Out of Site’s Flow Symposium culminated in a two-night performance event. Participants were invited to take what they learned from the symposium’s workshops over a three-week period and create a live stream performance. The event was hosted on Twitch, an online streaming service, and was open to participants, workshop leaders, and the general public.

Isa Fontbona is an artist, an art historian, a philosopher, and currently a doctoral student at the University of Girona in Spain. She is also a body builder who uses her body to display the way in which philosophy, literature, and art have constructed the ideal feminine body. She has gained and lost 30kg/66 lbs for her two year performance TRANSMOGRIFICATION.

During a variety of times and places, artist Denys Blacker was in conversation with Martine Viale. The talk, which for me was a Sunday afternoon, kicked off with the grounding (but also spreading, dispersing, connecting) practice that each presentation for the Out of Site Flow Symposium had thus far, in which we shared our times, our zones, which way the light was or was not shining into our small square space-screens for all to see. All falling along different places on the spacetime continuum, brought together by a common cause, but perhaps not to land at the same ends or energies.

Martine Viale hosted a three-day performance workshop for Out of Site’s Flow Symposium. With Viale’s emphasis on bodily presence in both installation and performance, participants embarked on a three-day journey in which they were asked to account for their own body’s presence in public spaces. The online platform of the workshop allowed artists and students from around the world to connect and work together,

Zhou Bin’s lecture on his work, interpreted and facilitated by Sophia Kidd, was a fascinating tour of his oeuvre from the late nineties until today. The lecture gave the attendees a good idea of the scope and importance of this work. Of particular interest was Zhou’s emphasis on pedagogy, the centrality of teaching performance, and the importance of working with other artists who are also teachers.

Image: It’s like talking to a wall by Laura Paolini, 2021, photo by Cara Tierney

Laura Paolini’s lecture on Chris Burden’s early performance work took place against the backdrop of the Flow Festival, a public performance event sponsored by Out of Site in Chicago. Flow advertises itself as embodied and sited/site specific. This year, as a result of the ongoing pandemic, it has been forced to be completely virtual, with artists and scholars participating remotely in the workshops, lectures, and performances.

The Out of Site community of artists condemn the violence that continues to impact black & brown, latino, asian, marginalized and gendered bodies in public space. We are horrified by the recent police murders of Adam Toledo, Anthony Alverez and Travon Chadwell in our City of Chicago.

On Sunday May 9, 2021 @12noon - 2pm CST, ieke Trinks is curating an live stream performance event on Experimental Sound Studios twitch.tv and ess.org

Image: Adrift by Marilyn Arsem, 2012, photo by Chelsea Coon

As part of the symposium we will be providing a space to discuss the new book Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem edited by Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless.

The Out of Site artists and myself, wish to invite you to the upcoming Public Performance Symposium: Flow, embody • in site, to discuss ways we can positively contribute to future healing and re-grounding as we re-enter public space and exit out of a year of pandemic times.

Decomposition in Composition by Jeremy Pauly, photo by Jamie Gannon. In this blog post Carron Little shares more information about the upcoming symposium, Flow, embody • in site and shares some thoughts about her own processes of working in public space.