Diagrams after texts 2000 -2011
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Reading and taking notes has always been part of my practice. Diagrams were initially reserved for teaching. When they migrated to the forefront of my work, I felt reluctant about it. Reading - and diagramming - Vilém Flusser's works helped me to make sense of this inclination. Drawing on my previous installation works, I began to understand diagrams as spatial entities.
Cultural and Deliberative Public Ecologies
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
From 2008 - 2010, I served as an embedded artist with the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) at the City of Chicago, accompanying the development of the Digital Access Agenda, and the Smart Chicago Recovery proposal.
In 2012, a new mayor initiated a Cultural Plan process for Chicago. Invited by the director for Cultural Planning for the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, I conducted a Cultural Plan open house for attendees of the Chicago Creative Expo.
This opened a door, locally, for organizations to consider more formal inclusion of art inflected perspectives in community and urban planning processes. Between 2012 and 2014, I was invited to work with the Foundation for Homan Square, the South East Chicago Commission, the Evanston Art Center, and the arts funding organization, 3Arts. SAIC graduate students participated in all Deliberative Cultural Ecology projects.
Curatorial Projects
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Curatorial Projects 1997 - 2014
Curatorial projects include curated, co-curated, co-organized and course-related projects.
Exhibitions from 1997 - 2005 were organized independently.
Starting in 2007, exhibitions were curated in conjunction with courses I taught or co-taught at SAIC, either as class projects, or in the case of the "Hairy Blob" exhibition, augmented by student activities.
Printed Matter: Games + Exhibitions + Public Art
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Works collected here consisted of, or were accompanied by printed materials. There are two games that were printed on the reverse of event invitations, two diagrams in support of exhibitions printed as part of support materials and as an independent piece, and two flyers that accompanied public art works. Other examples are part of the "Organogram' page, a postcard accompanying the Hyde Park Art Center organogram, and a 'cataposter' accompanying the project and exhibition at INOVA/Peck School of the Arts. Two exhibitions based on George Lakoff's writing were accompanied by flyers, as were the two Arts Ecology projects for Homan Square and the SECC. In each case, the point was that publics were able to take a copy of the work with them, if they wished to.
Reading Conferences
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
From 2008 to 2014, I drew up diagrams following several 'single track' conferences, at which I was able to attend all panels. These included a conference on Museum Ethics (2008), two conferences of the Fachverband Kulturmanagement (2011, 2014, both published in the proceedings), as well as a symposium on Research Cultures at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (2013, draft presented for discussion and development at a closing event l, and final poster to attendees distributed post-symposium), and the "Outer Regions" convening at East Tennessee State University. The Fractal 3-Line Matrix evolved from and through these exercises in consolidating large amounts of information, and became an instrument for the notation of conversations about cultural ecology and artistic practices.
I drew on these experiences when attending the "Artist as Problem Solver" convening in Indianapolis, in 2018.
Participatory Light Installations (1994), 1998 - 2000
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
My first light piece, in 1994, surprised me by being participatory in unexpected ways, beyond the intended ability to move within it. Drinks were spilled the first time I exhibited it at Tough Gallery in Chicago, and at an exhibition at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany, an enterprising organizer installed a disco ball next to it, for the opening party. Starting in 1998, light installation became sites for invited and curated events, and finally the premise for an exhibition.