SWAP #43: William Pope.L

William Pope.L (Chicago, IL)
Pull!
June 7-9, 2013
Renowned performance artist William Pope.L has a proposition for Cleveland: can we manually pull an 8-ton truck through the city for over two days straight, as a testament to the power of shared labor?
Pull! is a durational. city-wide community performance piece, in which hundreds of Clevelanders will manually pull a truck for 25 miles, through the neighborhoods of North Collinwood, Glenville, University Circle, Hough, AsiaTown and downtown; to West Park, Clark-Fulton and Ohio City.
Over 1,000 images collected from people across Cleveland about what work means to them will be projected from the back of the truck as it is pulled through the city. An excerpt of this video is on view at SPACES from May 17 - July 19, 2013.
Pull! is a show of strength that can only happen if thousands of people team together. It celebrates the labor that built the city of Cleveland and is a living reminder we should be proud of hard work (especially when we do it together).
We spend half our lives working and the other half avoiding it. Work puts food on our table and our kids through school. Our jobs (or lack of jobs) shape our lives for good and bad. Pull! will provide a moment for the diverse people of Cleveland to work together, eat together, pull together and talk together about one of the most powerful, meaningful forces in our lives-our jobs. And, to accomplish all of this through a community art performance project made for and by the people of Cleveland.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Indra Lacis, R.A. Washington, Cavana Faithwalker, the staff and board of SPACES, Robin van Lear, Nan Eisenberg, Chuck Ackerman, Anthony Body, Elle Adams and City Rising Farm, Tom O’Brien, Danielle Price, Melanie McCarter, Charles Gliha, Jacquie Gillon, Steve Louzos, Mary Sweeney, Beth Zone, Laura Mintz, Daniel Gray-Kontar, Jeff and Cynthia Chiplis, Paul Sobota, Andreia Sweeney, Sarah Bryan, Grace Needlman, Heather Rose Hileman, Gracey Amber, Britni Cartier, Iris Rozman, Giulia Fancinelli, Amy Goldman, Shari Wilkins, Pilgrim Church, Kristen Schmidt, Jake Wynne and the Revolution Brass Band, Chloe Hopson and Passport Project, Councilman Joe Cimperman, Rachael Sommers, Councilman Matt Zone, Woody Melton, Lisa Holly, Brian Altkruse, Dan Suber, Chester Rudzinski, Francis Crish, Johny Lloyd and the staff of Tenable Security, Michael Sering, Anthony Doss, Erik Gunsberg, Joe Vedova, Michael Williams, David Flenory, Tharne Clark, Lydia Bailey, Dharma Valentin, Dwayne Pigee, West Town Community Development Corporation, Virginia Houston and Zoe Adams, Ohio City Incorporated, Dodd Camera, FORM, Julie Patton, the Cleveland Hostel, Amy Hanauer, Piet van Lier, Mark Moskovitz, Tom Dea, Lynn Bycko, Chloe Hopson and Passport Project, Jacob Wynn and the Revolution Brass Band, the Neil Chastain Quartet, Mo’mojo, Tina Cassara, Christen Duvernay and the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio, Rebecca Town, Organizers & Allies, Thomas Mulready, Michael Cormier, David Desimone, Cindy Barber and the Beachland Ballroom, Northeast Shores, Anastasia Pantsios, Rachel Napolitano, Bethany Corriveau, Reto Thuring, Sue Wolpert, Evan Wachs, Elizabeth Emery, Hannah Baldwin, Tiffany Andreoli, Joy Roller, Doug Horner, Curt McClain, Lydia Grey, David Giordano, the Department of Art at University of Chicago, Nick Raffel, Mitchell Innes and Nash, and (last but absolutely not least) every single Clevelander who took the time to submit images and pull this truck across the whole city!
ARTIST BIO
William Pope.L is a visual and performance artist and educator. He has been making multi-disciplinary works since the 1970’s, exhibiting internationally in New York, London, Los Angeles, Vienna, Montreal and Tokyo. In 2009, he was commissioned
by Hauser & Wirth to create an installation in response to Kaprow’s Yard. He participated in the New Museum’s 2010 - 2011 exhibition The Last Newspaper, with a reenactment of his infamous Eating the Wall Street Journal performance. In 2011, Pope.L performed Blink in New Orleans, as part of the biennial Prospect2. Recent exhibitions include Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and Forlesen at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (April 28 - June 23, 2013).