SCHOOL NIGHT: Political Correctness 101
This event has been postponed due to illness. A future date will be announced shortly.
Homeroom presents a “School Night” performance, presentation, and discursive exchange with artists and professionals about taboo, art and activism, and how we can negotiate safer workspaces. Topics include open discussion, making demands, radical thinking, breaking silence, and the resistance and resilience of language.
H. Melt addresses queerness and sexual violence, organizational critique, and how to demand an end to rape culture; Damon Locks presents a short animation made in collaboration with Rob Shaw and 11 incarcerated artists from Stateville Prison titled Freedom/Time. Locks will discuss the project, created for The Jane Addams Hull House Museum and Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project (P+NAP), and making art directly connected to political activism and alarm ringing; and Cassandra Troyan will facilitate a field report on how to address issues of gendered violence and sexism in creative communities.
H. Melt is a poet and artist born and raised in Chicago. Their work proudly documents Chicago's queer and trans communities. H. Melt’s writing has been published by Chicago Artist Writers, Gapers Block, Lambda Literary, Newcity, Original Plumbing, and Windy City Times. They are the author of SIRvival in the Second City and the forthcoming The Plural, The Blurring. They currently works at the Poetry Foundation.
Damon Locks is a visual artist and vocalist operating in the Chicago area since 1988. A graduate of SAIC, his visual work often revolves around people and their landscape; the narrative themes of protest, unrest, and tension are woven throughout. In recent years, he has lent his artistic and teaching talents to organizations such as P+NAP, Art Reach, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum and UIC. Since the late 80’s he performed with Trenchmouth, The Eternals, and Rob Mazurek’s jazz group the Exploding Star Orchestra. He regularly creates music as an improvisor in different ensembles and deejays a monthly night.
Cassandra Troyan is a writer, organizer, and ex-artist. They are the author of three books, THRONE OF BLOOD (2013), BLACKEN ME BLACKEN ME, GROWLED (2014), most recently KILL MANUAL (Artifice Books, 2014) and the chapbook HATRED OF WOMEN (Solar Luxuriance, 2014). Their work explores the terror of becoming female amidst the accelerated haze of contemporary popular culture, yet derives pleasure from the nascent negation produced through absurd juxtapositions of submission, surrender, romance, and horror. Their writing or interviews have appeared in or forthcoming from: The New Inquiry, Chicago Review, Entropy Mag, Shifter Magazine, Harriet: The Blog at the Poetry Foundation and Kenning Editions. They received their MFA in Visual Art from the University of Chicago and work with sex workers, prisoners, and feminists in Chicago, IL where they currently, mostly, live. onemurderleadstoanother.com
Moderated by Fred Sasaki and Seth Vanek as part of Homeroom's 101 Series.