Public Address

Public Address

About the Project

Installation

"Public Address" took place in the final weeks and days before the November 2008 election. The storefront space was transformed into a 'headquarters' for political engagement, containing an installation of Rothenberg's large-scale prints and picket signs in conjunction with multiples by colleagues in the Chicago art community.

Rothenberg's prints, which preside over tables displaying campaign buttons and stacks of artists' posters, broadsides, badges, bags and t-shirts, use the language and spectacle of political activism. The focus of the installation are a series of picket signs: "SCREAMING WITH IMPOTENT RAGE," "WHEN ATTACKING THE POLICE," "YOUTH LOOKS LIKE OLD AGE," "DISHEVELLED AFTER FIGHTING," "ADDRESSING THE CROWD," "ECSTASY ON ARREST," all taken from a 1914 British anti-suffrage publication. Facing the signs are enlargements of early 20th century images of suffrage radicals. The images are of women in states of extremity in the process of being arrested, moments before, during and after confrontations with the police. These powerful images and the captions that once accompanied them, transformed through the circumstances of today's politics, place the viewer in a charged zone between image and text.

Rothenberg also invited artists to participate by producing multiples. Artists included Stephanie Brooks, Janet Eckelbarger, Marianne Fairbanks and Jane Palmer, Industry of the Ordinary, Carole Francis Lung and Christine Tarkowski. A campaign button contest solicited an open call for language, images, slogans and ravings of all kinds, texts from artists, activists, students, teachers, writers, and discontents. Proceeds for the sale of multiples went to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

This project has continued to morph and change, to be deployed at significant moments of political and economic challenge; most recently in 2016 at The Women’s March on Washington following the US presidential election, at the Dublin Biennial during the economic downturn in Ireland 2012, and preceding the US presidential election of 2008. 

 

Related

 

Ecstasy on Arrest

Installation

Prints produced during an artist residency at the Center for Electronic Media, State University of New York, Alfred. Exhibited first in Searching the Criminal Body: Art, Science, Prejudice, University Art Museum, State University of NY, Albany, NY. Subsequently shown in the group exhibition, Con/textual, Art and Text in Chicago, The Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois.

 

Dublin Biennial

Installation

 

Women’s March

An edition of posters produced and distributed at the Women’s March, Washington, D.C. in 2016

 

Exhibition History

Dublin Biennial International Exhibition, 2012
Curated by Maggie Magee
Sol Art Gallery, Dublin, Ireland

Fast Forward, a group exhibition curated by Heather Weber at the Fine Arts Center Gallery, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois in 2009

Public Address
, 2008
Curated by Ellen Rothenberg
PHAIZ, Chicago, IL
with works by: Stephanie Brooks, Janet Ecklebarger, Dianna Frid, Marianne Fairbanks and Jane Palmer, Carole Frances Lung aka Frau Fiber, Industry of the Ordinary, Christine Tarkowski, and Ellen Rothenberg

Con/textual, Art and Text in Chicago, 2001
Curated by Lanny Silverman
The Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois

Searching the Criminal Body, 2000
Curated by Susan Erony & Nicole Hanh Rafter, Ph. D.
University Art Museum, State University of NY, Albany, NY

 

RELATED MATERIALS

Publications:
Public Address, 2008 | PDF↓
WSQ: Activism, 2007 | PDF↓
Con/textual, 2001 | PDF↓
Searching the Criminal Body, 2000 | PDF↓