HEAT:05

Performance Documentation: June 2005

Thursday, June 30 19 clear cups being filled by the Millenium Fountain and Plaza next to the Elmhurst City Hall. Water ran down the textured faces of tall rocks and overflowed the cups below. This piece stands in stark contrast to the drought in Chicago right now. Grass that has not been tended by a sprinkler is a harsh yellow ochre, and it crunches under the feet of children who play in public spaces.

Wednesday, June 29 19 clear cups being filled by a sprinkler on the lawn on Farwell, each with one word written inside. This piece made me love the residents of Rogers Park. They are curious and unfazed by wierd behavior. One guy walked by and asked about my experiment, then came back with his friend explaining it to him.

Tuesday, June 28 Daley Plaza, 2:30 pm. Nineteen Cups of Water. This was a trial run of something I hope might happen during the week of the heat wave anniversary in July. It was 19 clear cups, each with one word written inside, that I filled from the fountain and assembled in rows within one of the granite squares in the plaza. The most encouraging part of the work was that it immediately attracted the attention of children and adults walking by, and I talked to them about the piece and the heat wave. Two ten-year-old twins read all of the words aloud and explained the piece to their mother in Spanish. I asked them if they thought it would look better with white cups, but they said they liked the clear. It also attracted the attention of security, but I had a good conversation with them about it. So the question of the day is, do I ask permission to make this piece every day for 7 days using 739 cups, or do I risk being hassled?

Monday, June 27 5:30 pm, Loyola Park. Seven Cups of Water. I am interested in making a larger piece that involves a lot of little cups of water, and I wanted to see what it would look like to write text in the cups and then fill them with water. The words in the cups all had something to do with the heat wave.

Sunday, June 26 9:00 pm, the back yard of Red & Jessica. Red greeted me from his lawn chair, beer in hand, requesting that my performance for that day happen again on their patio. Jessica's a huge fan of the music of the 70s, and Jackson Browne was freshly rehearsed, so I sang them "Looking into You."

Saturday, June 25 5:00 pm, Women's Club of Evanston. My dear friends Sue & Jay got married, and I sang Jackson Browne's "Looking into You."

And I looked into the sky for my anthem/And the words and the music came through/But words and music could never touch the beauty that I've seen/Looking into you.

Friday, June 24 7:00 pm, Hothouse. Suzanne Cohan-Lange founded Columbia College Chicago Master's program in Interdisciplinary Arts over 25 years ago, and tonight we simultaneously celebrated her academic career and launched her into the next phase of her artistic life. I was the salty & sarcastic MC and Haiku wrangler.

To this day, drummers
Repeat her wisdom:
People! Ideas are airborne!

Thursday, June 23 739 days of the Congress Hotel Strike. I walked the picket line during my lunch hour . I kept the performative aspect of walking the line to myself which I feel okay about since my solidarity with the wokers is sincere. Read the article marking 2 years of the strike in the Chicago Sun-Times. Today on the line one of the UNITE organizers and I talked about proposed legislation that would require hotels to forewarn customers, including groups, of hotel strikes and lockouts in Chicago hotels, as well as notify all guests who may have booked before a work-stoppage. The proposed Right to Know ordinance would require the notification of any hotel that has been subject to lawful picketing for more than 15 days by a nationally recognized union.

Wednesday, June 22 739 Words on Loneliness, performed with Ariella Lake. The original assignment to write 739 Words on Loneliness came from Ariella. After I cut them up and taped them to the inside of the el car (May 19), I gave her the rest of the words in a baggie and told her to figure out something to do with them. She has been eating one per day since May 20th, recording which word she chooses each day--a form of divination. Audience members were invited to write in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the performance any words that they heard in the text. Matt Cunningham recorded the performance for WBEZ's 848.

Tuesday, June 21 Pratt beach pier, 7:00 am. On Monday I received in the mail one of the postcards I left on June 14. One fabulous Rogers Park neighbor wrote a list of the 19 Things she would do if she had only 2 months to live, and sent it off. So I read her text out loud this morning while Ben fished for perch. For each item I threw one pice of white bread into the lake, watched them float away, and watched the gulls descend, carrying bits of dying wishes off in their bellies.

Monday, June 20 Pratt Beach pier, 10:00 pm. Under an almost-full moon I watched a red beach ball float out of sight and sang "Looking into You" for the benefit of the people illegally swimming in Lake Michigan.

Sunday, June 19 Clinton Lake, near Bloomington, IL. I take performance assignments from adults all the time and fulfill them with integrity. So why would I not treat a 2-year-old's request with the same seriousness? Natalie has been watching 4 baby birds creep further and further out of their nest on her garage, which may be the reason she requested The Birdie Song. I'm going to guess I sang it 15 times in an afternoon. And Natalie doesn't even make a pretense of having a sing-a-long: she's pretty clear about who is the entertainer and who is the audience. Her command: "More Birdy!"

Saturday, June 18 19 Things Before Dying, Bloomington, IL. I found out this weekend that Kim Chaon (right) of Leroy, IL, is one of the members of the community that keeps this project honest: the people who regularly check in at the HEAT:05 web site. She asked me how many of the Tuesday June 14 postcards I thought I would get back, and as we talked more about the work I thought it would be interesting to make a piece with her that evening. So I asked Kim, EJ, and Jill to list the 19 Things they would want to do if they had 2 months to live. They decided to make thier lists on paper dinner plates, and then shared some of the items on their lists before tossing them on the bonfire. Kim's plate put on a great show: it landed in the fire but was then tossed back up into the air, a burning disc, until it landed, transformed into a little gray moon of ash.

Friday, June 17 19 Cherry Giveaway. Tonight I walked west on Pratt Blvd. and north on Clark St. to Lunt, giving away the little drawings of cherries that I made for the performance in Minneapolis on June 4. I gave the cherries to random people I met on the street. Sometimes I just gave them a drawing, sometimes I said something like, excuse me, I'd like to give you a cherry. Almost everyone immediately flipped the paper, looking for advertising or explanation, and it started to feel very subversive to just give away little drawings that had not other information. One person thanked me in a way that made me feel like he was genuinely grateful. One little child asked, "Es una manzana?" I guess that says something about my drawing skills...

Thursday, June 16 Vong's Thai Kitchen, for Cate's birthday. Cate's an amazing writer, and I'm trying to read more poetry before I die. So I performed Mary Oliver's West Wind #13.

in my room after such a disturbance I sit, smiling. / I pick up a pencil, I put it down, I pick it up again. / I am thinking of you. / I am always thinking of you.

Wednesday, June 15 10:30 pm, The Hearland Cafe, "In One Ear" open mike hosted by Pete Wolf. The wedding of Sue Weiss and J Mueller approaches swiftly, and the Jackson Browne song they chose for me to sing needed to breathe in front of an audience. So I sang "Looking into You." It's a little challenging a capella, but overall I think was fine.

Tuesday, June 14

Dear Leah,

I hope it's okay that I kicked off our collaboration on this project without consulting you. If you'd prefer not to collaborate, that's okay, we can just agree that I stole your idea about asking other people to make lists of the 19 things they'd do before dying. I'm sure you understand I'm in a prolific, idea-sucking mode of operation right now.

So here's what I've done so far. I got 19 identical Chicago postcards & 19 stamps and addressed them to myself at my office. Hopefully this will not result in stalking. On the back of each postcard I wrote:

If you find this, please list the 19 things you would do if you knew you had only 2 months to live, then drop it in the mail. Thanks!

I changed the time frame to 2 months to live instead of "if you knew you would die in August" because I don't know when these cards will be found. I deposited them in various locations in and around Rogers Park. I'll let you know if I get any back.

Love, Nicole

Monday, June 13 Kathleen Schlagel's birthday at Margie's Pub, 4145 N. Lincoln. As always, Kathleen can pick a bar. Tha's why we called her Smithdaddy, and why we call her Sassdaddy now.

One of the things on my list of 19 Things Before Dying was "read poetry. And butches like poetry, too, so the whole birthday crowd stepped out the front door where they stood on the sidewalk listening to Mary Oliver.

Sunday, June 12 7:00 pm, Pratt Beach. 7 Things Before Dying. Made from alphabet pasta stained with beet juice, cardboard box, left for some person or dog to find.

Indi had been talking about what might happen to alphabet pasta in the rain. And then I got an email from Leah about conceptual art and ways to push on these lists of things to do before dying. These are not necessarily the most important 7 things of the 19 to do before dying, just the first part of the list, abbreviated drastically.

Saturday, June 11 Anne Statton (right) celebrated her 41st birthday, and in tribute to the loving way she reflects back on all of us, I sang her I'll be Your Mirror.

I find it hard to believe you don't know

the beauty you are

but if you don't, let me be your eyes

a hand to your darkness

so you won't be afraid

Friday, June 10 Tonight I intended to tick off something from my list of 19 Things to do Before Dying, but the rain got in the way. So instead Ariella and I sang.

This is how she described a piece we sang together (above):
the canon is a traditional one from England. It is a canon for 4 voices(we were missing two people). It is in the key of D harmonic minor. It is found in Robert W. Ottman's Music for Sight Singing 6th edition. I emailed a JPEG of the notation... couldn't find any connection to the number 739 except that an ascending D harmonic minor scale is comprised of a total of 7 pitches; typical cannon form is to sing the melody a total of 3 times (once in unison twice in cannon); and sung correctly, the tonic pitch of D is sung for a total of 9 beats. a bit music nerdy, i know. but there you have it.

Thursday, June 9 performance assignment from Ariella Lake: go to speed dating at T's and talk to people about the Heat Wave. There was a lot of debate in the runup to this performance:

Ariella: the speed dating age brackets are 20 to mid 30's (9:30 on) and mid 30's to really really old hags (8-9:30). lucky for you, you get to swing both ways! i'm going with a friend cuz i don't think i would have lived a complete life if i'd never had the speed dating experience. besides...it's summertime! what better time to diversify the dating experience before another long winter hibernation. admission is $10 ($1 "courage" shots)...and if you actually do decide to do this performance, i would most certainly sponsor it. i'm guessing you would actually get dates by talking about nothing but the heat wave. not too many other people would get away with it, though. i talked about the '95 heat wave to somebody at the dog beach today...this was his first summer in chicago.

Nicole: I'd like to do it. but the original request was that I talk as much as I could about the heat wave, not talk about nothing else. I think I would like to approach how to actually do the speed dating with charm and integrity while also connecting with people around the content of the heat wave. this has been an interesting way to approach interaction in the performance...it might be easier to steamroll people talking about the heat wave but there are interesting things that happen when I actually try to engage people...plus I don't want to get in trouble with Ronit rolling up in there mucking up the speed dating with my nutty performance.

Ariella: i think that your approach is more relevant to the interconnected and
civic nature of your project and is just more responsible, in general. Hanging out with Caila for so many years left me with a Dada'istic habit (if i'm using the idea of that genre correctly) of deriving a sort of pleasure from throwing folks out of a mental routine. really, i'm not explaining it right. also, it's not really something i find a deeper value in.. it's a habit like i said. its another conversation. since u've opted to woo the older crowd, i'm assuming you'll be there at 8. i'll be there to ceremoniously pay for ur admission. nicole (another nicole) is meeting me there at 9ish...we're going for the cradle robbing slot.

By the time I rolled in there, the age groupings had kind of broken down. I talked to someone who was originally from Alabama, so Chicago summers were baby stuff; instead, her family had warned her about the inevitable premature aging caused by Chicago winters. Another person told me that she was conducting research toward a master's thesis in Lesbian Territoriality, and was forced to admit that she was indeed getting credit for speed dating. I told her it was okay, I was combining work and play as well.

Wednesday, June 8 Tickling Jessica's Russian Roots. It was Jessica Halem's birthday; Red & Gwen's heads were still in the desert at Exotic World; the hotties were assembled in the back yard for an impromptu party; of course the scene demanded a performance of Oy, Da ne Vecher. It actually tickled Mick's Russian roots as well, and led to a discussion of how one can find one's family records online at the Ellis Island web site.

Tuesday, June 7 10:00 pm, Pratt Beach. Light the Fire, touch the Water: 6 of 19 Attempted Trips.

The moon is new, and the beach is dark. June in Chicago has blasted in with 90 degree temperatures. The piece I went to make was Light the Fire, Touch the Water. I planned to light a candle near the sidewalk, then walk across the sand and put my feet in the water. The candle blew out by the time I returned, so I relit it each time. I planned to make this trip 19 times, and I was tallying my trips with marks in the sand.

Around the 4th trip back to the candle I saw some people working with my candle and matches and was enchanted that someone might be interacting with the work. In the process, they may have lost patience with my box of Russian wooden matches (they need a delicate touch), because I returned to find the box of matches semi-destroyed.

In the meantime, there was someone sort of following me up and down the beach a little too close for comfort. And he didn't seem that interested in the content of the heat wave. Instead, our conversation went something like this:

Person: Excuse me, I'm not inebriated. I'm in my right state of mind. I just want to say that you have a superb body.

Nicole: Yes, I know. But I'd rather not talk to you about it.

At this point I decided I didn't feel safe on the beach, and stopped the performance. Hence the 6 of 19 Attempted Trips.

Monday, June 6 8:00 pm, Funky Buddha Lounge. Lisa Buscani was the featured performer at Mental Graffiti. If I read a poem in the open mike that preceded her BRILLIANT set of performance poetry, can I be counted as her opening act? I should be so honored.

Billy Tuggles (left) was the host, and I read Prove your Poverty.

Sunday, June 5 4:30, Pratt Beach. Day #3 of Three Days of Cherries.

Spending time with HIJACK dance company and friends made me jones for more work with beets. I wanted to see what the beet juice would be like on the beach. So I used beet juice and spray bottle to "paint" a bunch of cherries on the sand.

Saturday, June 4 12:00 midnight, Ball's Cabaret, The Southern Theatre, Minneapolis, MN. Day #2 of Three Days of Cherries.

Because I was in Minneapolis I don't really expect anyone to know about or remember the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave, so I did a little improvisation incorporating movement, text about the heat wave, and 19 hand-drawn cherries that I tore from a notebook and laid on the floor.

Special thanks to Kristin Van Loon of HIJACK dance company for hooking me up with this gig!

Friday, June 3 Minneapolis Sculpture Park, adjacent to the Walker Art Center. Day #1 of Three Days of Cherries.

This is a fountain/sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen from 1985-1988 called Spoonbridge and Cherry. I wrote a text about the Chicago heat wave and the woman who went out for a bag of cherries and installed it next to the sign explaining the sculpture.

Thursday, June 2 ACT Charter School, 2:00 pm, 4300 west on Washington Blvd. The 8th graders are preparing to map out an academic plan for Hight School that will ensure that they are ready for college and careers. As part of this planning they are having a series of career workshops and I was on a "Career Panel" talking about my work as an artist and at Columbia College.

I thought an interesting way to talk about my performance work, which often deals with the politics of the body, would be to do a mini-workshop on the politics of my body. So I walked in front of the group, asking them to tell me what information they get from looking at my body about age, size, race, gender, economic status. There were some raucuous moments when the first answer to the gender question was "Male!" The discussion got very interesting then...

I think for me it was also really fascinating to talk about the politics of the body in a context in which all of the other adult speakers were African-American men, in a room of African-American children.

I think Katherine Mansfield said something about how every time she leaves on a trip she prepares to die, so that if she does, everything will be in order. Is that cynical and pessimisstic? Or realistic and tidy and living in the moment?

-Leah

It was interesting to notice that of the 19 things on my list of what I would want to do before dying in August, I was already doing 9 of them. I got one of them on the schedule for next week. And the rest seem quite accessible. But what would I do with precious love letters?

-Nicole

Wednesday, June 1 9:00 pm. partial fulfillment of assignment from Leah Mayers: something about the 19 (7 + 3 + 9) things you would do if you knew you were going to die in August (the hottest day). how to demonstrate / perform this?

When Indi McCasey was here in April, we walked by this (far left) wall on Glenwood just north of Devon. She said it would be a very good place to leave things. When I packed my 19 glow-in-the-dark superballs, my Sharpie marker, and my list of 19 things to do before I die in August, I had no way of knowing that there would be exactly 19 identical holes going horizontally across the wall, south to north, but I was grateful for them.