How do we know what to recover, and when are we ready to take action? The moment between knowing and not knowing leaves us more in the present, where we discover our unifying force in silence and reverence to the listening.
Join us as we walk Big Marsh’s expansive and recovering landscape. In this simple act of slow walking, we find our presence together, immersed in subtle soundscapes often lost to our agenda and veracity of speaking. As a silent mass, we listen outward and inward for layers of sounds most often tuned out or discounted, such as points of unity, resonance, dissonance, and divergent noises.
Big Marsh Park is located at 11559 S Stony Island Ave. Meet at the pavilion or covered meeting area
The rain date for this event is September 12, 2026 5:00 PM → 7:00 PM. RSVP here: https://forms.gle/2qpo22hmizPHRSEz5
About Sara Zalek
Sharkey (Sara) Zalek is an interdisciplinary artist. Rooted in physical investigations of the intersections of personal, ancestral, and cultural trauma, resilience, and collective transformation. Their work is intimate, raw, and poetic. They make the lived moment stand at attention through performance, workshops, and the poignant everyday moment to encourage thoughtful interpersonal connection.
The City of Chicago named Zalek an Esteemed Artist Award in 2022; Elastic Arts Foundation awarded them a Curatorial Grant in 2020 for Hot Mess! 10 events featuring over seventy artists who engaged with them in interdisciplinary tactics using live performance, audio, video, and spatial mixing for live and virtual audiences.
Zalek has been conducting somatic research and teaching for fifteen years and currently works with the Japanese Culture Center, Roman Susan, and Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education. They were a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist in 2015, 3Arts Make a Wave Awardee in 2017, and a Ragdale Foundation Fellow. They have performed and curated performances at the Chicago Cultural Center, High Concept Labs, Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Links Hall, Lumpen Radio, dfbrl8r, Boston Center for the Arts, Urban Guild in Kyoto, Japan, and many more.
About Norman Long
Norman W. Long (b. 1973, Chicago, IL) is an artist/composer. His practice involves walking, collecting, performing and recording to create objects, environments and situations in which he and the audience are engaged in dialogues about memory space, value, silence and the invisible. He earned a Master’s Degree in ”New Genres” while attending the San Francisco Art Institute and Master’s of Landscape Architecture degree in 2008 from Cornell University.
In 2008, Norman relocated to Chicago where he has performed and exhibited at Experimental Sound Studio, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Hungryman Gallery, Harold Washington College, Chicago Artists Coalition Gallery, Links Hall, Elastic, and the Arts Club for the 2015 Chicago Humanities Festival.
Norman has received 3Arts Award for Sound Art in 2012, 3Arts Djerassi (Woodside, CA) Artists Residency Fellowship in 2014, BOLT Artist in Residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2014-2015, 3Arts Fellowship at AS220 (Providence, RI) 2017 Artist in Residence program, ThreeWalls RaD Lab Fellow for 2017-2018 and Guest Composer at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, Sweden made possible in part by the City of Chicago’s DCASE grant.