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A.J. McClenon

@middlenamejanae

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CLASSIC OTHER WORLD METHODS
me + @middlenamejanae
this Friday, opening 6-9 @roots_and_culture_chi
birthday cake and barbie dolls by @middlenamejanae

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4 months ago

come thru tomorrow, friday, sept 25 @ 7pm for @romansusanart open hours to future talk with my alter ego VEGA. VEGA will be projecting portals, sending sonic codes and messages through junctures of time, and offering free-write sessions around escapism, interspecies collaborations, and freedom.

images 1-3 still shot from video taken by @oypx taken in Roman Susan by @middlenamejanae

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a year ago

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS: smashing pumpkins Galápagos cover. we all gotta fall from grace one way or another. esp in this wrld built on top of a land that offers so much grace that we are inherently a part of. we can’t forget that. how we are intrinsically a part of something that restores itself. with or without us. question is how do we restore each other? how do we bring our hard stances and praxis into the interpersonal? into the waking hours before we have to show up somehow and try to say all the right things. how do we catch each other without language? in silence? in the dark? like how the wood-wide web does underneath the soil. can we build more upon our own merciful mycorrhizal network? cuz
it’s def been done. and it’s def been doing. as Dovie Thurman, a fierce force during Chicago’s 60’s welfare rights campaign asked in an interview with Studs Terkel, “I’m just trying to figure out, where do we go from here?” taken in Galapagos Islands, Ecuador by @middlenamejanae

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a year ago

🏡 Domestic space as stage. Action as echo.

Our final Ephemeral Organ artist spotlight, from April 17 through18, collaborative duo Katherine Simóne Reynolds and A.J. McClenon offer a performance-installation titled Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us by Blondell Cummings.

Working across visual art, sound, and movement Reynolds and McClenon explore the psychogeographies of Black intimacy, care, and memory. Their project draws from archival video and personal narrative to reflect on love, rupture, and the domestic as a site for choreography.

The installation opens Thursday at 3PM with live performances that day and traces of their presence remaining in the space Friday.

Ephemeral Organ Festival → April 17 & 18 @ EMPAC

Image credits: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, self-portrait in her grandmother’s house, Southern Illinois, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. A.J. McClenon, Photo by Eryka Dellenbach. Courtesy of the artist.

@middlenamejanae #KatherineSimóneReynolds taken in Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

i never really remember you asking for anything on your birthday or for anything at all for real and yet you gave so much. even you just letting me be myself. no hesitation. and no matter how much i contemplate what comes after a human’s last breath. no matter my agnostic or “what do i know attitude,” i know for sure you’re an angel. we never really talked about feelings but you taught me how to move my body weight into a punch. how to fish. you were one of the first adults in my life to call out homophobia. “that’s the dumbest shit i’ve ever heard.” you talked Ma into letting me wear boy clothes. you taught me about go-go, style and seeing you and Ma showed me a free unconditional way that love can exist.

when i wrote i love you in a father’s day card you told Ma no matter what that’s my daughter. when we got in the car accident you told the paramedics that’s my daughter i’m coming too.

it took a minute for us to really grow comfortable with each other but we still saw each other from the jump. i regret a lot of what i never said but i try my best to move authentic-like how you did it. like anyone on this earth you weren’t perfect and a part of your imperfect self took you away from us too soon which i will always feel like was a big ass mistake. but you weren’t.

i remember being so happy you came to my graduation even though you and Ma weren’t talking that time. you showed up how you always did. and i still feel like you do.

our angel BILL.

SWW ‘04 graduation by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

announcement: i made my @3artschicago fundraising match!!! “VOTE4VEGA 2124”

these past couple of years i’ve challenged myself to do scary things. take up an opportunity to go out on a little boat in the middle of the ocean. be vulnerable and honest. being serious about taking up a freedom practice. sometimes it makes my stomach hurt but mostly every time i feel like i’ve shedded parts of me that aren’t really mine.

and so why not perform as my alter ego VEGA? and make a film of it. and make a performance of it. and ask people to vote for a revolutionary party 99 years from now that helps imprisoned people escape wormholes to find habitable land? why not? why not? why not?

with grief and loss i sometimes get into a yolo mentality and try to cram in as much as possible in my days as if there is no future. but then my therapist said how would you plan for your life if you knew you’d be here for a very long time?

thanks to all that are helping me plan and birth this project that’s been living in my head and heart for so long.

special thanks to @cam.contemporarie and @watershed.art.and.ecology for opening your spaces to help fundraise!

*a little photo dump from my residency @surfpoint.me and fishing trip with Kate from the George Marshall Gallery and her dad Steve* by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

COME THRU TOMORROW FROM 7-9
@ 1821 S RACINE
WATERSHED ART AND ECOLOGY
3ARTS FUNDRAISER FOR VOTE4VEGA 2124
PERFORMANCES BY JOELLE MERCEDES & ANNA MARTINE WHITEHEAD
ZACHARY NICOL JOINING VEGA AS KRAMORIS
SPECIAL OPENING BY XRIS ESPINOZA
DANCE, THEATRE, PERFORMANCE, EXPERIMENTAL SOUND & VIDEO INSTALLATION
DONATE BEFOREHAND OR AT THE FUNCTION: LINK IN BIO taken in Chicago, Illinois by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

Interdisciplinary artist, A.J. McClenon is developing VOTE 4 VEGA 2124, a sociopolitical campaign set 100 years from now. VEGA’s 2124 Campaign fights for the freedom of imprisoned people forced into wormholes by a universal government prison system. Call 312-298-9632 to cast your vote in an election 100 years in the future.

VOTE 4 VEGA 2124 is a performative component of VEGA’s Crossing, an experimental film meditating on futurity, systems of oppression, and collective grief. Funds support the development of the film and A.J.’s travels to meet with scientists of color. taken in Chicago, Illinois by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

come thru to VEGA’s fundraising events. info on slides. come humble remembering once there was no sun, no moon, no human. any amount donation welcomed, all are welcomed. aunt cassie’s cake will be for available for sale.
VEGA’s work is about:
grief
human
sex
love
memory
escape
animal and machine
all living things
the mysteries and evidence of time
addiction and obsession and confinement
questions like solidarity, like is the movement of singularity human?
questions like culpability, like who is all responsible? like who is all free?
questions like is it the repeating of history or the umbilical pith of the colonial spell?
the yearning of submission to Earth and the unknown
a humility without hesitation, without power, without possession
much love to us all 4 being here <3
movement from my time @assets4artists taken in Planet Earth by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

Today I am launching a 3ARTS Campaign! After years of writing, performing, and making videos and objects as VEGA, my time-traveling alter ego, it’s feeling like time for VEGA to travel from the year 2124 to our present-day world ~ a time-traveling physicist who works with revolutions from the Future Freedom Party (FFP) to free imprisoned people forced into wormholes by a universal government prison system called the Universal Relocation Program (URP). VEGA is traveling to our present-day earth to request donations to release a multi-genre album for Earth Day, April 22, 2025, to communicate escape routes for the imprisoned and other revolutionary travelers stuck in other time periods on parallel earths and to construct travel suits using found materials.

With at least a $20 donation you’ll receive a published zine to learn more about the year 2124, including the Post-Post-Movement which has catalyzed in our present day, an underground synthesized drug called Freud Void aka Papa, that causes temporary incessant dreaming to reassess memories extracted by URP, and Positive Looping of Integrated Retrieval (PLIR), a memory collapsing process used on those imprisoned by URP to be looped into another a parallel universe and then back to our original universe to find habitable land ~ but VEGA and FFP have found a loophole using PLIR as an escape route for oppressed peoples.

Whether or not you’re able to donate VEGA asks that you cast your vote for the year 2124, 99 years from now to help sustain FFP’s fight against URP. Will you send your vote into the future to reimagine our world? Will you travel to parallel lands and waterways untouched by the varmint of colonization and genocidal practices? Untouched by the mass murder of our fellow species, like the American buffalo? VEGA is offering this experimental imaginary world to help us move through the precarity of our present-day world.

☎️CALL ‪(312) 298-9632‬ AND LEAVE A VOICEMAIL TO CASTE YOUR VOTE, ASK Qs, JOIN FFP

✨LINK IN BIO TO DONATE TO 3 ARTS CAMPAIGN✨
photo credit to @oypx for first image
thnx 2:
@a4artsfoundation
@surfpoint.me
@thenicholsonproject
@artspubliclife
@thecenterprogram
@theluminaryarts taken in Planet Earth by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

Film School will be participating in Night Out In the Parks with the Chicago Parks District! We will be screening three silent films, inspired by the absence of sound and rich visual compositions of film works by Black artists from the early 1900s. This performance series invites native Chicagoan poets and sound makers to fill in the gaps. Joining us for these fillings are Norman Long, whose work centers on walking, listening, improvising, performing, teaching, field recording, and exploring memory, place, ecology, and race; Xris Espinosa, who uses art as a language of space and encoded archetypes to explore the subconscious and determination of alter-destiny; and Imani Elizabeth Jackson, a poet working across disciplines, with particular attention to Black ecologies, histories, and intertextual practices.

Come through, bring a blanket or lounge chair or be free and stretch out on the grass. Be prepared to dance to the many sounds of Chicago before and after the screening to a set by ADOTJDOT featuring other vintage and contemporary Chicago imagery. taken in Chicago, Illinois by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago

uh oh uh oh i turn 38 today. i feel so fucking strong. i feel closer to free. i feel like im 16 again but sober. but sure. i feel madly in love with those around me always catching me when i fall and letting me fail. letting me fly. i feel my ancestors all around me. protecting me and loving me into infinity. i feel ready to fight for all the young people the universe has trusted me with. ready to listen to their wisdom that’s closer to a beginning im moving further away from. i feel hungry but not starved. i feel hopeful that the earth will restore itself without us and that the miracle of all existence will thrive beyond time, beyond the internet, beyond the pain, beyond understanding. taken in MASS MoCA by @middlenamejanae

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2 years ago