Chicago’s history is written in hubris—from reversing the course of the Chicago River in 1900 to expanding the size of the city itself by dumping trash into the lake. These large-scale public works have had profound and enduring consequences for the city’s people, indeed for the character of the city itself.

This is the kind of fodder that propels the work of the artist duo Balas & Wax, who examine the dynamic nature of cities through poetic reflections on the built and natural environments. In this performance and discussion, Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz will present a video and sound work, Fourth Horizon (2016), as well as a current work-in-progress, and discuss their process for mining the social histories and archival records of Chicago for artistic inspiration.

Eine Veranstaltung des Englischen Seminars der Universität Göttingen