Previous Mellon Collaborative Fellowship
Overlay
Sit where the light corrupts your face,
Mies van der Rohe retires from grace.
And the fair fables fall.
– Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca
Artist and media theorist Victor Burgin, and philosopher and artist D.N. Rodowick (University of Chicago, Department of Cinema and Media Studies) investigated displaced or effaced histories of architecture and urban space in the near South Side of Chicago through the creation of site-specific audiovisual installations.
The built environment – as a theatre of wishes and fears about past, present and future – is at the forefront in all of Burgin’s production. His work is concerned with the ways real objects in actual space are mediated through memory and fantasy – the way “space” becomes place. Many of Burgin’s video and photographic installations respond to specific architectural sites and explore the erased or disappeared cultural histories, real and/or imagined, inscribed in those spaces. Many of these sites provide occasions for exploring how historical conflicts between utopian and counter-utopian forces are expressed.
Their transdisciplinary collaboration (between ourselves, and between ourselves and students) delved into how artistic practice can produce counter-historical knowledge of the conflicted histories of specific urban locations. We are especially intrigued to take as our point of departure the vexed history of The Mecca. Built in the late 19th century, The Mecca was an architecturally significant structure representative of Chicago’s claims to modernity and innovative urban planning through the combination of high-density structures with more suburban residential features. By the 1920s, the building became a “mecca” for African-Americans aspiring to the middle class. The great poet Gwendolyn Brooks worked there, and wrote about it in her book of poetry, In the Mecca. Civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells and heavyweight champ Joe Louis lived there as well, and the structure even inspired a popular song, “Mecca Flat Blues.” Despite great protest, The Mecca was demolished as part of the expansion of the Illinois Institute of Design under the plan of Mies van der Rohe. This site and its Bronzeville environs presented an opportunity to explore themes of displaced architectures, competing visions of modernism and utopia, and conflicts in popular and cultural memory.
Course
Architectural History and Critical Media Practice
Spring 2015
Offered through Visual Arts (26201/36201) and cross-listed in Art History (26201/36201) and Cinema and Media Studies (29004/39004)
Monday, 1:30 pm to 4:20 p, Gray Center Lab, Midway Studios
In this advanced studio course, we investigate how creative practice can engage specific architectural sites and explore the erased or disappeared cultural histories, real and/or imagined, inscribed in those spaces. Our focus will be the history of “The Mecca” apartment building on the south side of Chicago. In the face of great protest, The Mecca was demolished in 1952 as part of the expansion of the Illinois Institute of Design according to plans developed by Mies van der Rohe. This site and its Bronzeville environs thus present a variety of opportunities for exploring themes of displaced architectures, competing visions of modernism and utopia, and conflicts in popular and cultural memory. Students are expected to propose and pursue individual projects around this theme and to work experimentally with strategies of research and writing along with still and/or moving image production. Field trips required. Prerequisites: Prior coursework and/or experience with a camera-based practice (photography, film, video, 3D modeling) is required. Admission to this course is by application and with consent of the instructors.
Exhibition
Prairie
November 20, 2015 – January 29, 2016
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 60637
Prairie is a digital projection work by Victor Burgin, created as part of Overlay, a Gray Center Mellon Collaborative Fellowship undertaken by Burgin and D. N. Rodowick. The exhibition is curated by Jacob Proctor, Curator of Neubauer Collegium Exhibitions.
Overlay focused on the history of “The Mecca” apartment building, built in 1892 and demolished sixty years later as part of the expansion of the Illinois Institute of Design under the plan of Mies van der Rohe, whose Crown Hall now occupies its former site. As in Burgin’s recent works, A Place to Read, focused on an Istanbul coffee house by Sedad Haki Eldem, and Mirror Lake, which turns around the Wisconsin “Seth Peterson Cottage” by Frank Lloyd Wright, Prairie responds to specific architectural sites (here, The Mecca and Crown Hall) and explores erased or disappeared cultural histories, real and/or imagined, inscribed in the built environment.
Fellows
VICTOR BURGIN
Victor Burgin (b. 1941) is a British artist, cultural theorist and photographer. He studied Painting and Philosophy at The Royal College of Art, London (1962–65) and Painting, Sculpture and Philosophy at Yale University, New Haven (1965–67). He taught photography at Nottingham Trent University (1967–73) and then at the Polytechnic of Central London (1973–88). Burgin was a Professor of Art History and Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1988–2000) and currently holds the Emeritus Millard Chair of Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College, University of London.
D.N. RODOWICK
D. N. Rodowick is the author of numerous essays as well as eight books: What Philosophy Wants from Images (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Philosophy’s Artful Conversation (Harvard University Press, 2014); Elegy for Theory (Harvard University Press, 2014); The Virtual Life of Film (Harvard University Press, 2007); Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media (Duke University Press, 2001); Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine (Duke University Press, 1997); The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference, and Film Theory (Routledge, 1991; reprinted 2013); and The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory (University of Illinois Press, 1989; 2nd edition, University of California Press, 1994). Rodowick’s newest book, An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities, will be published by University of Chicago Press in 2021. His edited collection, Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy, was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2009. Rodowick’s essay, “An Elegy for Theory,” received the Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2009, and his book, Elegy for Theory received the Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2015. Special research interests include aesthetics and the philosophy of art, the history of film theory, philosophical approaches to contemporary art and culture, and the impact of new technologies on contemporary society.