Mess Hall is self-described as “an experimental cultural center. It is a place where visual art, radical politics, creative urban planning, applied ecological design and other things intersect and inform each other. [Mess Hall] hosts exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, ‘brunchlucks’ (brunch + potluck), workshops, concerts, campaigns, meetings (both closed and open) and more” (www.messhall.org)
I've visited Mess Hall a number of times, but in response to my studies of relational aesthetics, and as my time as a graduate student wraps up, it seemed like a good opportunity to look at it with fresh eyes.
Walking down Glenwood Avenue, I can see a rack of clothes on the sidewalk. For a moment it's like seeing a thrift store which has spilled its contents onto the street. The metal rack is full of used shirts and pants, neatly hung. A few people are sorting through them, clearly deciding if they're interested in anything. Of course, they aren’t exactly ‘shopping.’ In the corner of Mess Hall’s large glass storefront window there's a sign. Haphazardly placed and written with black permanent marker on a scrap of brown cardboard, the sign reads: “Yep, it’s all FREE!”
Inside there's a loose cluster of people, sitting down and talking. For a second I think maybe I’ll interrupt if I just walk inside and join them. But I know better. I quietly take a seat just inside the door.
The room itself is a plain box. The walls are cheerfully painted. The floors are bare. The kitchen is in plain sight, as no partition divides the space. There’s a bulletin board near the entrance, as well as a rack of literature. Across the room I can see a makeshift set of shelves, constructed out of old coolers, the type that one might take to a soccer game or the beach, each screwed to the wall. The people are all sitting on plastic folding Ikea chairs. These are the only things that appear to have been purchased new for Mess Hall, but they still fit in. There is no dust in Mess Hall, but it isn’t an immaculately clean space either. Everything has the feeling of impermanence, as if all these things are meant to be shuffled around the space.
I’ve just missed a performance, the remnants of which are draped across the middle of the room. There are two tables, one turned on its side, and several chairs, all literally connected by interwoven threads. Balls of yarn wrap around furniture legs and create a sort of web.
An artist is sitting in front of the group, taking questions. She’s talking about her performance, her history in New York, how she feels about Chicago, current politics, and feminist history. It’s a dialogue between her and the audience that at first feels just like Northwestern’s own visiting artist lectures (at least the Q&A session) that I'm so familiar with. But there’s no academic pressure. Everyone is laid back. It is Sunday afternoon. People come and go throughout. At one point a woman stops in to donate clothes for the ‘free’ pile out front. Eventually the focused discussion disintegrates.
I’ve been recognized, and find myself in a discussion with Sara Black, a U of C grad who taught beginning sculpture at NU last fall. Sara is a performance artist, with a practice of her own, but she also works with a group called Material Exchange. She tells me about how welcoming and receptive Chicago is for collaborative, experimental projects like Material Exchange. Material Exchange is responsible for a variety of service based projects in which, “waste materials such as exhibition or theatre by-products” are remade by designers or design students into working objects, which are then donated to charitable organizations. She tells me that they have several events slated for the fall, and how they receive numerous invitations throughout the city.
On my way out, I run into Salem, who is a founder and organizer at Mess Hall, but also works with the collaborative artist group, Temporary Services (who also visited NU earlier this year). Mess Hall is essentially a project founded by Temporary Services. In their best known project, Temporary Services inserted 150 books created by artists or others into the Harold Washington Library Center here in Chicago. According to wikipedia, “The critical place of the public, generally dismissed in modernist and post-modernist art, is central to [the work of Temporary Services] which aims at creating projects that undermine conventional politics of art.”
Salem tells me about next weeks upcoming event at Mess Hall. The online billing is as follows:
Saturday, May 19, 200712:00p-6:00p 60 wrd/min art critic: BRIEF, SERIOUS REVIEWS GUARANTEED TO ALL ARTISTS ON A FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED BASIS. (with Lori Waxman & Ron Song)The short review is at once a challenge, an insult, a record, and a piece of advertising. Its purpose is debatable and arguably quite different for the various parties involved: the writer gets a tear sheet, a couple of bucks, and some editorial gratification; the reader, in the best case scenario, gets a succinct, opinionated description of a body of work they probably did not see in person; and the artist gets published recognition and an entry for their bibliography. But think, for a moment, of the artist who has never been reviewed. Do you need a review to get a show? You need a show to get a review.
Installed in the storefront of Mess Hall, an experimental culture center in Rogers Park, Chicago, critic Lori Waxman and receptionist Ron Song will receive artists in need of reviews between the hours of noon and six p.m. on Saturday, May 19, and Sunday, May 20. Reviews will be scheduled and written in twenty minute increments between those hours only. Reviews will be signed, published, and ready for pick-up within the time frame of the performance.
Does this sound like fun? It does to me.
References & additional reading:
http://www.messhall.org/
http://www.messhall.org/itf_mh_flier.html
Wang, Dan S. Mess Hall: What it is (after the first year)
http://www.messhall.org/wimh.html
Wang, Dan S. Practice in critical times: a conversation with Gregory Sholette, Stephanie Smith, Temporary Services, and Jacqueline Terrassa. Art Journal. Summer, 2003.
Anya Liftig’s “Woven Room”
http://angusgalloway.com/page17.html
http://www.material-exchange.org/index.html
http://www.temporaryservices.org/
Hart, Hugh. Artists Build on a Canvas of Dirt, Weeds. Los Angeles Times. April 23, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Services
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collo-Julin
Waxman, Michael. Eye Exam: Group Dynamics. New City Chicago. http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/2525.html
Waxman, Lori. 60 WRD/min Art Critic. The Believer. February, 2007.
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200702/?read=article_waxman
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