"Positive or Zero: Long Distance Collaboration" at Acre Projects

Film Still from Chair Study #17. 2022
Lois Bielefeld

To be an artist who works in any form of collaboration requires a level of comfort with distance. At the bare minimum, an artist must be willing to remove their ego, at least to some extent, as the project is no longer solely theirs but a product of multiple minds and practices. It is rare that collaborative projects occur in a single fixed location with the makers working side-by-side; an expansion of time and space is almost always integral to collaborative work. One must be willing to approach the work in the only way distance can be measured, as positive or zero, never negative. The work will either progress or it will never be made at all. 

Positive or Zero: Long Distance Collaboration presents a group of artists who make work in relationship with distance: collaborations over time and with time, work made with elders, ancestors, and past selves, the labor that goes into hiding labor, and projects about the places we once were and the resilient ways we figure out where we are going next. The work in this show presents multiple angles and ideas on how we must approach the world today and tomorrow. We must be willing to work together and to learn from each other and from our histories, even slowly, if we have any hope of moving forward.

Acre Projects
2921 N Clark St
Chicago , IL 60657