OUR LITERAL SPEED will be made manifest at THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO In association with Art Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Renaissance Society, and the Smart Museum April 30 - May 2, 2009 Accompanying Exhibition May 1 - July 4, 2009 Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago OUR LITERAL SPEED manifests the imperatives that materialize the theoretical and the pedagogical.  No longer can we interpret forms of academic and artistic professionalism  as neutral, abstract backgrounds to the aesthetic and performative.  These activities have produced their own distinctive surfaces and procedures: the "aesthetic" has become discursive and "discourse" has become aesthetic. Rather than a series of academic lectures, the conference/event is imagined as a kind of “media pop opera” or “administrative gesamtkunstwerk” that includes fluid and/or jagged transitions among scholarly presentations, panel discussions, artist's talks, performances, and an art exhibition within an academic conference.  These emerging, hybrid forms demand a synthesis of collective activity (OUR), a self-reflexive examination of art history and its constitutive technologies (LITERAL), and an intense concern for the pace and texture of our movement through institutional mediation (SPEED).  The project offers a temporary laboratory in which a concerned public can investigate non-formulaic, experientially vibrant and theoretically precise responses to the modes of distribution, consumption, and circulation that drive contemporary art. Accompanying Our Literal Speed exhibition at Gallery 400, the University of Illinois at Chicago, 1 May – 4 July 2009. Opening at 8:30 pm, 1 May 2009. Featuring the premiere of the Jackson Pollock Bar’s theory installation PICASSO/BRAQUE 1989 at Gallery 400, the University of Illinois at Chicago, 9pm, 1 May 2009. OUR LITERAL SPEED SOUNDTRACK RECORDINGS Performed by The Size Queens Written and Composed by Adam Klein and Michael Mullen Schedule of Events - Chicago Thursday, 30 April, 6pm “Opening,” David Joselit, 157 Cochrane-Woods Art Center, University of Chicago Friday, 1 May, 9:30am –12:30pm “Historicity/Geschichtlichkeit,” featuring Tony Cokes & Andrew Perchuk, Rainer Ganahl, Juliet Koss, and Eve Meltzer 157 Cochrane-Woods Art Center, University of Chicago Friday, 1 May, 1:30pm – 4pm “Formalism/Formalismus,” featuring Gregg Bordowitz, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Hannah B. Higgins, Alison Knowles, and Joel Snyder, 107 Kent Hall, University of Chicago Friday, 1 May, 6pm – 7pm “Art Chicago,” featuring Janice Misurell-Mitchell, Tania Bruguera with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Merchandise Mart Conference Center, Art Chicago Friday, 1 May, Exhibition opens at 8pm/Performances begin at 8:30pm “Exhibition,” featuring Jackson Pollock Bar, Alexander Dumbadze, and Art & Language Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago Saturday, 2 May, 10am – 1pm “Performance 1,” featuring Art & Language, Darby English, Christopher P. Heuer & Matthew Jesse Jackson, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, and Walid Raad Morton Auditorium, The Art Institute of Chicago Saturday, 2 May, 1:30pm – 4:30pm “Performance 2,” featuring Thomas Crow, Andrea Fraser, Boris Groys, Christine Mehring, and WJT Mitchell, Fullerton Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago Saturday, 2 May, 7pm – 9pm “Closing,” featuring the South Shore Drill Team, Theaster Gates, Hal Foster, and Anne M. Wagner 107 Kent Hall, University of Chicago Saturday, 2 May, 9pm –11pm “The inauguration of enhanced consideration of Hamza Walker’s Nothing Is Everything 2009,” The Renaissance Society Saturday, 2 May, 9pm-11pm “Hidden Track,” , featuring Sharon Hayes The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago OUR LITERAL SPEED SOUNDTRACK RECORDINGS Performed by The Size Queens