Making Out
2017
October 5 – October 27
SITE Sharp
Contributing Artists
Maggie Wong, Nancy Murphy-Spicer, Morris Fox, Morgan Green, Brendan Getz, and C Alex Clark
Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:
MAKING OUT turns the SITE gallery into a space of playful resistance. The work will center around a large installation of bleachers that suggest a high school football field — the kind of bleachers that provide a refuge for clandestine kissing. MAKING OUT fosters radical imagination by constructing a particular, touchable, sometimes functional site for envisioning tenderness. This show is a collaboration by a group of artists known as HIVE. The work is a site of negotiation between power and intimacy. It aims to clarify the question of whether tenderness can resist and alter systemic power structures. This work encourages and explores the practice of making out in the context of institutional subjugation. HIVE intends to remain hopeful via this exploration. HIVE intends, at every step, to acknowledge the possibility that if we keep kissing, we may alter the conditions of our subjugation. At the same time, paradoxically, we humbly acknowledge our helplessness in the face of power: we make out all the same. Several programs and happenings will take place as we explore these ideas with the gallery’s visitors. Some programs take place under the refuge of the bleachers. Some will be available to stream online, as this show is both local and dispersed. In addition to the bleachers, this show includes interactive sound and touch installations, as well as a limited quantity of free zines. MAKING OUT is the first exhibition in SITE Galleries by students in SAIC’s Low-Residency MFA program, which was established in 2014. It is a joint effort by HIVE, a group comprised of class of 2018 Low-Residency students Maggie Wong, Nancy Murphy-Spicer, Morris Fox, Morgan Green, Brendan Getz, and C Alex Clark. We are grateful to the faculty, loved-ones, and remote collaborators who join us in this work.
Programming
October 5, 3:30 – 6:30PM
Leroy Neiman Center Lobby
We Won’t Get Bored Kissing Because Time Will Be a Mobius Strip
October 11, 5:00PM
SITE Sharp
In this lecture, Morgan Green will seriously consider alternative conceptions of time as tools of resistance. She will draw from queer theory and popular media as she clumsily attempts to simulate (pedagogically) the experience of making out forever. A supplementary zine will be distributed after the talk.
Making Out and a Discussion with Sarah Schulman
October 25, 12:00 – 1:00PM
SITE Sharp
Sarah Schulman, being active in ACT UP and having produced such archiving projects such as The ACT UP Oral History Project and the documentary “United in Anger: A History of ACT UP” is practiced at looking back at a radical moment, record stories, and cull meaning. HIVE seeks to reflect on the recent past attempted Kiss-In, as well as the
90’s kiss-ins, as a means of processing and coming to an archiving methodology for the project. During the discussion, the artist seeks to also look back into the past while asking, what happened in Making Out, what happens when we make out as people, through collaborative endeavors, or decipher the past? What does it mean to do a Kiss- In in 2017? What has changed since the days of ACT UP, what has learned but also
what still needs to be addressed? What are the conditions of subjugation now and how do intimacy and consent operate in divisive climates?
October 18, 4:00 – 6:00PM
SITE Sharp
Safter Space Talks: A series of video-cast talks curated by Morris Fox, in which experts from different arenas discuss strategies around creating safter spaces | Bed Sheet Poetry Readings: A series of video-cast poetry readings curated by C Alex Clark, in which poets Bailey Schaumburg (St. Louis, MO) and Katie Johnson (Santa Fe, NM) Skype in from their bedrooms, in whatever state of dress they choose.
