SAIC’s revamped art space asks

Sometimes you gotta knock down walls. Sometimes you gotta stake a claim. Sometimes you gotta say what nobody wants to hear.

This fall, SAIC’s Betty Rymer gallery is doing all this in literal and figurative ways for fluXspace, a series of projects and exhibitions that force the question: What is a gallery?

It’s the right time to ask this. The Rymer is undergoing renovation with the help of students from the “Visualizing Design” course led by Assistant Professor Douglas Pancoast. The group is literally knocking down Betty Rymer’s walls to make a more socially engaging space. Expect progress toward transformation once the semester concludes. This course is one aspect of a series of “fluXuations”–short-term projects, events, actions, lectures, performances of varying time spans–initiated through a group of students, recent alumni and faculty, who call themselves the Department of Flux. In the spirit of “flux” this department is constantly transforming and re-shaping its members, and anyone who is interested in becoming involved is welcome.

The idea grew from the realization the bureaucratic hurdles of the exhibition system caused a gap in student-gallery relations: students have to apply for shows at the Rymer, and if they are accepted it can take a long time for the show to be realized — potentially after the student has graduated and moved on. So the Dept. of Flux is looking for ways student/artistic life can be reconnected to the gallery and how gallery space can become re-invigorated by the outside world.
DJ Spooky (Paul Miller of New York City) will speak here in connection with his work, Link City Chicago at 6 p.m. that day in the school’s auditorium (280 S. Columbus Dr.) as well as a performance at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.)

Also, New York-based performance artists Ernesto Pujol will speak the day after his performance “Memorial Gestures.” Then get your angst on with the Complaints Choir of Chicago at 1 and 3 p.m. Nov. 3rd. This is the brainchild of Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, who visit communities and encourage citizens to sing out what ails’em. Yes, you too, can sing in public about the CTA crisis, gum on your shoe, and other Chicago-related woes.
Finally, (and most importantly!) the student performance festival New Blood will supplement these out-of-town artists at 8 p.m. Nov. 2nd and 3rd, as well as 7 p.m. Nov. 4th in Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield.

For more information about fluXspace and its artists, log onto HYPERLINK “http://www.saic.edu/”www.saic.edu and look for “Betty Rymer” in “Galleries.”