May 17–November 14, 2019
We live in a perpetual storm—ecological, political, cultural, personal—and must learn to survive. While modernity tries to outsource and displace “bad weather,” always keeping the darkness at bay or in the next neighborhood or over the wall, we believe we must learn to live with inclement weather of all kinds. Concrete tetrapods, which form coastal breakwaters, represent a way of engaging turbulence: irregular assemblies of spiky shapes dissipate force rather than flatly resisting the sea.
Storms bring wreckage and loss, however, they also produce some unique effects: unexpected camaraderie or alliances; the experimental mobilization of logistics, on small and large scales; and the occurrence of the surreal. Across the coastal US during storm season, “hurricane parties” bring friends and neighbors together to cook perishable foods to clean out the freezer in advance of a power outage, wait out the weather, and also, to dance—who might kiss in the dark? We are inspired by sea otters, who tangle up in kelp with one other, to stay close while sleeping in the ocean currents.
In 2019, The Night Gallery presents Storm Signals, a series of film, video, and installation works which use new forms of representation to render visible turbulent and changing conditions across scales and disciplines: from the interpersonal to the virtual.
Storm Signals comprises six works by architects, landscape architects, designers, and artists presented in a storefront window on Chicago’s near south side. Each work will be exhibited for one month, daily, from sunset to sunrise. Openings with short talks from contributors and discussion occur on the third Friday of every month, coinciding with Bridgeport’s “Open Studios.” All openings are open to the public and begin at astronomical twilight.
May 17–June 20
Loa’s Promise, Joshua A. Dawson
In Chile, over the years, thriving corporations began to monopolize the resources in the mineral-rich Atacama Desert in order to fuel their economic expansion, including in the Loa province. Loa’s Promise envisions the outcome of this situation, presenting an alternate history and a possible future where the desert’s ghost towns have been retrofitted as data centers and digital mines, effacing past memories.
June 21–July 18
Virality & Impermanence, Maggie Lee
In our current age of virality, every droplet is another pixel of millennial pink, corgis, memes or political and social upheaval. Virality + Impermanence acts as an omniscient livestream of a hypothetical cause-and-effect cycle where our virtual worlds directly affect our physical worlds.
July 19–August 15
To the Lighthouse, Olive Ouyang and Nathaniel Gillette
To The Lighthouse proposes a hypothesis of an interplanetary network of un-manned “lighthouses” that are made obsolete, yet still in operation long after the destruction of planet earth and the displacement of the human race. Influenced by Lebbeus Woods, each structure originally serves as an autonomous, self-repairing relay station for survey drones.
August 16–September 19
Privacy Storms, AC33 (María Esteban Casañas, Vivek HV, Julian Siegelmann)
Privacy Storms is an installation which captures the people that pass by the gallery screen. Each new passerby will be able to recognise themselves in the screen and their own image will be superimposed on previously recorded passersby. Privacy Storms explores “contaminating realities,” between the physical world and the virtual world.
September 20–October 17
Failure, Emma Mendel and Brad Cantrell
Failure is at the heart of landscape: inherently complex environments of multi-valent relationships in constant flux with indeterminate beginnings and endings. This requires a paradigm shift: how do we operate in a world that understands it cannot predict a chaotic future, an environment that embraces complexity but rejects predictability? Failure is formed through continual testing, applying stress and digesting the outcome.
October 18–November 14
Phantom Fictions, CO – G, Elle Gerdeman and Kyle Coburn
A Fata Morgana is a complex type of mirage, containing many sharp temperature gradients resulting in distorted-erect, inverted, and stretched images. Phantom Fictions asks if design can index fiction creation: if a proto-architecture can act as a measurement device for these atmospheric gradations, while simultaneously perpetuating the perceptual effects it measures.
About The Night Gallery
The Night Gallery is a nocturnal exhibition space in Bridgeport, Chicago. Open from sunset to sunrise, The Night Gallery features film and video works by architects, landscape architects, designers, and artists, and also screens feature-length films. Situated in a storefront window, The Night Gallery occurs on the sidewalk in public space, connecting pedestrians and passerby. Founded in 2017, The Night Gallery is a project by Future Firm, an architecture practice founded by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, that focuses on designing spaces for people to come together in new ways.
For more information, contact us at: info [at] thenight.gallery.
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