DOC/UNDOC: Collaboration and Metamorphosis
UI Main Library, Special Collections Reading Room — Wed., Mar. 30 at 5 p.m.
Artist Felicia Rice will present “DOC/UNDOC: Collaboration and Metamorphosis” on Wednesday in the Special Collections Reading Room of the UI Main Library at 5 p.m. She is one of two Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professors in Iowa City this week, the other being her collaborator Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
Rice’s talk will examine the journey she’s made from book to performance artist, a change she made after working with Gómez-Peña. “Guillermo is a gifted collaborator. He challenges me in just the right ways. I grow, learn and benefit from my association with him,” she said in an email interview.
The new book, DOC/UNDOC: Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamanica Performatica, is a limited edition that draws from Gómez-Peña’s performance scripts and features commentary from Jennifer González.
Rice said the new book has challenged her. “This has been the hardest to create and may be the most important work of my career of four decades,” she said.
Her relief prints and typography illustrate the book, which unfolds to a 30-foot long work of art.
“It is a monumental work, the result of a monumental effort over a seven-year period that transformed my life and invites the viewer/participant to do the same, just as all who cross borders must reinvent themselves,” Rice said.
Her first book with Gómez-Peña, completed in 1998, is called CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS. Rice’s next project is Border Bus, a long poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Feleipe Herrera that will be published in 2017. She also founded Moving Parts Press in 1977.
Gómez-Peña, who performed on Monday night, will do another presentation on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in Room 240 of Art Building West.
Their visits are sponsored by the UI Departments of English and Theater and co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the UI Center for the Book.
