Join us for a participatory ritual, inspired by Ellen Harvey’s The Disappointed Tourist, that honors the buildings and places that shaped us but no longer exist.
A Mourning Procession: The Buildings We Carry
Ellen Harvey and Dannielle Tegeder taking part in a prior Mourning Ritual. Photo courtesy of Ellen Harvey.
(Originally scheduled for January 17, this event will now take place April 10.)
Inspired by Ellen Harvey’s “The Disappointed Tourist,” a current exhibition at the CAC, this participatory ritual honors the buildings and places that shaped us but no longer exist.
Between dusk and darkness, we gather to mourn what has been demolished, supplanted, and otherwise erased from our cities.
In Victorian mourning tradition, participants will walk in The Procession of Lost Spaces — a candlelit (LED) cortege with architectural mourning cards where we name aloud the theaters, stations, childhood homes, corner stores, sacred spaces, and other vanished local fabric that haunt our memories.
Through eulogy, petition-writing, and collective blessing, we acknowledge that when architecture falls, it takes pieces of us with it.
This procession is facilitated by Ellen Harvey, adapting it with permission from creator and frequent collaborator Dannielle Tegeder, who is unable to travel to Chicago. Participants are invited to dress in mourning attire (black, purple, or grey) and bring the memory of one lost space. Because what was built can be destroyed, but what is remembered cannot be erased.
About the facilitator
Ellen Harvey is a British-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose work ranges from guerrilla street interventions such as her iconic New York Beautification Project for which she painted miniature landscapes over New York’s graffiti sites to immersive institutional installations and large-scale public artworks.
Her work is often painting-based but utilizes a wide variety of media and participatory strategies to explore several recurring themes such as the social and ecological implications of the picturesque, the revolutionary potential of nostalgia, the conflict between advertising and ornament in public space and the relationship between art and tourism. Her work frequently centers the viewer and involves direct participation by the public.
Artist Talk & Reception
Join us for a related program—a special reception and talk with Ellen Harvey, the British-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist behind The Disappointed Tourist, currently on view at the CAC.
