We would like to thank all of those who presented and attended last night's program.
This special panel, organized Caitlin Bruce and Polly Solomon, was the second installment of a year-long project that explores the shared connections between contemporary circus and graffiti art in New York City and Chicago. With this exciting project, Bruce and Solomon seek to put into conversation graffiti artists and circus artists through discussions, workshop, and performance in order to investigate the ways in which both genres utilize publicity, spectacle, and movement.
In this panel at the Evanston Art Center, Chicago local graffiti historian and artist, Gabriel FLASH Carrasquillo, Circus scholar Roy Gomez Cruz, and the project organizers led a public discussion about the above themes as they play out in the Windy City. This panel opens a week-long series of events that will take place at ‘Alternatives,’ including circus and graffiti workshops and a culminating performance. All of us at the Evanston Art Center are thrilled to be able to offer a vibrant space to celebrate and kick off these events!
The Evanston Art Center provides an open platform for public programming that engages our community in conversations about contemporary art and our visual culture. Through collaborations with Universities, community partners, cultural providers, and various individuals, the Evanston Art Center strives to be a catalyst for scholarship and an incubator for new ideas; welcoming people from all backgrounds and experience levels into the dialog.
All events are free and open to the public. Updates can be found at: http://circusgraffitispectacular.blogspot.com/
Caitlin F. Bruce is a PhD Candidate in the Program in Rhetoric and Public Culture in the Department of Communication studies at Northwestern University, whose research focuses on public art, urban space, critical theory and affect studies. Recent publications include “The Controversy at Rockefeller Center: Phantom Publics, Aesthetic Barbarians” in Advances in the History of Rhetoric; and “Modalities of Publicity: Leon's City of Murals Project” in Inopinatum.