All I heard were lists of things I had to fear when I told people I was moving to Chicago, old tropes about violence, and this or that. But nobody told me there’d be giant spirits walking around two blocks away from my apartment!

“On Sept. 5 and 6, Humboldt Park will host Remnants, what the Wender Collective calls an ‘eco-mythic public spectacle.’” These giants are not here to harm us but rather to teach us something about the land upon which we live. I hopped on a call with Cooper Forsman, local naturalist and the show’s director, and Katie Mazzini, producer and multi-faceted artist, to talk about their upcoming show.

Crowded together in the offices of the neighborhood’s Christy Webber Farm & Garden, Forsman and Mazzini were happy to fill me in on what exactly we can expect to see in the park next weekend. Not merely a performance, Forsman emphasized Remnants as “a public spectacle, using large-scale puppets, a lot of imagery, dance performance,” all while using the park’s “prairie and savanna and wetland restorations as a backdrop and a focus.”

The spectacle addresses a variety of themes that the youngest generations seem to be universally grappling with: our relationship to the past, to our systems of authority. However, the primary driving force behind Remnants is our relationship to the natural world around us. We all feel the impending weight of AI and its socioeconomic ramifications. We’re facing a world of increasing violence and war, but the folks behind this show want to draw our attention to a more immediate issue.

“We’re in the middle of a climate crisis, we’re in the middle of a biodiversity crisis,” Forsman explained. “We’re facing an extinction of experience of the natural world.”

Chicago used to be a hyperdiverse fabric, woven of varying habitats with rich populations of native flora and fauna, according to the collective’s digital zine. We’ve lost close to all of it, save for pockets of ecological restoration efforts in areas like Humboldt Park. These critical efforts are what Remnants wants to inspire celebration of. “People can’t care about the things that they don’t have an understanding or personal experience with,” Mazzini noted. “So it’s really important for us to engage, with our art, these questions.”

Expanding upon that, I asked them to talk about the importance of art in today’s cultural landscape and what we can take from past stories into our future. Forsman points to Indigenous North Americans, who have endured “countless ends of the world”—and thrived, despite the ecological and humanitarian violence forced upon them by colonists.

Remnants promises to be one of the city’s most unique artistic events. There will be giant puppets and original music. There will be drama and dancing in one of the few surviving portals into Chicago’s natural past. And it’s all free of charge.

To the Wender Collective and its company of Chicago creatives, we are not called to retreat into the shadow of our contemporary woes but rather “to fight like hell and find ways to tell stories and connect.” I think a good place to start would be in Humboldt Park on the evenings of Sept. 5 and 6.

Learn More at wendercollective.org.

September 5 & 6 at 5:45pm - Dusk

Location: Sledding Hill