For the Front Window Summer Projects, the ‘open call’ Jury has selected works by four artists that address hot topics in today’s global discussion, and relevant problems that affect our communal quality of life. Margaret Roleke refers directly to the dilemma of gun ownership unchecked. Jody Wood is interested in the production of community knowledge around Health and subsequent production of remedies. Felix Kindermann, with the score by composer Natalie Dietterich, questions the physical, mental, and social dimensions of the individual vis-à-vis the collective human body. Karla Carballar alludes to the mental barriers we impose upon ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) such as coping mechanisms that while may have helped us at some point in time, turned into harmful habits for ourselves as well as for others.

For the second segment, the third project of ‘The Front Window’ Juried Open Call Summer Series, the curators selected two succinct works by two awarded artists plus an additional culinary special guest project. Felix Kindermann and Karla Carballar are interested in our experiences as human beings concerning social environments. In contrast, Kindermann is interested in understanding how an individual establishes interpersonal relationships with others, adding sound and voice as a vehicle. Carballar recurs to the bodily experience as a possibility to arm mechanisms of social regulation, which contribute to building our-selves as well as others. Sasha Sumner and Marni Kotak are special guests with a singular Summer sweet project “Chocolate Chip Kooky: A Recipe for Caretaking” in a new collaborative performance. Baking, caretaking children’s stories, and special trophies designed by Kotak, amplify interior circumstances within the public sphere. Cookies, milk, and live sidewalk musical decorum by the all Urban-Americana ‘Hungry Marching Band’ culminate this remarkable culturally sidewalk divertimento event, to beat the Heat before the Heat knocks us all out.

Karla Carballar “Cognition Rest on the Basis of Emotion”

August 2nd- 7th, 2022

Opening Wed. August 3rd, 2022 5-7 PM

The work of Karla examines the role of emotions as the driving force of how we interact with each other and understand the world. The body is usually her point of departure since it is where emotions are clearly felt and expressed. she references her personal experience as the starting point for investigations to address challenging emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and grief. In the video Red Yarn, the person on the left constantly fixes her hair; meanwhile, the character on the right is wrapping her head with red yarn. The piece alludes to the mental barriers we impose on ourselves (consciously and unconsciously), such as the coping mechanisms that helped us at some point but became habits that harm ourselves and others. The method we try to conform to, disregarding ourselves, internalizing its rules, and mistaking them for absolute values.

Margaret Roleke
“Thoughts and Prayers“
July 12th – 17th Opening Wed. July 13th, 2022 5-7 PM

For several years Margaret Roleke has been creating work that directly approaches the subject of guns and gun violence, a current and constant challenge facing America alongside issues of racism, gun violence, global warming, and an incredible assault on the truth.  Margaret Roleke’s work carries an urgent response to these issues insisting on a call for real dialogue. She lives near Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 school mass shooting, an event that inspired sculptures made out of shotgun shells. She donates a percentage of all her work sales to organizations working on gun control. 

Jody Wood
“Social Pharmacy”
July 19th – 24th, 2022 Opening Wed. July 20th, 2022 5 – 7 PM

“Social Pharmacy” is an ongoing, traveling project started in 2021 to accumulate a living library of people who comprise specific locales. It is a non-hierarchical collection of resources from traditional and family knowledge that can be accessed in The Front Window at WhiteBox public space. Each remedy is a consumable art object that tells a story about the person who uses it and is named after that person. For example, Bilyana’s remedy for nutritional health is a family recipe for grinding stinging nettle leaves that her mother used growing up in Bulgaria. Jose’s remedy for stress involves a ritual he uses to reconnect with Nature. Each remedy acts as a script or score for performing another person’s private health regiment. Jody Wood proposes public health as a collaborative performance scripted and enacted by strangers living in proximity to one another. The project transforms personal health regiments into ‘exchangeable’ regiments using performance as a way to move an individualistic self-care behavior into a relational gesture of community care. 

Felix Kindermann “Individuality as Social Form”

July 26th – 31st, 2022

Opening Wed. July 27th, 2022 5-7 PM

Felix questions the relationship of reciprocity between people and their social environment while pointing out the dialectical relationship between individuality and collectivity. For the artist “no one can be considered in isolation”, each individual has characteristics that allow him to be part of different social arenas. In this way, social relationships become complex, because while we have the ability to alter the environment, we also react in different ways to what surrounds us.
Through rearrangement, fragmentation, and techniques of acoustic distortion, Choir Piece creates a feeling of alienation, destabilizing the interrelated appearance and effect of the choir as a familiar cultural asset, blurring the lines which are dissolved through the play with essential opposites like harmony and disharmony, the individual and the collective. 
Composer Natalie Dietterich’s commissioned score „Composition for Separated Musicians” applies Kindermann‘s far reaching intervention on the coherent structure of the ensemble, such that its harmony remains intact. Using Kindermann‘s text, her composition allows for a permanent spatial modulation of the singers, whilst staying connected via acoustic set pieces, despite their actual spatial modulation.
As the sound of the voices echoes from the front window onto the street, the themes of separation and connection are translated into choreographic movements between the interior and the exterior, the private and the public. 

Sasha Sumner and Marni Kotak

July 27th, 2022 7 PM

“Chocolate Chip Kooky: A Recipe for Caretaking” is a new collaborative performance by Sasha Sumner and Marni Kotak that plays with the role of the caretaker through the everyday act of making chocolate chip cookies. This special ‘Recipe’ is performed by the artists and their children, ages 6 months, 4 yrs, and 10 yrs, culminating in an edible batch for all.  As food preparation for loved ones can be an activity both cherished and onerous. ‘Ingredients’ and ‘directions’ provoke a dramatic range of related gestures and emotions, and breast milk just might be thrown into the mix. 
“Chocolate Chip Kooky” nods to the pioneering work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ and her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! in which the everyday activities involved in caretaking are proclaimed works of art. Sumner and Kotak’s new performance emphasizes the ongoing lack of acknowledgment of home maintenance work which is still embedded in the matrix of contemporary life.
Baking, caretaking stories, and special trophies designed by Kotak amplify interior circumstances within a public sphere. Kookies, milk, and musical decorum by Hungry March Band culminate this sidewalk event.

The Front Window Full schedule

– Margaret Roleke “Thoughts and Prayers“

July 12th – 17th

Opening Wed. July 13th, 2022 5-7 PM

– Jody Wood “Social Pharmacy“

July 19th – 24th

Opening Wed. July 20th, 2022 5-7 PM

– Felix Kindermann “Individuality as Social Form“

July 26th – 31st

Opening Wed. July 27th, 5-7 PM

– Karla Carballar “Cognition Rest on the Basis of Emotion”

August 2nd- 7th

Opening Wed. August 3rd, 5-7 PM