Environmental Encroachment - Origins

Origins

Environmental Encroachment was founded in Chicago, in late 1994 for the purpose of providing site-specific, playground environments, with interactive sculpture and music. On New Year's Eve, 1994, the founders of Environmental Encroachment—Dave Christensen and Mike Smith—along with a group of friends, built the first open-to-the-public art playground environment with a hanging cargo net for climbing, a zip-line, a revolving see-saw, and also a crude set of drums and barrels for providing music. This installation was the start of many guerrilla-style events through the year, including a net and swing hanging under the 18th Street Bridge over the Chicago River, and a guerrilla playground on a lagoon island in Humboldt Park (Chicago park). More installations became more elaborate and performance within the installation evolved. Interactive sculptures, as well as the style of net hangings and zip-line rides, were a fresh addition to Chicago's art and music scene.

Dave Christensen's "Freak Bike", a four-person drum bicycle, which Smith and Christensen smuggled onto Navy Pier for that year's Art Chicago International Exposition, became another mode of mobile and interactive art. They also rode it in the 1996 Democratic National Convention protest parade.

EE was performing within its installations in order to test them for safety before foisting them upon the general public. Masks and costumes started to be worn, and eventually video and other documentation was taken of these installations and performances.

In 1996, EE started its three year participation in HADES Haunted Houses, the Midwest's largest haunted house. EE created its own room with the nets, and sculptures, and then also performed and acted within its own installation room. There were 18 total 4-hour performances over the course of the run. It had elements of loud music, such as bass and drums running through sound effects. It also had people swinging around in scary costumes and make-up from and in nets. These three years of installations at HADES established music and costume, as well as shadow puppetry, as a main ingredient in EE.

In 1997, EE was invited to DEFENESTRATION, a large-scale performance festival in San Francisco, based on environmental sculpture. Hundreds of performers performed in an abandoned building turned live art environment in the Mission District, San Francisco, California. At that point, the late artist Peter Kadyk was putting together a marching band for the event, and members of Environmental Encroachment took part. EE brought back the idea of a mobile marching musical band to Chicago, to involve these elements and fuse them into the group.

Some of the early members, including John Santoro, Deron Cavaletti, Smith, Scott "Whitey" Larson, and Charly Barbera, had been seriously studying African and Caribbean drumming. Smith took up the trombone, Larson the tuba, and others such as saxophonist Kurt Iselt, North African-style percussionist Quentin Shaw and trombonist Bret Lortie joined EE, providing a musically-sound basis for the group's future. Iselt is credited with writing some of the first melodies for EE, a number of which are still currently used. Shaw is credited with the group's Moroccan influences.

The group was invited as a main performer in the now-defunct Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, a run in Pittsburgh at the Black Sheep Puppet Festival, and in Chicago as a regular at their Summer Solstice Performance event.