Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries is a philosophical study of equality as binding principle by art-makers across disciplines, and how they view their work situated across unrestricted spectrums of social and ideological value. As source material for the tropes and themes of Workman’s interactionist and instructional choreographic work, they are intended as a recovery of under-represented discourses, scholarly research volumes, and critic’s “selected works.” It also aspires to trace the contours of what more life-like art may be present — or imagined — in today’s shifting social imaginaries.
Includes interviews with:
Kurt Vonnegut
Shirin Neshat
Karen Finley
John Waters
Bill Ayers
Daniel Bozutzky
Young Jean Lee
Claire Tancons
Laurie Anderson
J’Sun Howard
Allen Moore
Bebe Miller
Aaron Hughes & Amber Ginsburg
Deborah Hay
Kerry James Marshall
& others
Dimensions: 5 x 8"
Materials: Softcover
Bridge Books
(Irving Park)
LAUNCHED IN 2022, Bridge Books was founded with the belief that books are the vascular systems of democracy, delivering the intellectual oxygen required for a body politic to actively, inclusively, effectively self-govern and thrive. Bridge Books strives to provide that oxygen through publication of interventionist titles in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art, architecture, dance, couture, cinema, and the broad spectrum other artistic disciplines and related interests as defined by the concerns of the Bridge collective of artists, including work by its members, as well as new, relevant and vital voices when encountered.
Michael Workman is an artist, writer, reporter, and sociocultural critic. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity, and on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. He is Director and Editor-in-Chief of Bridge, a Chicago-based 501(c)(3) publishing and programming organization. His choreographic writing appears in Propositional Attitudes (Golden Spike Press), and his book Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries (StepSister Press, 2018) premiered with performances at the MCA Chicago. In 2019, two of his scores were published in a special issue of Notre Dame Review for the &NOW Festival. Most recently, he presented an Active Investigation at the Neubauer Collegium’s Festival of Holes, combining restructured texts, site, literary history, and phonemic poetics. More at michaelworkmanstudio.com.