Mary Patten: At The Risk Of Seeming Ridiculous
- May 1 @ 6:00 PM
- Siskel Film Center
- 164 N State St. Chicago IL 60601
The work of Chicago-based artist and activist Mary Patten operates between the realms of poetry and politics, posing expansive questions drawn from a life deeply engaged with social and political movements. In a program wryly titled after a truncated quote by Che Guevara, she presents a selection of readings and videos spanning from the mid-1990s to the present. These include video essays, diaries, and documentation of the fight against the AIDS epidemic, struggles to free political prisoners, and anti-imperialist movements. Often assembled from the fragments of everyday life—newspaper clippings, letters, snapshots, half-remembered conversations, found objects, and other ephemera—these works embody Patten’s project to face as well as fictionalize her “checkered biography” and its contradictory entanglements between the call to respond to political urgencies and the desire to live an “artist’s life.” Followed by a conversation with the artist. ACCESSIBILITY Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu