LINCOLN PARK — Photographer Sean Fader spent summer 2018 driving across the country and visiting every site where an LGBTQ+ person was murdered while the Hate Crimes Prevention Act was being debated from 1999 to 2000.
Fader’s gold Subaru Outback clocked more than 15,000 miles as he traveled 37 states and researched every LGBTQ+ person who was killed in that time period, which followed the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man who was beaten, tortured and left to die in Wyoming.
Shepard’s death brought national attention to hate crime legislation and preceded President Bill Clinton’s 1999 State of the Union address in which he called for laws responding to hate crimes committed against LGBTQ+ people. A bill would not be signed until 2009.
“I did this by myself and cried at every location,” Fader said. “I feared for my life sometimes and thought about the fear they must have felt, and I felt this sense of responsibility to share their stories.”
Photos from Fader’s cross-country trip along with stories about the murdered LGBTQ+ people were compiled into a Google Earth photo database for the artist’s series “Insufficient Memory,” on display at Wrightwood 659 in Lincoln Park.
Fader is one of 17 international artists featured in “Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art,” an exhibition that opened this month at the Lincoln Park gallery.
“Difference Machines,” co-curated by Tina Rivers Ryan of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, explores what it means to live in a digital world.
The artists featured in the exhibition use various media, ranging from animated videos and video games to biology experiments, to explore the intersections of technology and identity.
In “Insufficient Memory,” Fader presents the limits of technology in properly archiving queer history and its participants.
While researching the LGBTQ+ people who were murdered after Shepard’s death, Fader often found their stories were underreported by local news outlets, if they were covered at all.
“It shows the limits of digital visibility and the failures that turn into a lack of digitization for queer histories,” Fader said.
Keith Piper’s “Surveillance: Tagging the Other” uses four video screens that portray a Black man slowly rotating his head for the camera as a target follows his face.
The piece represents how Black people have been “tagged” throughout history, whether through slavery or modern technologies, Rivers Ryan said.
Artist Hasan Elahi’s series, “Tracking Transcience,” also explores themes of surveillance by sharing his experience being investigated by the FBI because of an erroneous tip after 9/11.
Elahi would send the FBI agent surveilling him photos throughout the day showing the investigator what he was up to. The mundane photos ranged from images of the food he was eating to toilets, scenery and other activities.
“This is my life documented every few moments as I checked in with my FBI agent — not because I had to, but because I chose to let them know I’m doing nothing,” Elaji said. “That was 20 years ago, but now this looks like an Instagram feed, so it’s also about how we’ve normalized surveillance.”
“Difference Machines” gets its name from the difference engine, an early computer made by Charles Babbage that calculated the differences between numbers.
“We’re invoking that history and concept of the difference machine, that basically computers from the very beginning were theorized as machines for producing difference,” Rivers Ryan said. “And now we can talk about how computers are being mobilized in the production of social difference, whether it’s empowering or against marginalized people.”
Visitors could easily spend an entire day or multiple visits exploring the exhibition, Rivers Ryan said.
Also on display at Wrightwood 659 is a collection of architectural sketches by Tadao Ando, the internationally acclaimed architect who designed the gallery at 659 W. Wrightwood Ave.
“Tadao Ando: Spontaneous Sketches” throws it back to the gallery’s opening five years ago when the celebrated architect quickly drew on the walls during the debut exhibition. Ando’s drawings — inked in blue marker on painted sheetrock — were preserved and framed.
Wrightwood 659’s fall season ends Dec. 16. Admission is $15 and can be reserved here. The gallery is open noon-7 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.
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