How To See In The Dark
Eva Davidova, Dakota Gearhart, Garrett Laroy Johnson, Alberto Ortega-Trejo
May 2nd - June 6th, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2nd, 6-9pm
Workshop: Muindi Fanuel Muindi
Organized by Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines
Co-Prosperity Gallery is pleased to present How to See in the Dark, a group exhibition organized by CCAM, the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, opening on May 2nd. Artists Eva Davidova (NYC), Dakota Gearhart (NYC), Garrett Laroy Johnson (Chicago), and Alberto Ortega-Trejo (Chicago) respond to the unspoken headline of our contemporary moment: the d*rk enlightenment espoused by reactionary technopriests is upon us. How to understand this moment as artists, organizers, educators, workers, dreamers? A line from cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster often quoted by Chicago activist-artist stalwart Brian Holmes gives the show its wings: “If you want to see, learn how to act.”
Of course, the quippy “how to” offers no silver bullets, but How to See in the Dark does intend to mobilize the American can-do spirit. Emphasis on spirit. The viewer is asked to “stay with the weirder" to confront ways of thinking and acting we might have dismissed, a call to break open old convictions, and a challenge to step beyond closed systems of thinking, seeing, and acting. It is a meditation on the paradox of our times, an abandonment of purity politics. The exhibition wrestles with the cycles of history and nature, from witch hunts and genocides to tectonic shifts and cosmic phenomena. In doing so, the show challenges the viewer to reckon with the current moment on more-than-human time-scales, to accept that as a best case scenario, we find ourselves experiencing the solstice of a thousand years of darkness. Through this exhibition, the artist advocates for an intergenerational project rooted in revolutionary optimism, a collective shift towards a cyber-ecological spirituality (eco-techno-theo practices) that confronts darkness head-on without the promise of salvation. An Infopoetics workshop featuring scholar Muindi Fanuel Muindi (Chicago) is offered on Saturday, May 24th. A symposium with panels and more is offered on Sunday, June 1st.
How To See in the Dark: Closing Activations
June 1st @ Co-Prosperity
3219-21 S Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60608
Symposium: 11:00AM - 3:00PM
How to See in the Dark's symposium gathers artists, scholars, and activist's to refract the show's theme through their various socially engaged, activist, and philosophical practices: music, dance, image making, writing and computational media.
Panel 1: Signs, Signals, and Sigils
Hosted by: Eva Davidova, Grace Grace Grace & Muindi Fanuel Muindi
11:00AM - 12:30PM
while (experience == actual){
signified = signifying;
signifying = signified;
}
Processual aesthetic experience is born out of the ab- and adduction of sociopsychical ensembles. Signs, thought to be tethered inextricably to the thing they symbolize, are mutated at the molecular level by their co-imbricated perception and action. The signpost for the thing underway becomes the sign itself, signals sigilize becoming. This panel circumscribes aesthetic experience's "underway-ness", and follows its pointers to a literally magical nexus of technics, religion, scientific articulation, poiesis, that beckons ecosophic spiritual practices for a politics yet-to-come.
Panel 2: Footwork, Rootwork, and Wakework
Hosted by: Anna Martine Whitehead, Angel Bat Dawid, Thomas Defrantz, jada-amina
1:00PM - 3:00PM
Black life has never depended on the promise of light. Ever since the barracoon, the exit through the Door of No Return, the hold of the ship, Black people have learned to navigate the dark—not as deficit, but as depth—because the dual pressures of fungibility and fugitivity demand it. This panel explores how, in evading the perils of the searchlight, flashlight, spotlight, and limelight, Black survival has involved profound creativity in the fields of rhythm, ritual, and remembrance.
Closing Reception: 7PM - 10PM
Closing Performances: 8PM - 9PM
Following the symposium, How to See in the Dark's closing reception will run from 7-10 Sunday June 1. At 8:30, we will host a dynamic couplet of performances by artists Eva Davidova, Odette Stout, and Grace Grace Grace that works through the project's thematic emphasis on the immanence of vision.