Chicago Field Trip

Show notes

This episode discusses Nick Cave's exhibition Forothermore and features a conversation with scholar-artist Dr. Meida Teresa McNeal and curator-artist Danny Dunson. A timely meditation on listening, Black bodies, house culture and visual arts, enriched with sound excerpts from Dr. Zami's research field trip to Chicago.

In Conversation With

Meida Teresa McNeal

Meida Teresa McNeal is Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. She received her PhD in Performance Studies (Northwestern) and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History (Ohio State). Awards include Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago, 3Arts Award in Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and the Links’ Hall Co-Missions Fellowship. An Independent Artist and Scholar at the intersection of performance studies, dance, and critical ethnography, Meida also teaches at University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. Meida also works with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events' Executive Administration team as the Senior Manager of Arts & Community Impact Investments building and implementing artist recovery programs and creative placemaking grantmaking initiatives. Prior to this role, Meida worked with the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives.

Website

Danny Dunson

Danny Dunson is an art historian, critic, curator, and writer. He is a Director of Curatorial Services at DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. Dunson graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a degree in Art History and received both a Fulbright Grant and Gilman Scholarship. Exhibition projects include "The Color is: Nick Cave and Jack Cave" at the DuSable Museum Roundhouse, “In Memoriam, Portraits of the Middle Passage, In Situ,” at the Cape Coast Castle Museum in Ghana, and “Collective Reflections: African and Diasporic Expressions of the New Vanguard” in Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana. He founded the Legacy Brothers and The Lab, an artist development consultancy designed to prepare emerging artists of disadvantaged communities to enter the art world by providing grants for studio spaces, supplies, and living expenses.

Instagtram

References

Nick Cave

The sculptor, installation, sound and performance artist Nick Cave created among others the sculpture series "Soundsuits". He has collaborative works with choreographers, dancers and amateur performers, often adressing topics like racism, gender, class, gun voilence, or climate change.
Forothermore Exhibition MCA Chicago
Forothermore Exhibition Guggenheim New York (runs until April 18, 2023)
The Color is: Nick Cave and Jack Cave
The Power of the Party: Chicago House and Nick Cave

DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center
A non-profit museum and Chicago community institution dedicated to the collection, documentation, preservation, study and the dissemination of the history and culture of Africans and African Americans.
more information

Lori Branch

As a solo artist, Lori Branch has held residencies in numerous Chicago clubs, played opening sets for several recording artists such as Michelle Ndgiecello, Lauren Hill, Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest and others. She currently co-hosts the Vintage House radio program on WNUR 89.3FM Evanston Chicago and WNUR.org and is a board member of The Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation. She currently co-hosts the Vintage House radio program on WNUR 89.3FM Evanston Chicago and WNUR.org and is a board member of The Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation.
more information

Mankve Ndosi is celebrated for a sound and practice that spans genres and disciplines: celebrating influences from Jazz and African legacies, Hip Hop and Soul, performance art, theater, public art and improvisation.


Of Jamaican and Louisiana Creole descent, Jayve Montgomery is a Nashville sound artist and multi-instrumentalist of the Chicago school of Free, Creative, and Improvised musics, Sonic Healing Ministries sector.

Credits

Sounds
Field Recordings by Layla Zami
All sound excerpts recorded by Layla Zami in Chicago, 2022
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, installation (sound excerpt)/br> 24-7, 365 (#5) by Gregory Bae/br>

DJ Set by Lori Branch at “The Power of the Party” Event, DuSable Museum

Improvisation by JayVe Montgomery + Mankwe Ndosi at Freedom From and Freedom To, August 27, 2022

Visuals

Podcast Info
Concept
Dr. Layla Zami, Postdoctoral Researcher in Performance Studies
Producer
Freie Universität Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts
(SFB 1512 Intervenierende Künste, TP B05)
Funded by
German Research Society (DFG)
In Cooperation with
FU Berlin, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft
Eufoniker Audioproduktion