DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong

March 31–April 28, 2017 / The (Former) Everyman Theater / Baltimore, MD

Opening Friday, March 31st, Wickerham & Lomax and Station North Arts & Entertainment, Inc. will launch DUOX4Odell’s You’ll Know If You Belong, an ode to the legacy of Odell’s, the legendary nightclub that still stands today as an aberration of its former self, no longer in use and still maintaining its peculiar façade on North Avenue. Through an installation spanning multiple projections, personal testimonies, and free-standing sculpture, Wickerham & Lomax investigate the rich history of the club’s years of occupancy from 1976–1992, an attempt at preserving and illuminating its cultural memory in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District and contemporary Baltimore club culture. This project is part of Light City’s Neighborhood Lights Festival and will occupy the former Everyman Theater (1723 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201) from Friday, March 31st (7-10PM) and will run through April 28th (12-6PM).

The title of the project borrows the club’s popular slogan, “You’ll know if you belong,” and alludes to the codified aspects and unspoken suggestive qualities of collective experiences and an implied sense of kinship. While striving to establish a congruence between the creation of fiction and historic collective realities, Wickerham & Lomax perform the contemporary essence of Odell’s, inviting visitors to participate in its life and continued legacy.

By connecting to those who formed the Odell’s community and clientele, the duo expounded on its mythology by recording and recreating nuanced, personal accounts of the space. DUOX4Odell’s highlights moments of collective joy created by Odell’s and the creative, expansive group who thrived in the space, while questioning how the legacy of these individuals and the cultural institutions they built are being honored and preserved today. This project, while discovering slippage in fact and fiction, is a positive interruption to the changes happening throughout Baltimore, and acts as a reminder of the strength and beauty that predates what is now known as the Station North Arts & Entertainment District.