Katie Hargrave / Past Times: Remembering, Remapping, Recovering
A site generated investigation for the sesquicentennial of Illinois State University.
Amber Ginsburg and myself present a variety of visual, auditory, and experiential tools to highlight past uses of the south quad of Illinois State University, the current site of the Center for the Visual Arts and University Galleries.
This site evolved from a patch of muddy ground that dirtied the skirts of the first University students, to a trolley line,
and then to women's archery, tennis, field hockey and football fields, before its present use as the art building.
The exhibition has two components: walking tours and gallery installations. Each weekday at noon we will offer free 30-minute walking tours around the Center for the Visual Arts grounds. View-Master Viewers will be provided for all tour participants, featuring digitally altered photographs that fuse historic and contemporary scenes. With the aid of a View-Master, each participant can experience a trolley as it emerges from under the Beaufort Street viaduct, a field hockey game in action, and several other 3-D views.
In addition to the walking tours, University Galleries hosts Provenance, Commemoration, and Sediment, three installations which provide visual evidence of Illinois State University's histories.
Provenance (Accepting the imbalance of preparation) points to the first moments of ISNU by invoking the names and counties of the original students who matriculated in first trimester in 1857. While 47 students enrolled, only ten graduated. By pointing to those who completed the three year certificate program, we look to the history of gender politics in education and the workforce across this institution's history. Disporportionately, more women attended, while more men graduated. Jobs could be saught after as little as a semester of coursework, and as such, women left. Men, however, stayed, completed the program and went on to other universities.
Sediment (Trolley, Archery, Tennis, Football) creates a contact zone between all past iterations of the south quad. A single abstraction evokes the trolley cars, archery bows, the tennis courts, and the football field. The gallery floor completely covered with moist clay serves as a display mechanism for a clay tennis court while allowing each visitor to leave their own imprint on the space.
In the third gallery, slides of archived images are projected onto a single dinner plate, providing the sole lighting source for Commemoration (Ephemeral representatives). As 80 images of past events flash by, viewers are invited to sit in one of five chairs and listen to audio recordings of primary and secondary sources.
Download the Podcast of the Tour here.