Concept Sketch
“When we produce the future, we always do so out of fragments of the past.” -Erwin Panovsky
‘All memories eventually become fictions.’ -unknown
The Beast, generously supported by the Hyde Park Art Center, to be installed in Gallery number 1 in April of 2014, as part of HPAC’s 75th year anniversary celebration. I will be in residency at HPAC in the spring of 2014. General Framework The Beast is a roughly 20 x 40 ft. longhorn steer hybrid, covered with leather collected by an army of harvesters, from alleyways, junkyards, salvage yards, covering a complex architectural framework designed for the exhibition. In a sense the form reconstitutes the image of where the materials have come from, out of which a story develops about what happens next. The project imagines the waste-filled urban landscape as a crop, as game, as a receptacle of “cooked” (as opposed to raw) materials. The project employs hunters and gatherers, from all over the city, collecting materials over the next year and dropping them off at various collection sites. The interior is a roughly replicated suburban split-level rambler, the middle class version of prairie style, made from collected detritus. The Beast will be programmed with events that fall into a small group of categories: violence, anarchy or self organization, buildings and urban space, contemporary ethics and belief. Programming will include storytelling, music, sermons, panel discussions, conversations, presentations, rituals, and dinners. I will be in residence inside the beast for the duration of the exhibition.
Concept Sketch-potential installation on top of funeral home in Rogers Park 
…or a vacant firehouse
Some of these “pelts” have been harvested and exhibited in this form.
pelt 1, leather ottoman, cedar 2012 fabricated by Kevin Resiwig
pelt 2, naugahyde bar stool, hickory, string, 2012, fabricated by Fred Schmidt-Arenales
The form on the outside represents a beast that has just been slaughtered, while the interior of the animal becomes a functional space. The structure will be built in such a way so as to be transportable, to be used after the exhibition for a functional space. The structure becomes both a spectacle, and a site for ongoing programming and activities. The structure will be built using an ingenious building technique for realizing complex form, based on a planar model of spatial dimensions.
Lignum Pavillion. Frei and Saarinen Architects
The Production
A Spectrum of Immersion Inspired by Roland Barthes’ text S/Z.
Written and composed by John Preus, with help from Leroy Bach
Musical instruments adapted from broken things, with help from Kevin Reiswig, Tadd Cowen, and Will Fitzpatrick.
