HCL Commission

Included as a part of Chicago Takes 10 | Supported by the Walder Foundation

Necessary Preparations (CTT cut)

Directed by Aram Atamian and created with performers Salpi Apkarian, Zachary Nicol, and Anya Smolnikova.

After months and centuries of so much cruelty and terror and destruction, how does one carry on? Necessary Preparations (CCT cut) is an emanation enacted by three performers who know a place they belong to that is not here, in Chicago. The characters, stuck in a metronome of the mind, occupy a fort of Costco hauls walled into their own environments. Water on pallets. Paper. No element is too small. Everything counts. None acknowledges the other. Aram Atamian directs the collaborators, who have set for themselves: how to prepare for Utopia?  What plans to make? For a refuge, for peace and for guidance, as an artist and a human being.  

Person 1 plans life by a large tear-away calendar taking up space in their chosen enclosure. Person 2 self-casts in life by memorizing words and gestures of famous speeches and TV interviews. Person 3 is in constant retinal-mouth-limb motion, a “getting ready” life. Necessary Preparations (CCT cut) is built through rehearsal and prompt based inquiry. A north star for the collaborators is Kahlil Gibran, born in what is now called Lebanon and educated in Boston and Paris. He saw himself as mainly a painter. He transformed twentieth century Arabic literature, notably with The Prophet, about the mysterious prophet preparing to leave a place after decades to return to his island home, and is begged to stay.

About the artists

Aram Atamian is a US born diasporan Armenian artist and educator living and working in Chicago and Yerevan. His art practice spans live performance, video and 3D rendering, and positions fantasy as a strategy of survival within marginalized communities. Collaborations are integral to his practice, informed by  a background in classical acting and contemporary dance. Atamian has exhibited internationally in Italy at the 57th Venice Biennale (Arts and Globalization Pavilion) and Tethys Gallery; in Armenia at HAYP, The Institute of  Contemporary Art, and NPAK; in Turkey at Çiplak Ayaklar and METU; in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Gray Center at the University of Chicago, Links Hall, Extase, Ohklahomo!, and Mana Contemporary among others; and in New York at The Maysles Film Institute, Chashama, PIMA at Brooklyn College, and GEARY Contemporary. He has been a resident artist at the ICA Yerevan, Ox-Bow, and  High Concept Labs among others. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Salpi Apkarian is a dancer, bodywork student, essential worker and community organizer living in Chicago. They have performed at Mana Contemporary Chicago and High Concept Labs, notably in Aram Atamian’s  Never Again This Time: composition for 6 lamps after Alex Forrest (2019), and in Armenia at HAYP Pop-Up Gallery. They are a recovering neuroscientist, applying the teachings of brain science to life and movement. 

Zachary Nicol works with performance, words, video, and image, addressing scrutiny, identification, illegibility, and presentation. Their work has been presented in Chicago, Portland, Toronto, and online. Nicol works frequently as a collaborative and performing artist in dance, theatre, and film. Recent contributions include projects with Mlondi Zondi, Kim Brandt, Alexandra Pirici, Jonas Becker, Ginger Krebs, Elise Cowin, Catherine  Sullivan, and Anna Martine Whitehead. 

Anya Smolnikova is an image and space maker with a belief in the healing power of the creative process. Painting and drawing, the primary language, led to an embodied process in recent years and current commitment to movement practice and research. As an educator, Smolnikova locates the studio work and pedagogy in dialogue. Smolnikova was born in the former Soviet Union in 1987, immigrating to the US at the age of 12, and credits the transformative experience for shaping the embodied creative process that has been essential to personal health, as well as broader humanity wellness. 

Additional info 

Necessary Preparations (CCT cut) is conceived as 30 to 40 minutes of material for a camera by three performers that builds off themes of synchronicity and imperceptible community explored in an earlier piece, Never Again This Time: composition for 6 lamps after Alex Forrest (2019). A scored work for six performers, Never Again… used the lamp scene from the 1987 psycho-sexual thriller Fatal Attraction as a source to imagine an imperceptible rhizomatic connection between people in solitude. Necessary Preparations (CCT cut) reunites Atamian and the performing collaborators from the 2019 piece, which they see now is the ‘small version’ of a ‘large version’ they hope to create following this ‘medium version’ commission.