Upcoming Events
Please read our Health & Safety Guidelines before attending an in-person event.
Game Day!
Artist in Residence Kristin McWharter
A discussion and screening of the first full football game designed through experimental software and football simulator, Football Practice
Praise Mother
praise mother: a (N) spiritual is an interactive installation and work-in-progress performance by Aaliyah Christina featuring research, poetry, autobiographical materials & sounds, and liturgical improvisation. It explores themes of mental health, grief, and mother/daughterhood.
With much care for witnesses and listeners, mentions of depression, anxiety, suicide, abortion, and death will occur.
PASSAGE: co-presented by Kinetech Arts and ODC Theater San Francisco
PASSAGE will have live and remote audiences in both San Francisco and Chicago-- inspired and informed by 1.5 year’s worth of lockdown’s remote collaborations. PASSAGE by Kinetech Arts in San Francisco is an immersive experience of performances, soundscapes, and interactive installations.
In Chicago, experience PASSAGE's live counterpart at High Concept Labs -- where HCL's Partner Artist in Residence Irene Hsiao develops a live experience with interactive installations in her remote collaboration with the Bay Area performance. Guests will also have the opportunity to explore the worlds of Mana Contemporary's participating fourth floor artists who will be opening their studios for this occasion. Guests are invited to attend at any point during the duration of the performance, with a suggesting visiting time between 30 minutes and 1 hour. Registration is strongly encouraged.
PASSAGE: co-presented by Kinetech Arts and ODC Theater San Francisco
PASSAGE will have live and remote audiences in both San Francisco and Chicago-- inspired and informed by 1.5 year’s worth of lockdown’s remote collaborations. PASSAGE by Kinetech Arts in San Francisco is an immersive experience of performances, soundscapes, and interactive installations.
In Chicago, experience PASSAGE's live counterpart at High Concept Labs -- where HCL's Partner Artist in Residence Irene Hsiao develops a live experience with interactive installations in her remote collaboration with the Bay Area performance. Guests will also have the opportunity to explore the worlds of Mana Contemporary's participating fourth floor artists who will be opening their studios for this occasion. Guests are invited to attend at any point during the duration of the performance, with a suggesting visiting time between 30 minutes and 1 hour. Registration is strongly encouraged.
Water Wise Bamboo Free
Douglas R. Ewart comes together with Renèe Baker (Violin, Viola and Voice) and Lou Mallozzi (electronics) in a trio called Sonic Bamboo Rhizomes for a special performance entitled Water Wise Bamboo Free dedicated to Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians Elders Lester Helmar Lashley, LaRoy Wallace McMillan, and Reginald "Reggie" Willis. This is the first in a series of performances presented as part of his current exhibition Douglas R. Ewart: A Retrospective at ESS’s Audible Gallery.
The first performance takes place Saturday, October 16 at 7pm for a live, limited audience in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood at the multidisciplinary arts hub High Concept Labs, located inside of the Mana Contemporary building.
Proximity. Pop Up Performance Festival
Pop Up Performance Festival in Two Parts [FREE ADMISSION, RESERVATIONS REQUIRED] *RSVP for Part I, Part II, or BOTH!
Proximity does not mean the same anymore; being in isolation has changed our perception, sense of reality, and interactions; we transformed, we are still transitioning.
Proximity. Pop Up Performance Festival features eight Chicago-based artists from diverse backgrounds and practices who will perform live and next to each other again.
Meet us where you are in Proximity; limited in-person tickets are available, be near to us if you can. Follow @highconceptlabs on Instagram for Pop Up Performances streamed Live if you need to move at your own pace.
Curated by High Concept Labs' Maria Plotnikova and Co-Curator Sofia Gabriel; Proximity takes place in two parts. Pop-in, pop-out, be sure to RSVP for Part I, Part II, or BOTH!:
PART I [5p-7p]
5:00PM | Seth Sexton and Paige Naylor. A Brief Lament
5:30PM | Jordan Knecht & Madeleine Aguilar. Playing
6:00PM | Sal Moreno. experiments in free-drumming I
6:30PM | Simone Whiteley-Allen. Heavy Until Freed From The Foundation; An Invasive Species
PART II [7p-9p]
7:15PM | Maria Plotnikova. Closer
7:45PM | Kevin Norris. Passages
8:15PM | Eric Capper. sonando el yunque
8:45PM | Corey Smith. TAKE/COVER
ABOUT THE CURATORS
MARIA PLOTNIKOVA
Maria Plotnikova is an interdisciplinary artist. Originally from Ukraine, she started her artistic career in the UK, exploring the concept of social sculpture. The main topic of Maria’s practice is human contact: its social and personal challenges, power dynamics, and behavioral patterns. Plotnikova is exploring an ordinary deskilled body in performance. Removing language and mythology from social activity, she explores the basic mechanics of the simple action repeated by many people or by the artist herself numerous times.
Being of post-Soviet generation, Maria Plotnikova carries a trauma of 'spectator', being out of both collectivist and individualist paradigms. She explores the conflict of belonging and isolation while reflecting on the aspects of interpersonal connections, the relationship between the group and individual. Maria suggests the viewer to experience fragility and awkwardness of people’s relations.
Photo by Mark Jeffrey.
SOFIA GABRIEL
Sofia Gabriel Del Callejo (Mexico City, 1991) is a dancer, community organizer, curator, and arts administrator from Mexico, interested in collective thinking and making, and collaborates on projects that focus on art and activism, performance, and intersectional feminism. She has collaborated and worked in different capacities with several artists and organizations such as Tania Candiani, the National Museum of Art from Mexico, the University Museum of Contemporary Art, the Office for Cultural Affairs at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Material Art Fair, SAIC Galleries, the Field Foundation of Illinois, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, among others.
Photo by Maria Plotnikova.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
PAIGE NAYLOR
Paige Naylor is a Chicago-based artist and educator working within the realms of sound, performance, video, and writing. She is an MFA candidate in the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago specializing in voice and electronics. Paige is currently interested in self-regulating systems, participatory performance, social intervention, installation, real-time song de/reconstruction, auditory illusions, movement & text scores, aesthetics of joy, death, ephemerality, loss, and facilitations of healing. She holds a certificate in Deep Listening from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is composer-performer & co-producer of the experimental pop opera The Near Misses.
Paige has exhibited work and performed at Experimental Sound Studio, Elastic Arts, IMPACT Performance Festival, ADDS Donna, School of the Art Institute, Links Hall, No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab, Vox Populi, Black Iris, Baltimore Theatre Project, D.C. Arts Center, Open Signal as well as through programs such as The Quarantine Concerts, Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks, Lumpen Radio Twitch, and Telemetry Music Series.
A Record for Lamentations. Mixed Media on Paper. 100 x 68 in.2020-2021. Photo by Seth Sexton
JORDAN KNECHT
Jordan Knecht is a systems designer, educator, and musician, surfing the wave of unknowing.
SAL MORENO
Sal Moreno is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago who engages with computation, video, sound, and performance. He generates work that speculates how the modes of expression within various traditions and cultures are shifting in the presence of emerging technologies, such as VR, AR, sound synthesis and motion capture tools. Sal spent his early undergraduate years involved in competitive percussion ensembles in circuits such as Winter Guard International and Drum Corps International. He has exhibited live performances at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including the New Blood XIV Performance Festival and the Impact MFA Performance Festival. He has shown work as part of a United Nations conference in NYC, and also has participated virtually in collaboration with artists from the UK and Brazil, producing work that has reached international audiences.
Sal earned his BA from UC San Diego in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts and has recently earned his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art and Technology Studies.
Photo by Sal Moreno.
SIMONE WHITELEY-ALLEN
Simone Whiteley-Allen is a painter and performance artist based in Chicago, IL. Her work emphasizes dualism through generative processes of performing materiality and magical abstraction. The structure of Simone’s work transcends the space occupied by psychic energy channeled through the body. She often uses duo collaborations to manipulate simple material, highlighting the nuances of harmony and opposition within relationships of two entities. Simone draws from her background in dance and choreography, her early exposure to experimental theater, and a Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Oregon as well as a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Photo by Maria Plotnikiva.
MARIA PLOTNIKOVA
Maria Plotnikova is an interdisciplinary artist. Originally from Ukraine, she started her artistic career in the UK, exploring the concept of social sculpture. The main topic of Maria’s practice is human contact: its social and personal challenges, power dynamics, and behavioral patterns. Plotnikova is exploring an ordinary deskilled body in performance. Removing language and mythology from social activity, she explores the basic mechanics of the simple action repeated by many people or by the artist herself numerous times.
Being of post-Soviet generation, Maria Plotnikova carries a trauma of 'spectator', being out of both collectivist and individualist paradigms. She explores the conflict of belonging and isolation while reflecting on the aspects of interpersonal connections, the relationship between the group and individual. Maria suggests the viewer to experience fragility and awkwardness of people’s relation
Photo: Allentown International Contemporary Art Center.
KEVIN NORRIS
Kevin Norris is a Chicago-based visual artist who creates performances, sculptures, videos, drawings, and writings that explore themes of identity, memory, and narrative. His artwork draws out relationships between disparate fields of thought and culture —pop culture, art history, literature, personal biography— and strings them together to create complicated networks that expose the vibrant nature of everyday life.
Kevin received his MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. His work has been presented at No Nations Art Lab, SITE Gallery, Roman Susan Gallery, and The Hive Art Community.
Photo by Ryan Brown.
ERIC CAPPER
Eric Capper is a sound and sculpture artist from Queens, NY, presently working in Chicago. His work is motivated by cultural heritage, crisis, spirituality, and science.
Photo by Eric Capper.
COREY SMITH
Corey Smith (he/him) is a composer, writer, and performer from Chicago, Illinois. He has been an artist in residence at Light Box Detroit, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, and Grin City. His work has been seen at Links Hall, the Detroit Fringe Festival, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House, and numerous venues around the USA. His longstanding project, The New Prairie School, has been featured by Architectural Digest.
Corey is an avid collaborator and has worked in various capacities as sound designer, director, performer, composer, and/or devisor for artists such as Every House Has a Door, Rough House Puppet Theater Company, the Suburban Piano Quartet, director Lindsey Barlag-Thornton, and many others. He received an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More information is available at coreyds.com.
Photo by Drew Angle.