Events and Lectures in April

This screening pairs two documentary films that address ways humans interpret and cope with government oppression. For her film Before Ai Weiwei, director Daria Menozzi interviewed artist Ai Weiwei in 1995, and created a rare, intimate portrait of China’s most famous and controversial artist. Menozzi looks at the artist’s early political beliefs at a time when he is both estranged from the country he lives in and also poised to position himself as a global force within the art world.

In Enemies of the People, directors Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin also investigate political issues through personal narratives by interviewing Cambodian men and women who perpetrated massacres for the Khmer Rouge regime between the years of 1975-79. Sambath lost his own family in the Cambodian Killing Fields and the film follows his personal quest to uncover how and why the government carried out a massive civilian genocide.

This program is presented in conjunction with the MoCP’s exhibition Survival Techniques.

Wednesday, April 11, screening begins at 6:30 pm @ Hokin Lecture Hall, 623 S. Wabash Ave.

The exhibition curator for Survival Techniques, Davide Quadrio, will speak with exhibiting artists Julika Rudelius and Li Mu about the work on display in the MoCP’s galleries.

Quadrio conceived Survival Techniques while living in Thailand from 2008 to 2010, when he experienced firsthand the country’s political turmoil. Yet the situations in Thailand—and the reactions of its people—are not unique. Survival Techniques explores how history bears witness to the ways in which individuals, groups of people, races, and nations survive in times of political uncertainty and social unrest.

Admission to this gallery tour, which precedes the exhibition’s opening reception, is free and open to the public.

Thursday, April 12, 4 pm @ MoCP, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

The MoCP will host the grand opening of Survival Techniques, an exhibition that explores human conflict and the varying ways people endure it. The artists whose works fill this exhibition hail from all over the world, and their work explores a range of human travails—exile, displacement, and the struggle to exist in a state of flux. The opening reception is free and open to the public.

Thursday, April 12, 5 pm @ MoCP, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

Once just a subtle background instrument, the bassoon becomes the star of the International Contemporary Ensemble performance this Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

The performance, One Hundred Names, features renowned bassoonist Rebekah Heller accompanied electronics, creating a unique musical experience. Edgar Guzman, Marcelo Toledo and Dai Fujikura will perform the electronic accompaniment. Nathan David and Marcos Balter will compose.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Friday, April 20, 7:30 pm @ MoCP, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

Survival Techniques artist Uriel Orlow presents Aide-Mémoire, a lecture-performance that was first executed at the 54th Vince Biennale. During the program, Orlow will weave together salvaged film clips to create new narrative configurations that merge visions of the past and the future. The piece blends distant places and times, referencing sites including Biblical Mount Ararat, a Ghost Town in Northern Armenia on the site of an earthquake, and a Kurdish village in Turkey built out of the rubble of an ancient Armenian monastery.

Wednesday, April 25, 6 pm @ Hokin Lecture Hall, 623 S. Wabash Ave.