Lora Lode’s Public Ordinance Cups are part of Exposed 2011. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
The project, “Public Ordinance Cups”, extracts existing legislative language and re-contextualizes it by printing it on coffee-cups for free distribution. The only thing Lode is “selling” by printing coffee cups with text from city ordinances is the idea that we might be more aware of the laws that regulate our actions. That’s one observation. Another might be: while the language applies to all of us – the public – it is rarely found in our most visible forms of communication (advertising, the news media), and even when found, the language is often ridiculously prohibitive in its attempt to be thorough. This project is an absurd and humorous look into a serious matter.
Lora Lode is an artist living and working in Chicago. She is part of a collaborative group called People Powered, and co-runs the experimental cultural center Mess Hall. While Lode’s work is mainly collaborative, her independent work scrutinizes conventional forms of visual and textual language as the manifestation or exploitation of our collective expression of experience, perception and desire.
ABOUT EXPOSED
For the past twenty years, the Helen Day Art Center has hosted an outdoor public art and sculpture exhibition called Exposed in Stowe, Vermont. Exposed hosts sculptures, site-specific installations, and participatory work from twenty-three national and international artists. the 2011 edition offers a series of Thursday night events by 12 video artists, writers, performers, and musicians accompany the exhibit. This exhibition and series of events is accompanied by cell phone audio tours, QR codes, walking tour maps, walkabouts, and a catalogue of the exhibit published by Kasini House Books. The exhibition will take place July 8th to October 8th, 2011.