In conjunction with University of the Arts’ exhibition Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-garde curated by Sid Sachs with Jennie Hirsh, Alex Da Corte and Kate Watson-Wallace will reinvent Kaprow's Chicken in the same location it was originally performed, now known as the Gershman Hall of University of the Arts.
Chicken variously dramatizes, commodifies and deconstructs the trope of the chicken. In 1962, the work was staged on ad-hoc wooden stands and booths with “pitchmen” plucking real chicken feathers, live chickens being vacuumed, people behaving like chickens, records with chicken sounds and so on. In 2020, Chicken no longer promises the "new vocabulary" it once did. Rather, Da Corte will stage a progressive, animal-friendly reconsideration of what the “avant-carnival” originally considered itself to be.
Chicken will feature Kristel Baldoz, Melanie Cotton, Danielle Currica, Julia Eichten, Jessica Emmanuel, Ya-Ya Fairley, Ann-Marie Gover, Imma, Andrew Smith, Kim Thompson, and Wilmer Wilson along with Kate Watson-Wallace and Alex Da Corte; with music composed by Marco Buccelli and Xenia Rubinos, performed with Sunny Ali and Karna Ray.
Chicken features a newly commissioned text by Rosalyn Drexler.
To learn more about Chicken, visit http://chicken-happening.org
Support for the Invisible City Symposium and Chicken has been provided by the Edna W. Andrade Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation.
Support for the research, development and presentation of Invisible City has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
Visit uarts.edu/invisiblecity