Through The Glass | A Wall Is Just a Wall
Description: Cook County Jail is the largest pre-detention facility in the United States, using 96 Acres of space, with approximately 100,000 detainees annually. What can stories and experiences inside and outside of Cook County Jail reveal to us about the effects of incarceration on our communities and society at large? What can we learn from local efforts to address issues of incarceration? What purpose does the poetic, historical, and data driven information serve when grappling with the visible and invisible repercussions of prisons, jails, and detention centers? In an attempt to share alternatives, this performance will share various sources and references that seek to bring audiences into a more intimate understanding of the power of listening,  personal human contact, storytelling, and poetry, in the envisioning of alternatives.
Performers Silvia Gonzalez and Michael de Anda Muñiz are active members of the 96 Acres Project, an ongoing collaborative project lead by the Artist Maria Gaspar.
The 96 Acres Project is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that address the impact of the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side. The projects aims to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation. For more information: on Chicago’s West Side. The projects aims to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation. For more information: http://96acres.org/
Documentation by nadia sulayman.

Mobile Speakers' Podium For Citizens And Non-Citizens at Logan Square, Chicago
Artist Jenny Polak's podium is a deployable speakers’ corner that is both functional and symbolic. Installed and activated on the lawn of the Comfort Station for 5 weeks, it will provide a focus for presentations by local social justice groups.
Description: Cook County Jail is the largest pre-detention facility in the United States, using 96 Acres of space, with approximately 100,000 detainees annually. What can stories and experiences inside and outside of Cook County Jail reveal to us about the effects of incarceration on our communities and society at large? What can we learn from local efforts to address issues of incarceration? What purpose does the poetic, historical, and data driven information serve when grappling with the visible and invisible repercussions of prisons, jails, and detention centers? In an attempt to share alternatives, this performance will share various sources and references that seek to bring audiences into a more intimate understanding of the power of listening,  the power of personal human contact, storytelling, and poetry, in the envisioning of alternatives.
Performers Silvia Gonzalez and Michael de Anda Muñiz are active members of the 96 Acres Project, an ongoing collaborative project lead by the Artist Maria Gaspar.
The 96 Acres Project is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that address the impact of the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side. The projects aims to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation. For more information: http://96acres.org/
Documentation by Meg Noe, Jeff Kolar, and Jenny Polak
Chicago Home Theater Festival Roger's Park, 2015
Hosted by Sojourner Wright
Produced by Monica Trinidad
Artists Benjamin Hart, CQQCHIFRUIT, Carrie Kaufman, eedahahm, Silvia Gonzalez, + Tasha Viets-VanLear
Intimacy is the root of humanity, constantly being invisibilized, lost, culturally appropriated and rejected in the western world. Private, university libraries, heavily policed neighborhoods, and cultures squandered by assimilation fosters fear in our communities and isolation between our homes. The notion of the good neighbor has been corrupted. Our learning spaces co-opted. Dreams of our genealogical ancestry vanished. But what if we invited intimacy into our homes? What if our learning spaces were accessible, tangible, genuine dream machines? Artists Benjamin Hart, CQQCHIFRUIT, eedahahm, Silvia Gonzalez, and Tasha Viets-Van Lear will challenge the destruction of the dream machine, posing these questions at varying distances, using our whole bodies to learn as a means of postcolonial re-cooperation, recovery and reclamation. 
Documentation by eedaham.
96 Acres performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Documentation by Guadalupe Onis.
96 Acres performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Documentation by Guadalupe Onis.
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