school admissions officers as reasons for their preference for anonymity. Todd, calling herself the “Vita girl,” does not share this anxiety, stating plainly, “This is the bed I made for myself.”

UofC second-year and photographer Edward Menéndez, the only other actually named Vita contributor, is proud of the work he has submitted, although it was not shot for the magazine specifically. Like many UofC students, Menéndez is interested in questioning sex and gender roles, and believes “Vita” would be the appropriate venue. In this upcoming issue, he poses one female model in such a way that “it’s hard to draw sex out of the image.” A black-and-white side profile of a girl staring into a window located outside of the frame, the light spilling onto her slightly slumped shoulders, offers to its viewers no suggestions that are explicitly sexual. And yet by virtue of the fact that she is a naked woman, he admits that her image is sexualized. Menéndez prefers to inspire reflection rather than hand viewers any definite assignment or conclusions. “It’s a provocation, be it sexual, physical, psychological.”

As a rule, Todd would not ask “Vita” contributors to do something that she herself would not feel comfortable doing, which includes shots of penetration or masturbation. For her, a spread that involved any live sex act would be “crossing a line I’m not comfortable with,” adding, “There are some things you don’t get to see.” Though Todd’s boundaries may have influenced the direction of this last issue, her bold direction sets the bar high for issues to come, as she will be posing for “Vita”’s staple photo of “hot chicks reading books.” Said one of the magazine’s photographers, Tuncay Esref, “People are scared of other people’s judgments, which I think is why ‘Vita’ is necessary.” Esref hopes to find a future venue for “a shoot that involved sweat and bulges of skin and pubic hair.” With Todd graduating in just a few short days, her hope to “bring sex to a more public arena,” beginning with her own full exposure, is the first step to reclaiming the world of academic erotica. And with students like Esref and Menéndez sticking around, “Vita Excolatur” will live on as the counterpart to this crescat scientia institution.
“Vita” will be printed and ready for sale by the start of the second week in June in the UofC Reynolds Club.

The “Communion” piece came towards the beginning of “Ritual,” a dance performance organized by nine students from the UofC that made a short run of three shows last weekend. The dancers choreographed their own pieces, combining elements from dance traditions as diverse as Indian classical dance, flamenco, and ballet, setting them over mostly modern music, familiar to their college-aged audience. The performance focused on the universal importance of ritual; directors Amulya Mandova and Virginia Rangos wrote in the program that they were inspired by French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s ideas of collective effervescence.

The early “Coming of Age” number followed the social initiation of new members in light blue by the priests in purple. In “Seduction,” a flamenco-inspired rhythm and guitar line played around three dancers whose twisting motions and flowing sashes evoked sexual initiation. In the later pieces, conflict arose within the society of dancers, and a piece of cloth became a blindfold across the eyes of a condemned girl.

The performance itself had the effect of ritual. The dancers were in total physical commitment. They hit the ground hard, and in one striking moment, a young initiate fainted backwards towards the floor, and one of the veterans swooped to catch her head a few inches from the floor. What might have been a few missed steps and stumbles in timing were part of the nervous energy at the center of the scene, and even the clanking of the doors of the rehearsal space didn’t seem to distract from it.

The dancers ended with a namaskar, a South Indian tradition where dancers pay their respects to the universe by stomping on the ground beneath them. With the last stomp, the performance was over, and after a brief moment the dancers relaxed their bodies. For an instant, though, nobody seemed to realize that the ritual itself was over, and that the women in front of them were embracing as people and not performers.

For the first time in forty minutes, the crowd broke out into noise. They moved towards the center and congratulated the dancers, bread still in their teeth.

(courtesy of Vermilion Development)

In May 2008, when the University of Chicago completed the $6.5 million purchase of Harper Court, President Robert Zimmer heralded the moment as an opportunity. “Ideally,” he said in a public statement on the purchase, “this project will be reflective of the distinctive nature of Hyde Park and represent the best of Chicago’s mid-South Side.” This January, after Vermilion Development was selected by the University to redevelop Harper Court, its CEO, David J. Cocagne, was quoted by the Chicago Maroon echoing the same sentiment. “We’re very excited to be undertaking this project,” Cocagne said. “We think it will be very transformative for the commercial core of Hyde Park and will really celebrate all that Hyde Park is.”

The idea that Harper Court, once it is redeveloped, will represent the essence of its neighborhood has garnered considerable backing from both the University and its developers, who also market the redevelopment as bringing a much-needed retail and entertainment district to the area. But what is the “distinctive nature” of Hyde Park, and how do the redevelopment plans celebrate it? What is going into the Harper Court redevelopment? What will come out of it? Currently, the University is working with Vermilion Development (which could not be reached for comment) to prepare financial proposals for the project that are due in mid-June, according to Susan Campbell, Associate Vice President for Civic Engagement at the University. Once the funding is approved, Vermilion will begin work on a final redevelopment design, which will incorporate retail and office space, a hotel, a parking garage, and possibly a movie theater, and deal with structural changes such as the rerouting of streets as thoroughfares. While there have been no changes to the planned groundbreaking in early 2011, the financial climate is making it difficult to find funding for some aspects of the development, especially the housing project that is proposed for the second phase of construction, scheduled to be completed in 2015.

The funding issue highlights an important issue surrounding the redevelopment of Harper Court: gentrification. If the housing units of the redevelopment were priced at market rate, it is likely that many current residents of Hyde Park would not be able to afford to live there, while those with bigger pocketbooks would. Although the intent is to eventually offer affordable mixed-income options for sale and for rent, right now money is tight. “It’s hard to find funding to build housing, let alone mixed-income housing, “ Campbell says.

There are also questions about the displacement of local businesses from the revitalized Harper Court, a concern embodied by the departure of Dixie Kitchen in June 2009. Though Dixie Kitchen was not actually forced out by the university—Campbell quickly points out that they were offered relocation assistance by the University and that “it was a business decision” to close the Hyde Park location—it was an unsettling indicator of the potential negative effects that redevelopment could have on locally owned businesses. Campbell, however, points to measures to be taken by the University to engage with the community and local businesses to make sure that the final redevelopment plan is equitable. Her office is partnering with the Southeast Chicago Commission and the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce to plan events like a July 4th neighborhood fair at Nichols Park, which is intended to “highlight businesses that have stayed in Hyde Park.” The project’s declared goal is revitalization that works for Hyde Park residents. “We have a vision of making a more vibrant commercial corridor, including retail that appeals to everyone” while at the same time “always trying to help [local] businesses,” Campbell says. “Hyde Park has a uniqueness, a diversity that people enjoy. Our key claim to fame is our people.”

Community response to the proposed redevelopment has been markedly more positive than it was when the University first announced its obtainment of the Harper Court property, and certain elements of the designs, like open spaces for farmers markets, suggest there is a real possibility of keeping a local sensibility in the new developments.

The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC), a local association, has grown to support the redevelopment plans. According to HPKCC’s president, Jay Ammerman, what was once a controversy about whether to do anything with an underperforming Harper Court became a compromise, and what was once a community-run commercial center was turned over to the University with the promise of future revitalization. “Over the course of several years, we came to the conclusion that a change was necessary,” he says. “I don’t think we have an argument about where this is headed.” He adds, though, that HPKCC, in its capacity as an organization working on behalf of the community, would continue to critique University involvement so that community concerns would be heard.

Underlying the whole project is the question of whether or not the University would transform Harper Court the same way that it had redeveloped neighborhood spaces in the past. “When urban renewal was initiated in 1958, it meant drastic change, and a lot of displaced people with low incomes, small businesses, and people involved in the arts,” says Bart Schultz, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the UofC and director of its Civic Knowledge Project. The development of Harper Court in 1965 was a response to the displacement of artists from the prominent artist colony at 57th Street and Stony Island Avenue, where artists, writers (including Sherwood Anderson), and used bookstores set up shop. Harper Court was envisioned as a retail space for artisans to replace their previous haven. While it didn’t successfully replicate the atmosphere of the artist colony, Schultz argues that open space and elements of local authenticity like public chess tables made Harper Court “innovative” in its own way.

For Schultz, a successful development will keep those aspects of Hyde Park that set it apart from other neighborhoods in the city. According to walkscore.com, for example, Hyde Park is one of the top 10 most walkable neighborhoods in the city, rivaling the Loop and Lincoln Park. Institutions like the Seminary Co-op—which Schultz calls “the best bookstore in the country”—should be treated like “treasures to be preserved.” How, he asks, will plans for a hotel, which brings in road traffic, be reconciled with Hyde Park’s walkability? How will it be guaranteed that local business not suffer if chain retailers move in? “In all honesty, it’s hard, when you have what’s essentially a 12,000-person corporation, to engage the community,” says Campbell. “We try hard to help and to not overstep our bounds.” To that end, the University is working through its Civic Engagement office to be far more open with the community on the Harper Court redevelopment than with other projects currently underway. Just last week, for example, the University announced their selection for the architect of the new Milton Friedman Institute without any faculty or community input. Schultz says that measures like soliciting art installations from the Hyde Park Art Center are a move in the right direction, but he cautions against rejoicing too soon. “It’s very easy to announce a project with great fanfare, when really it’s a constant process,” he says. “I worry about that.”

The chess tables that once lined the open space at the center of Harper Court are more significant than they might appear. In the original plan for Harper Court, a chessboard prominently backdrops its logo, and its outdoor tables were a meeting point for neighborhood chess enthusiasts. Upon the removal of the chess tables in 2002, community groups like the Friends of Harper Court Chess staged protests and encouraged boycotts of the shopping center. Chess, they said, was something that made Harper Court unique, something that was a part of “all that Hyde Park is.” Maybe the powers-that-be are listening. At the February 8th meeting of the 53rd Street TIF (tax increment financing) district, Vermilion presented plans to include a small pavilion in the redevelopment, complete with chess tables. It’s a start, but Schultz encourages restraint and patience. “When a community gets into something like this,” he says, “the discussion is just barely starting to get along.”

All-white walls enclose an unidentifiable treadmill-like device, the whoop, whoop, whoop-ing of its enormous belts sounding throughout the room. This gallery-within-a-gallery at the University of Chicago’s DOVA Temporary exhibition space in Harper Court was created by graduating Master of Fine Arts candidate David Cordero. The artist began thinking about his thesis project, “Grind,” using a set of tiny models set in shoebox-sized boxes, as a live sketchbook for the works he could create for a full gallery exhibit. This “testing space” for his ideas required the construction of simple, recognizable objects scaled down to thumb-size. Playing with the ambiguity of those shapes we commonly utilize, the blown-up result is majestic proof of technological innovation; it’s confusing and beautiful, and mechanically perfect, begging the question, so what does it do?

Cordero’s show was the last of five solo 2010 MFA thesis shows held at DOVA Temp. Each of the exhibiting students—André Callot, David Cordero, Sophia Cara Dixon, Andrew Fansler, and Nicole Mauser—was handed the task of transforming the space for four or five days. Shows were scheduled at the same time each Friday beginning on April 9, in the hopes that art enthusiasts and members of the UofC community who turned up for one show would make it to the rest. The turnout last Friday was small, even an hour after the start time. When asked who usually turns up at these exhibits, one MFA candidate replied, “We do.” With a few exceptions, the people walking towards the exhibit were other MFA candidates, a few of their professors, and visual arts undergraduates.

In a conversation before the show, Callot seemed dissatisfied with the low visibility of their work at the university. “These thesis shows should be about finding attention for our artists.” Callot acknowledged the possibility of a lifetime of poverty, attributing it partially to the University’s historically lopsided relationship with the MFA program. In his two years here, Callot has come to believe that “the University doesn’t give a shit about art.” Spending any amount of time within the space of Lorado Taft’s Midway Studio suggests the same. Old complaints of poor air circulation, faulty door locks and alarm systems and the resultant losses of expensive equipment due to theft and break-ins have gone, for the most part, unaddressed. “Midway Studios has the charm and ambiance of an abattoir,” said Callot, adding, “Every time it rains, art is ruined. Every time.” He went on to describe the relentlessly noisy construction on an arts center that few of the MFAs believe will be erected by its slated completion date in 2012.

After the November 2009 destruction of part of Midway, MFA students were in obvious need of a new space. So when the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences moved out of an old brick house at 60th Street and Kimbark Avenue, the building became an almost secret home of the arts. In the last year, it’s seen everything from noise rock concerts to potluck-style Thanksgiving dinners, though on any given week night the typical scene is an assortment of graduate students working deep into the night while conversing over a few beers. “I feel nothing but love for and from my friends here. We’re mishpoche,” he says, using the Yiddish term which means, roughly, “crazy family.”

The five MFA students, along with Masters of Arts Program in the Humanities candidate Young Joon Kwak, have collectively named themselves Gamma Ray Burst Six, and will exhibit their work in various forms of collaboration and installation at Pilsen’s Roxaboxen gallery starting this Friday, May 28.

The friendship and creative influence that each of these graduating students have shared has helped them produce art that third-year visual arts major Paul Siple called “really fucking good.” At the very least, the students expect their group exhibition to be “one more way to get someone else to pay for our drinks,” as Callot puts it, so that the GRB6 can celebrate the time they have had together before moving on to other venues.

Art in Action will take place this Saturday, May 29th at First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn from 11 am to 7 pm. The festival is full of music, art, vendors, and workshops. This year’s musical acts include Queen Portia, a local blues singer, jazz pianist Paris Smith, hip-hop artist and activist HB Sol, and Lakesigns, a student rock band. The event also features workshops for belly dancing and slam poetry. In addition to the entertainment, there will be discussion groups focused on South Side issues, like the impact of the 2016 Olympic Bid, a financial literacy workshop, and a discussion exploring the nature of racism. “There’s a hell of a lot of talented people but there isn’t a place to sell their art,” University of Chicago graduate student Mark Hopwood says. He gestures to a woman in the planning committee, “Dessie Williams is a great example. She makes jewelry, paintings, and children’s toys. Art in Action is somewhere she can sell it.” This year, Art in Action will include a free barbeque lunch and dinner.

Advertising for the festival has been almost entirely word of mouth, but the word has spread. What started as a 70-person event five years ago drew over 400 people last year. “I think this will be our biggest year yet,” Carol, a South side resident says confidently. This time around the committee is planning for about 500 visitors. Art in Action began with the partnership between the Southside Solidarity Network (SSN), a University of Chicago student run organization, and Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), a community advocacy group from Woodlawn. The two groups found they had overlapping goals: SSN, a student group at the University, seeks to facilitate connections between the University of Chicago and the South Side; STOP aims to encourage political and economic awareness among South Side residents. Art in Action was a way to encourage the dialogue that both groups want to see.

Within the university community, regions south of the campus have traditionally been represented as uniformly dangerous, and students have been discouraged from venturing outside of typical University stomping grounds. “The mentality was that if you cross the Midway, you were going to get killed,” says STOP community liaison Wardell Lavender. The same sentiments ring true in the other direction as well—there has been mistrust in the Woodlawn community with regard to the University. “The University and the community were just never together,” Lavender says. “But then guys from the University came to the community and said ‘Look, we want a festival where the community mingles with the University.’”

Art in Action has grown out of a belief that the presence and practice of art can be a form of activism by breaking down cultural barriers and forging relationships with the community. “This event is meant to give students a different view of Woodlawn,” says Hopwood. “It is not a threat, but a community with a history, and it is possible for a relationship with the residents.”

For more information about Art in Action visit artinactionchicago.com

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, the internationally renowned Russian conceptual artists, married couple, and the subjects of the film, were seeing it for the first time as well. They were at the University as fellows in the Artspeaks series, and had spoken the previous night at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Nestled together in the middle of the small theater, they too had comments to offer. When asked to comment on the clips themselves, Emilia told Wallach, “We will talk later. It’s very good, but…”

The clips themselves were beautiful and intriguing, but didn’t form a coherent film, a fact which audience members kept bringing up. There was a disjunction between Wallach’s attempts to talk about the movie she is hoping to make and the audience’s persistent discussion of the clips they had just seen. Wallach struggled most to reconcile her desire to present the Kabakovs’ installation art in a comprehensive way with the knowledge that one cannot really experience the pieces through a film.

What was on display of the Kabakovs personally, however, was far more satisfying. The clips conveyed Emilia’s forceful character and her thoughtfulness for Ilya. The film will revolve around Ilya’s decision to return to Moscow for an exhibition after living in the U.S. since the late ‘80s. Clips of Ilya pacing through an empty garage-turned-gallery alternate with more interesting scenes, including an excerpt of the show’s opening in which reporters, critics, and photographers leer menacingly over the unassuming Ilya. Certainly, the screening brought to life the artist’s aching nostalgia for a Soviet utopia that never existed. Emilia’s voice ran over various pieces of the installations, exemplifying this longing: “The moment you lose your roots, you are in the air. You never, ever put your roots in another soil.”

(Mehveş Konuk)

Few opportunities arise for representatives from rival nations to ask one another to please pass the orange juice. On Friday May 14th, ambassadors representing 44 nations met at the University of Chicago’s Harper Memorial Library for breakfast and conversation. The ambassadors were here as part of the U.S. State Department’s “Experience America—Chicago” tour, which was meant to give diplomats and their spouses the opportunity to learn about America’s cities and communities outside of Washington, DC. In past years tours have been made to New York City, California, Florida, and Dallas. This year, from May 12th through May 14th U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic Marshall took the international representatives to the Windy City’s classic tourist attractions. When asked how many stops were made on the tour, one ambassador laughed and replied, “Too many to count!” Stops along the trip included the Wrigley factory, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Art Institute of Chicago. The University of Chicago was chosen due to its connection with President Barack Obama and its academic prowess.

There was something surprisingly American about this crowd. Their relaxed manner of walking and easy mode of conversation made it easy to forget that these were diplomats and not ordinary Chicagoans—the only thing denoting their position was perhaps a tiny pin shining from a lapel or a touch of a foreign accent. As the group entered, a pair of diplomats had their picture snapped in front of Harper Library’s gothic-style interior. They smiled widely and the camera’s flash reflected off of their glasses. Coincidentally, Harper Library is featuring a photographic exhibit entitled “Bureaucrats.” Images of government workers from all over the globe, hands folded on their desks, stared solemnly from the walls of Harper at the fellow bureaucrats in their midst.

The event included an address by President Zimmer, Dean Boyer, Ambassador Marshall, UofC professor of political science Cathy Cohen, and even a pre-recorded video welcome from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The majority of speeches predictably centered on the University’s academic renown and its importance in research. Munching on quiche and sipping orange juice, the crowd politely took in what Zimmer and the others had to say. Clinking silverware reverberated off of Harper’s high ceilings. One ambassador picked at the crumbs on the maroon tablecloth with his index finger. After the speeches, the diplomats had the opportunity to converse with students, professors and fellow ambassadors.

The event concluded with a cheery “the Mayor is waiting!” The ambassadors were herded off into buses to go downtown for a reception with Mayor Daley and diplomacy continued in the cramped seats of a bus.

(courtesy of David Moss)

David Moss is a self-described “extreme vocalist.” In his bizarre, entrancing performances, he babbles and sings in invented languages, his commanding but playful use of his voice leaving audiences speechless. This Saturday, at the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel, Moss will premiere his latest composition, “Hyperglyphyx.”

The composition focuses on “a rhythm that drives the human genetic package,” Moss says. Trained as a percussionist and self-taught as a singer, Moss is interested in finding ”a pulse, a beat, a chant buried” deep in human memories and “chemical hieroglyphics.” It is what cannot be expressed in grammar alone that excites Moss. To find these hidden beats and pulses, he uses warped excerpts from texts selected partly for their content, “and sometimes for the rhythm and color of their language,” he says. He cites three diverse authors. “[Italo] Calvino, the Italian writer, has attracted me tremendously because of his imagery about time and memory and physical location and philosophy of places…Melville, especially in ‘Moby-Dick,’ represents this kind of incantational power of speaking and writing through repetition and exaggeration and onomatopoeia—it’s almost like chanting. [Franz] Kafka lies between the two, dealing with narrative puzzles and mysteries.“ The excerpts are critical in Moss’s improvisations. “I like to know that I have someone’s beautiful words in front of me that I can jump into and use as material to start something new again.”

Moss’s Saturday performance is part of the “Praxes of Theory” conference, a two-day international colloquium that explores the relationship between aesthetic theory and performance practice in a variety of disciplines. Appropriately, the colloquium is being hosted by the University’s Germanic Studies, Theater and Performing Studies, and Cinema & Media Studies departments, along with the Renaissance Society. Artists and scholars will discuss a variety of formal papers and conceptual performances, including Moss’s vocals.

“Hyperglyphyx” and a history of unique, titillating performances have kept Moss’s name in discussions of the avant-garde. One of his current projects is the improvisational trio Denseland, formed in February of 2008 to investigate “being compact, earthy, and massive.” To the novice listener, Denseland sounds a bit like the lovechild of Tom Waits and a washing machine. But somehow the trio’s music really does sound earthy—it suspends listeners in an alternate world of sounds that creep, crawl, scrape, and slink.

This ability to activate instruments and his voice into something that seems to move has earned Moss significant critical praise. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 and a DAAD Fellowship (Berlin) in 1992, and in 2005 he was a soloist in the opening concerts of both the Venice Biennale and the Queensland Biennial Music Festival. In 2001, with funding from the Belgian government, Moss founded the Institute for Living Voice, which offers workshops, concerts, and discussions focused on singing.

When Moss comes to town on Saturday, it will be no surprise if his audience is awestruck. He will likely turn Bond Chapel into a playground for his voice to take flight. Or to sink, swim, swoon, or skate.
Bond Chapel, 1050 E. 59th St. May 22. Saturday, 8pm. Free. renaissancesociety.org

“Voices of the Middle Eastern City” was performed on May 14th at the University of Chicago as part of the 25th annual Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference. The symposium attracted scholars from such varied institutions as the University of Melbourne, Columbia University, and Turkey’s Bilkent University. The assembly hall of the International House was filled with these intellectuals and others who chose to spend last Friday evening listening to the sounds of the Middle East.

The University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble took the stage next, parading their collection of bendirs, ouds, and santours alongside violins, recorders, and clarinets. Students, professors, and others jubilantly strummed and hammered and bowed away at their respective instruments. Men got up one by one to sing as the performance moved through classical Arabian songs, old Iranian folk tunes, and Andalusian poetry put to music.

From the outset, “Voices of the Middle Eastern City” spoke to the plurality of the word “voices.” Throughout the performance reverberated echoes of Jewish, Persian, Turkish, and Sufi traditions, to name a few. With each bedtime tale read aloud, each personal thought jotted down in a journal 200 years ago that was again invoked on stage, each folk tune being sung for the umpteenth time, the understanding deepened: there is no singular Middle Eastern perspective.