 Let's grab that right there. Hi everyone. Hi. Hi, and congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations on Monumental Exhibition, Chicago Architecture Biennial, 80 Artists, 11 Sites Across the City, titled This is a Rehearsal, and I thought that's a place we could start because that's an idea that's important to both of us. I think it's really an excuse just not to be done with the show. But no, I think this is rehearsal, it really came out of my collective floating museum's practice, which also comes, thinks about like Margaret Burrow's founding of Disabled Museum in her home about kind of community influenced, like, design practices. So coming in with an idea of a willing to change the direction of that idea or form of that idea based on the input as it comes in. So I think we brought that into the Biennial, and also wanted to think about points of entry. So this is a rehearsal, kind of takes some of the tension out of having answers and sets the ground for play, which can also be research, which also can give us space to try some things out and not be the authority. So we kind of, the people that we invited, the architects, designers, community, participants, we saw them all as contributors. We kind of went with that prompt, and it took some of the edge off of kind of quote unquote delivery of timeline biennials, some of the ethical issues of pushing a show versus how it engages with community. And sometimes your partner's timeline isn't the show's timeline. So what can be done in that time? How is this useful for you? We know what the biennial needs. They need a show. They need a, you know, certain things, fine, we'll figure that out, but how can we also figure out, you know, how our community partners kind of do. So this is what we were talking about outside, you know, maybe you can talk a little bit about down in the public. Sure. I want to pick up on that thought you just concluded on that the exhibition space is this sort of temporary window into seeing the work that's often confused with what the work is, but the work actually took a long time to get there and continues after. And the exhibition is this frame, this sort of temporal frame where you get to invite audiences to sort of peek in. And in addition to being this sort of temporal frame, it's also a spatial frame. So the idea of a rehearsal is something that I started to work with before walls turned sideways, but really try to operationalize it there. So making an exhibition about the prison industrial complex at the intersection of mass incarceration, my first question was like, what does it mean to think about those questions within the space of the museum? And thinking about the ground on which the museum was built and sort of begin to undo the ways in which that relationship is also related to the relationship of the prison or the institution of the prison. And thinking about then as a ground that is open to sort of practice, perform, imagine, stage different conversations about how we could enact Angela Davis's statements. What does it mean to turn a wall sideways to make a bridge? And thinking about that space as a temporary physical space where we can examine that possibility. And so then moving into counterpublics, we're working in public space and shifting that idea over there. So if you all aren't familiar, I was one of five curators invited to come to St. Louis to organize a response in relation to the city. St. Louis is an incredibly complicated space. And thinking about the physical ground there, it is the space. I've been calling it the gateway to dispossession. It's the space in which all US soldiers who fought in the plain wars west when St. Louis became the frontier, all of those soldiers went west and dispossessed native peoples and made paved ways for settlers. It is also what I also called the edge of the south. It was a space in which communities fled to or through on their way to places like Chicago. So it has an incredible history of like black legacy and also displacement. So thinking about those multiple spaces, thinking about how do you make a public art exhibition that doesn't restage an occupation? Or doesn't, can evade surveillance? And I know that some of these kind of operations of the city, how public space operates and then how do we not replicate those systems? Something you're thinking about too. I mean, to answer that, it's like, how do you make a public exhibition? You invite the public to make the exhibition. We often think about not for, but with. It was like, we have a kind of a cookie buying, you know, we flew around and at least my partners did and they came and I said, man, so many of these architecture buy-ins are really dry. Like it's just a, it's like a thesis on a wall. And that's, that's, that's kind of like great, like for like insider baseball. But it's like, that's not really, that's one community, right? It's an architectural community, which is an important community. But it's also important to think about points of entry. If you're really thinking about how to bring in different types of knowledge, different types of experiences, you have to open it up a little bit. So it was really important for us to like curate things that were fun, you know, like tiny desk, like we love tiny desk concerts, right? Like, you know, but at the same time, you know, it's like, but the office space, the cubicle culture in design actually had a massive impact on architecture, right? So it's like figuring out once again that level playing where you can bring people in so they can have dialogues and then build things beyond. But also kind of going back to the speed of trust, right? I mean, we've seen what happens with like things like the Olympics when it comes into a place and they do an event and then you're left with the infrastructure, that communities have to figure out what to do with and they're just kind of gone. So we really didn't want to curate a show that did that. We also have the benefit of being a Chicago based institution. So we merged our mission of partnering in all of our like city sites. Like, number one, there's no off sites. There's city sites, like we have the downtown sites. We have sites in Inglewood, sites on DuBond. And really understanding those sites and our partners' interest in looking out for that. So we're not going to like team you up with an artist or an organization or funding that's going to pull you down at the end. So that was one of our goals from the outset. So we're still, some of these things are still in rehearsal. We're still working through them and we'll continue working through them beyond the exhibition. So we're having fun, also fun. Like fun's kind of cool. Like we like to have fun, like, you know. Well, I appreciate you just naming that sometimes these biennial experiences are dry. They're pretty dry. And then I think the biennial, triennial phenomenon I was trying to contend with was I'd been to too many biennials that had taken me on a treasure hunt for trauma. Right, right, right. Yes, thank you. So you're new to a city and then you're investigating it through this exhibition map and being led on an artist's journey that takes you to an incredibly terrible history that's like then I made a project. And then it was, and then that was addressed and we're going to call it reparation or reparative. And so I also want to avoid that energy. You're welcome. So, yeah, so I think what I did instead was think about the geography of the space. It's a confluence of rivers. And I thought about how those rivers brought people down to those spaces and how what a return could look like. What an unbuilding or a return could look like. And that led me to invite four artists that were related to St. Louis via the river. So like Jean-Quick DeCie-Smith and I had long conversations about how St. Louis was the departure point for the French to get all the way up to Montana. Or the Missouri River that connects Chinupas people down to St. Louis or X being Kishota from Louisiana. And then bringing Anita Fieldson from Osage back to her ancestral homeland. And then also thinking again about that question not, how do you not restage a occupation using public art? That's where like sound, plants. Chinupa did an amazing augmented reality project that I'm happy to show you all how to use. Reimagining, or actually it's a performative action that invites the buffalo back to St. Louis. And that sets in motion a conceptual shift that makes us a series of questions. What do we need to do to make that happen? We'd have to unlock the Mississippi. We'd have to water the prairie. We'd have to, and then it kind of builds out from there. So not getting mired in the trauma but kind of opening space for bringing visibility to things that have been erased and then also finding possibility. You know, one of the things that comes up a lot is audience, right? And I think different spaces have different ecologies and operate differently. One of the things, one of our partners was Erica Allen and Urban Growers Collective. Any Urban Growers Collective in the house? Okay. But we went down there and we had a press tour. And one of these questions was like, oh, like if you don't know, it's a great for those that aren't aware of Urban Growers. Look up Erica Allen doing some amazing work. Has a huge team, but the site we're specifically talking about is kind of in Southeast or Park District land. And it's just an amazing site. When you meet her, she's just like walking through the garden, just like eating leaves and like have some leaves. And then I'm like, no, we're actually doing a digester, the biggest in the world. And it's the biggest three-story building. And you're like, wait a minute, the farmers? Like no, it's, she's a rock star. She's amazing, brilliant. So the question was like, oh, it's a community garden. Yeah, like, well how does the community accept the garden? And she's like, that's a weird, weird, weird question. Like we are the community, I don't understand. Like there is no like this kind of exchange thing. Like we serve you, you get something. Like it's just very, you know, and kind of changing how we think about that. So when people ask about audience, I'm like, yeah, you're welcome to come or not. Like I really don't care one way or the other. It's great, you miss out or you come. It's not a show that's the work being done. And the audience are the producers, right? Like the producers are the audience, you know? Like so that's the type of thing. And it has multiplier effects that not only hit that community, but many others. With the Floating Museum, I always say we don't actually work with community at all. We work with the people who work with community. And by giving them resources, highlighting their work, then that has multiplier effects on the communities they serve. So yeah, just, I mean, that's some of this, like when we talk about a biennial. I mean, we'll move beyond a biennial and just get to the work. The biennial's an excuse to highlight something. It's just a two-year point-of-way station to do some fun stuff with a little bit of extra money. But how does it, how does the work move beyond? And I'm actually more interested in the allyship that we built through this process, the knowledge base of how to move across the city, the resources, the municipalities' needs and interests and know how, and then internationally, how we can make that benefit Chicago and how Chicago can vice versa benefit those international partners. So all the people that were selected were strategically selected, not for the show, but actually beyond the show. It's building a web. So I think that's what it can do. Yeah, you're also reminding me of some things that we've talked about in our conversations. How these large-scale exhibitions are also opportunities to keep asking. To like, well, you wanna fund an exhibition? Great, how about we fund something like rematriating this site? How about we fund an interaction with changing, like just replacing monuments or reinscribing ideology, changing conceptual frameworks and how part of the work that we're doing, I think, as curators is being in touch with policymakers, being that sort of middleman between audience as people and then leveraging in favor of people. No, exactly, it's been interesting moving from someone coming to Chicago 20 years or so now or back to Chicago 20 years or so now and just kind of like seeing how like it all, one thing leads to another, leads to another and being able to still be in dialogue with those first kind of collaborators from the beginning and kind of building this like really city-wide international family. Yeah, it's been a real magical experience. So people are like, how are you so calm at the bar? And I was like, yeah, because I have fun. So I think we're at time, but I know that we forgot to introduce ourselves. Yes, I'm Fahim Majeed, I'm an artist curator, one of four co-directors of the Floating Museum, which is now a thing. It wasn't a thing originally, it's just an idea. And also we were invited to curate the Chicago architecture, the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial that just recently opened at 10 different sites all over the city. And I'm Risa Palau and I'm a curator and art historian. I live here in Chicago, but don't work here in Chicago. So I was one of five curators coordinating the second Counterpublic Triennial in St. Louis. Do that in reverse.