You and a book are invited to a silent reading party in the installation “The Shoes Are Centered on the Shelf” (Allen Ruppersberg, 2018)! For this one night only, the gallery will transform into a special space for reading, hosted by Coffee House Press. Looking for something new to dive into? We’ve got you covered. Check out a book at our pop-up library, featuring volumes from Coffee House Press and the Walker Library.
“The Shoes Are Centered on the Shelf” (2018)
As part of his retrospective, Ruppersberg was invited to explore the Walker’s library and archives to create a new piece. He visited periodically over the course of several years, pouring over boxes of ephemera, including newspaper clippings, invitations, and printed material collected by the museum over the course of many decades. He assembled items of interest on the color copier, creating photo-collages to fill the walls of the exhibition’s final gallery. Commissioned by Walker Art Center, 2018.
Imagination is Power: Eight Questions with Nadine Cloete
"If people watch closely they will see there are those of us out here creating instruction manuals for a new revolution." Cape Town–based filmmaker Nadine Cloete discusses her 2016 film Action Kommandant, which examines the life and state-sanctioned assassination of 20-year-old revolutionary anti-apartheid freedom fighter Ashley Kriel.
Imagination Is Power: Eight Questions with Amir George
Amir George is a Chicago-based filmmaker who deals in imaginative black joy, using surreal, seductive, and joyous imagery juxtaposed with sound to create spiritual stories in fragmented vignettes. Valérie Déus, a Twin Cities artist and co-curator of the Walker's Imagination is Power series, asks George about his practice and the film Black Chains.
Imagination Is Power: Stories from Chicago Film Archives
“We believe that these stories—the stories of everyday, regular people that were documented on film—are extremely valuable to our understanding of what life was like in the 20th century.” The staff of the Chicago Film Archives discusses the collection of more 26,000 titles, the archive's important work with film preservation, and the history behind the three films they provided for the Walker series Expanding the Frame: Imagination is Power.
Imagination Is Power: How Bidayyat Captures Syria on Film
“Art is a tool of expression and resistance. It is important to show and represent artistic views and films in times of revolution.” As part of the multi-part examination of the ideas behind the film series Expanding the Frame: Imagination Is Power, the arts organization Bidayyat, discusses its work to support and produce Syrian documentary films, giving voice to new artistic expressions in and around the region.
Imagination Is Power: Six Questions with Ayo Akingbade
"I am interested in land and space and how this dictates current affairs, the power you culminate because you own this land, and so on. What are the stories of these people? What is power? What is legacy? " In Tower XYZ (2016), artist Ayo Akingbade explores London's iconic tower blocks, drawing on her own experiences as a young British Nigerian woman living in the ever-changing landscape of Hackney in East London. In advance of the film's April 12 screening, Akingbade discusses her practice with series co-curator Valérie Déus.
Imagination is Power: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military
Rivaling the contemporaneous New Wave in its aesthetic innovations, Czechoslovakia's Army Film studio challenged political orthodoxies and military regulations during the Prague Spring. In this excerpt from the book Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military ,Alice Lovejoy looks to the sobering vision of Forest (Les, 1969) and 34 Women (34 ženy, 1969), both of which are included in the Expanding the Frame series Imagination is Power.
Imagination is Power: The Revolutionary Spirit of Valérie Déus, Part 2
"Protest for me is part of citizenry." In part two of our multi-part examination of the ideas behind Expanding the Frame: Imagination Is Power, series co-organizer Valérie Déus discusses how her upbringing in a New York immigrant family shaped her engagement with activism, her multidisciplinary art practice, and her approach to this month's selection of short film and video works from the 1960s.
Imagination is Power: The Revolutionary Spirit of Valérie Déus, Part 1
How does art, literature, film and TV influence and communicate the power of radical action and social mobilization? Bentson Archivist/Assistant Curator Ruth Hodgins and artist Valérie Déus discuss their recent collaboration on Imagination is Power, a four-part program that looks at the revolutionary spirit from the late 1960s until today.
