FEATURE STORY — Nov./Dec. 2006

Culture Shock

Not content to simply entertain, Nicole Garneau creates performance art that confronts socio-political issues

Garneau rehearses with members of theater troupe A Sordid Collective for “The Lola Project,” a gender-themed show staged at the Hothouse (31 E. Balbo, Chicago) Nov. 16, 17 and 18. Lloyd DeGrane

With temperatures inching toward 100 degrees that day in July 2005, the asphalt inside Chicago’s Millennium Park heated up like a cast-iron pan, dissolving wet footprints left by children dashing back and forth from the park fountain. Nicole Garneau’s ’93 LAS “739 Cups of Water,” an artwork composed of 739 cups of water arranged on the pavement, also fell victim to the heat, its water slowly evaporating as the sun hit high noon. The weather’s interference with “739 Cups of Water” was of no detriment, however; it was appropriate for what was, in Garneau’s eyes, a memorial to the 739 people who died during the 1995 Chicago heat wave.

Garneau’s commemoration of the heat wave didn’t end there. In 2005, the interdisciplinary performance artist created “HEAT:05,” a durational project in which she performed an “intentional art-making activity” every day of the year—365 performances in all—to mark the tragedy’s 10-year anniversary. It was a lofty undertaking, but one that’s typical for this 36-year-old, who jam-packs her schedule with theater rehearsals (she’s currently involved in two shows), teaching courses at Columbia College Chicago and working as a coordinator for CCC’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships.

Garneau sees art as a practical tool for addressing socio-political issues related to feminism, the death penalty, violence against women and more. She has made a concerted effort to participate in theater shows that “help the audience connect the personal to the political,” such as “Blueprint of the Blue Goose,” which addressed the prison-industrial complex by incorporating narratives from real prison inmates. Garneau is also concerned that in the United States art has become inaccessible to the working class, largely because it’s “locked away in galleries where only rich people can go,” she says. To eliminate that gap, she creates art that incorporates pedestrian items (such as cups) to make it approachable for anyone. Cups “aren’t like a scary, abstract sculpture that someone who doesn’t have an MFA can’t have a conversation about,” she says. “Anyone can be like, ‘What is with the cups?’”

At times, Garneau’s performance style can be abstract and even strange (in past performances, she has coated her clothes in beet juice and made a giant peanut butter sandwich on the el), and the roots of this style can be traced back to UIC. During her junior year, after participating in several traditional theater shows, Garneau wrote and produced two experimental shows and staged them in the basement of UIC Theater. She also developed a passion for Russian theater’s unconventional style after participating in a UIC show managed by Valeryi Beliakovich, a guest director from the Theater of Moscow Southwest. Garneau realizes that experimental theater resonates with a smaller audience than traditional theater, but “I would rather be making something that I really care about,” she says. “I want to do things that are interesting and feel relevant now.”

—Rachel Parker