The Six Foot Platform presents Mike Durkin

OCTOBER 18:

Mike Durkin: The Mending Quilt

Let us mend together. Mike will conduct story-sharing sessions centering around mending, while we mend our clothing or supplies. With a partnership with Fabscrap, audiences and Mike will focus on sustainability, in fashion and in community. Participants will gather with torn clothes and items and Mike will teach and help mend those clothing items. We will also talk about other areas in our life we need to mend, relationships, habits, and other important issues the participant is engaged in. We then will contribute to making a collaborative quilt. Each participant will make a square which will be sewn into the quilt. This process of making will lead to an improvisation, a dance, some movement, music, a collaborative experience building off of the conversations and movements of making.

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mike durkin (he/him/y’all) is a large-bodied multidisciplinary social practice performance artist based in South Philadelphia and Brooklyn. The intersection between art and the everyday guides mike (lowercase to de-center himself for the process). He has created site-responsive social practice productions exploring urban foodways, community mending, sports, houselessness, food access, place, and the americana. mike works in communities and college campuses across the country. His work combines a variety of styles and mediums to embrace time, place, and the Americana. He aims to bring dissimilar bodies together to challenge and dismantle hate and stigmas, putting effort into the ideas that bring us together rather than push us away.

mike, just recently taught a Food and Culture course at UPENN in the Anthropology department, looking at celebratory foods and traditions. Upcoming projects include The Mending Quilt at UNC-Asheville and Texas Tech University, and a community-based movement project working with fast food restaurant workers.

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