What You Missed
Sexual Role Play, Power Rangers and Body Memory
10/12�13
By Ayanna Mccloud
 Ask Me, curated by Laurie Jo Reynolds, presented the concept of information dialogue at Gallery 2 on October 12 and 13. In a gallery filled with 17 dispersed stark white information booths and featured speakers or "fellows," visitors were encouraged to ask. Fellows eagerly and kindly invited visitors to participate in open-ended dialogue on an array of topics including but not limited to: cosmology, Power Rangers, U.S. sanctions against Iraq, sexual role play, trauma and body memory, supermax prisons, quantum physics, and Islam.
Transforming the gallery into an interactive fair, guests fluidly maneuvered from booth to booth engaging in conversations of all sorts.
My experience at the show was no doubt engaging. I visited the show on Sunday, which I was told was the calmer of the two evenings. Mistress Minax told me the details of a typical session for a dominatrix. El Kheir explained fundamental beliefs of Islam. Nathan Martinez informed me why he collected Power Rangers and what is experiences were like seven years ago when he was just a little baby. Wafaa Bilal and Joe Proulx graciously explained the details of economic sanctions against Iraq.
Ask Me was packaged as a performance installation. While it did not settle comfortably into a familiar definition of art, as so much current art doesn't, it redefined traditional roles and boundaries. It was, like most contemporary performance, an extension of conceptual art in which emphasis lies not in the material object but on ideas, actions, and language. Ask Me was a performance installation with no audience and no artist. The new players consisted of the viewer, curator, and "fellows," who all worked collaboratively towards the theme of the show - interactive, open-ended dialogue.
Ask Me reminded viewers that there is something refreshing about interactive art. The idea of a democratic art method in which the artist and viewer collaborate to engage in a sensory experience is appealing. It challenges the traditional relationship between artist and viewer in which the artist gives and the viewer takes. Interactive art subtly demands that both subjects equally give, take, and receive. It requires that the viewer meet the artist half way.
In Ask Me, Laurie Jo Reynolds was not interested in exploring themes in a traditional manner. Instead the curator stepped out of a safe mode often restricted within the boundaries of a white square canvas or gallery walls, and redefined the limits of what art is and how ideas can be absorbed, and she did so impressively.
Uri Avneri Speaks of Peace in Israel
10/15
By Joseph Micheal Budka
"You're a traitor to the Israeli people!" was the last thing a man wearing a black leather jacket said as I approached the podium. He brushed past me and went to stand in the rear of the lecture hall with a group of men who spoke amongst themselves, every so often making faces in the direction of the man by the podium, Uri Avneri.
It's 10 p.m. on Monday, October 15 at DePaul University's law school, and I'm still lingering in the crowd after Israeli peace activist, journalist and writer - Uri Avneri - finished a two hour lecture on the possiblity of peace in Israel. The event was organized by Not In My Name, a Jewish protest group based in Chicago which supports peace between Israel and Palestine. The tall man with snow-white hair, who is the leader of an independent peace movement to amend the situation between Israelis and Palestinians called Gush Shalom, took the podium at eight o'clock and began to educate us:
"I have forgotten my speech," Avneri began. "I will have to say what I really think." Avneri has a reputation for holding nothing back. For forty years he was the owner and editor of Ha'olam Haze, an Israeli newspaper which stands unequalled for its critique of Israeli government policy and corruption. Another major distiction in Avneri's biography is the fact that he served three times in Israel parliament, the Knesset, where he made over 1000 speeches. "If any American politican said a little bit of what I said in the Knesset, they would sign their political death warrant," he joked. Yet this statement takes on an eerie truth when one remembers Avneri has survived two assasination attempts.
In the course of his lecture, Avneri traced a history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, analyzed the causes of the most recent year of violence, and drew connections between America's support of Israel and the terrorist disaster at the World Trade Center.
"I am a reformed terrorist, so I have an understanding of what a terrorist group needs to operate," he said. "Above all, terrorists need the support of the public. Popularity equals political power... ."
Avneri proceeded to explain how media in the Middle East has affected and served to strengthen the terrorist effort. "There is an independent television station, The Island, which broadcasts all over the Arab world. Every day for a year there have been pictures of Israelis shooting Palestinians, and everyone has watched with the knowledge that America supports Israel 100 percent.
"Mr. bin Laden believes that now the atmosphere of the Arab world is ripe [for an attack], that now so much rage and hatred at the U.S. has acumulated. American support of Israel created this rage, which made it possible for bin Laden to act."
Avneri then discussed the recent violence in Israel and Palestine in relation to political events. He set out to explain the history behind the present conflict:
"In September 2000, seven years of peace negotiations under the Oslo peace process fell apart completely," read the 20-foot projection screen above Avneri. "Clinton and Barak both blamed Arafat for rejecting a generous offer and choosing a path of violence."
Using projected maps Avneri showed how Barak's "generous offer" would have reduced the land of Palestine (already 22 percent of the original state), and how all the borders and its only port on the Dead Sea would have been occupied by the Israeli military for an undetermined period.Uvneri said that Arafat's rejection of this plan, which would have made the state virtually impossible to govern, cemented the opposing forces in Israel and Palestine.
Avneri finished his speech by discussing possible ways of reaching peace in Israel.
"I have promised myself I will not die until there is peace in Israel," Avneri said to wide applause. "It is very hard to believe in peace because none of us has experienced one day of peace. We must get rid of [these] memories, and concentrate on the future."
The leader of Gush Shalom places hope in a resurgence of the U.S. government's interest in peace between Israel and Palestine. "It is a historic change," he said, "for the American government to work for peace... If a significant part of the Jewish community call out and say that peace is good for Israel, I think it will have a profound effect on U.S. policy."
Avneri continued greeting people long after the lecture had ended, even arguing calmy with one of the friends of his earlier leather-clad naysayer. At the end of the evening, I saw him leave the building escorted by his wife and friends.
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