Brief outline: It is well known that time is conceptualized largely on spatial terms: linear, long, short, compressed, sequenced, coming up, running out. What is less obvious is that our understanding of time directly impacts how we frame our responsibilities to others and take responsibility for our environment. Pre-historic, circular time is evoked to describe humans low on ambition to innovate, but who are diligent, environmental caretakers. The linear history of the enlightenment talks of ongoing, scientific improvements and unlimited, exploitable resources. Neither image serves us today. What is a contemporary, appropriate, useful image of time, and how can new visualizations serve to discuss responsibilities in new ways?

Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Hairy Blob is an exhibition that focuses on how artists visualize time. It will run at the Hyde Park Art Center from April 22 to July 29, 2012, presenting video, sculpture, drawing, installation, dance and audio performance work in the first floor galleries and on the video façade. Additional artworks and contributions by writers will be featured in the 'asteroid belt' online component, reconfigured weekly throughout the exhibition and serving as a depository afterwards. The curatorial concept emerged during a residency at the Banff Centre, from a series of drawings about time, associated with six different eras, identified in the titles, and introducing a seventh image that is based on a perception of human lives in a global era, presented as arcs that contribute to the accumulation of artifacts that each generation has to reinterpret in its turn. It has been fleshed out through an extended diagram and performance lectures since. Contributors include Becky Alprin, Nadav Assor, Deborah Boardman, Lauren Carter, Sarah FitzSimons, Ashley Hunt and Taisha Paggett, Judith Leemann, Kirsten Leenaars, Faheem Majeed, Emily Newman, Tristan Sterk (exhibition design), Jessica Westbrook and Adam Trowbridge (asteroid belt). Curator: Adelheid Mers. Curatorial Assistant: Leah Oren.Download the Invitation

with Mark Genrich and Shuko Wada, ARC Gallery Raw Space, Chicago. A collaborative exhibition, a pyramid scheme, encompassing 39 layered installations by as many artists created in three phases in a gallery measuring 6380 cubic feet. A reception was associated with each phase. Artists: Phase 1: Mark Genrich - kinetic disks; Adelheid Mers - par lights; Shuko Wada - white walls. Phase 2:Simon Anderson - presence; Adam Brooks - white letters; Jno Cook - spider web and silent sound installation; Anthony Elms - Christmas decorations; PatrickMcGee - kinetic string drawing; Arthur Myer - found rounds; Laurie Palmer - fans; Mary Patten - gift cups,3-d glasses, artists rules reprint; Lynn Pidel - plexi postgard project. Phase 3: Leah Abrahams - traffic light; Anonymous - tabloid on bench; Richard Ashcroft - sound installation; Deborah Boardman with Robert Metrick - apples and performance; Michael Bulka - unknown; Max King Cap - champagne case; Patrick Collier - poem on website; Matthew Hanner - photo with second generation member who invited him; Barbara Koenen - guerilla installation-glitter dots on walls and windows; Darlene Kryza - photos on black cardboard circles; Roger Machin - magnets on column; Darrin Martin - tent (also has a video in the Media Room); Kathleen McCarthy with Mitch Brandt - LED text display; Donald McGhie - Absence; Adam Mikos - 2 contamination suits (opening reception) and plastic entrance covers; Jocelyn Nevel - dental floss; Elisabeth Penker - installation with photos, text and sound; Claire Pentecost - remote control and car; Michael Piazza - extension cord; Robert Peters - orange text on wall and column; Alison Ruttan - confetti on windows; Brian Rumbolo - 2 prints on wall; Alison Safford - upside downer (metal head gear with lens); Joel Score - white lettering on wall, magnetic message board, footprints on paper on the ground (with Jake Jacobs), retirement sign and paperclip chains; Jackie Terrassa - crochet knick-knack; Shirley Tse - plexi and styrofoam column and corn pads mound; Shuko Wada - paper on the ground and permission on wall; Amy Yoes - green friendly sculptures.