Terrorists In The Library at Harold Washington College, Chicago, IL

 

Speculative Research Project by Ruslana Lichtzier

September  18th  –  November 24th, 2015  

 

It’s quiet before the storm, well, now it’s over. The terrorists are back. Don't worry, we are not going to surprise you, just to expose exactly what you always feared. Don’t bother to rush and bury your dirty secrets. We opened books and went through the obscure classifications. We reached up high and broke into the locked locations, also storages. We gathered experts in exposing what you’re afraid of. You know it well (the nightmare). It hurts, but trust us, it aims to cure you, or at least, to bring forward an abreaction to the numb, post traumatic nature of your mind. Sorry, our mind. Are you the terrorist? Who are you? What do you know? Who taught you that? Do you trust your teachers? 

 

It runs amongst us, away of what we know.  

 

The President’s Gallery at Harold Washington College presents Terrorists in  the Library, a speculative  research project in the form of an exhibition. Using the philosophical thoughts around Terrorism, which one can shortly define as a radicalized movement through sacrifice, the project is designed through the negation of positivist research strategies. It attempts to trace and invent moments where the material manifestation of knowledge is being undone and unraveled, exposed in its weakness and terrorized. With that, the project highlights and questions the powered position of catalogued knowledge, while in a parallel trajectory, it also exhibits the frailty of what is assumed to be a stable fundamental cultural basis.

 

The participating  artists include Anna Shteynshleyger, Dora García, Michal Bar Or,  Jase Flannery, Fred Schmidt­Arenales & Sarah Mendelsohn, Lior Modan, Kelly Lloyd, Ajax Athena, Rami George, Troy Briggs, Molly Brandt and Dario Robleto.  

 

In the end, it was they who did it but we who wished it.1 

 

The exhibition will treat its host, Harold Washington College, in a parasitic manner. It will keep provoking its surrounding for the duration of the show.

 

Future Programming includes performances and conversations by:  

 

Fred Schmidt-­Arenales & Sarah Mendelsohn, Ryan Coffey, Kelly Lloyd, Ross Jordan, Danny Floyd and others.

 

 

 

1 Jean Baudrillard, The Mind of Terrorism.