NOVEMBER
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Fluxus artist Dick Higgins’s early-1960s “Danger Music” series of performance pieces consists of 43 unconventional instructions for artists that address notions of risk taking: grab on to a hoist hook and be lifted three stories in the air, says one; volunteer to have your spine removed, says another. “They’re not saying to have your spine removed but to volunteer to have it done and think about what it would be like if that happened. The pieces are the forerunners of what we think of as conceptual art,” says Columbia College professor Jeff Abell, who organized the performance segment of tonight’s opening of Betwixt and Between: The Life and Work of Fluxus Artist Dick Higgins. Cocurator Simon Anderson of the School of the Art Institute and Higgins’s widow, Alison Knowles, will perform Danger Music Number Two, a piece based on a list of five words–“hat, rags, paper, heave, shave”–which Knowles used to perform with Higgins, who died in 1998. Higgins’s daughter Hannah–an artist, UIC faculty member, and the retrospective’s other curator–will also perform. The free opening reception is from 5 to 7 at Columbia College’s Center for Book & Paper Arts, 1104 S. Wabash, Chicago. The free performance starts at 7:30 in the Columbia College Music Center, 1014 S. Michigan, Chicago. Call 312-344-6630.
11 SATURDAY
Steve Cushing recently celebrated the 20th year of his public radio program Blues Before Sunrise, but after falling out with WBEZ four years ago he lost his funding–and his job as engineer. Cushing, who now works as a tour guide in the Museum of Science and Industry’s coal mine exhibit, has been finding his own underwriters and producing the show himself; it’s now heard on 70 stations nationwide. But he says he needs to raise $1,000 for annual broadcast liability insurance, which is required by law. Tonight he’ll get help from retired blues guitarist Jody Williams (in his third appearance in 35 years), Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Howlin’ Wolf imitator Little Wolf, and a bevy of old-school blues bands (including Cushing’s own Ice Cream Men) who will play a fund-raiser for the show. It starts at 6 at Rosa’s Lounge, 3420 W. Armitage, Chicago. Admission is $10; call 708-771-2135.
15 WEDNESDAY
