THE OFFICIAL UNOFFICIAL VOTING STATION 2016
BORDER CROSSERS
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2016
Chicago, USA
Students in Roberto Sifuentes' Performance course, Border Crossers, at SAIC (Chicago) were asked to create their own voting stations.
The project that emerged was "Logo Therapy" by Anne Novotny, Nick Mahshie, and Elida Andrea Paiz Pineda:
"We were inspired by the outsider artist Loy Allen Bowlin- who considered himself to be "the original rhinestone cowboy"- who made his home into a glitter masterpiece. We wanted to try and "rebrand" election propaganda and set out to create our own buttons to hand out, that were made from glitter and collage/ found objects like plastic lids. And then we used the buttons as a way of engaging in a dialogue with folks around Pilsen regarding the hateful rhetoric of the election. We had lots of great conversations- and the glitter did brighten up a difficult topic and served as an entry way to the difficult topic of the election- especially with the Latino population- a target of Trump's hate during the campaign. We did this in Pilsen in order to also hopefully catch some apathetic white kids, and millennials- to try and get their perspective- and see if they were planning on voting. Each button was different and unique- it was fun to see people pick which slogans resonated with them- we had slogans in English and Spanish."
- Anne Novotny