The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art presents “The Black Factory,” an installation by nationally acclaimed visual and performance artist William Pope.L, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 6, at the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The recipient this month of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into The Black Factory, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, The Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page:

http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Earlier in April, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced this year’s recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship, including Pope.L, whose award will support his installation work. The purpose of the Guggenheim program is to help provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. He was one of 185 fellowship recipients in the United States and Canada, out of 3,268 applicants. Fellowships totaled $6,912,000, making the average award worth $37,362.

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for eRacism, a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.

The recipient this spring of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into the Black Factory installation, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, the Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page: http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for “eRacism,” a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.

Working up to an April 2004 premiere at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, acclaimed visual and performance artist William Pope.L is collecting raw material for his Black Factory project from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, in Chase Hall Gallery at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, where he teaches.

Internationally known for his surprising and provocative explorations of culture and consumerism, Pope.L’s Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet. It aims to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

There are two ways to contribute objects to the Factory on what Pope.L calls “Check Days” (the term refers to both the idea of checking in with someone and “the day of celebration in working-class culture when the check arrives,” Pope.L says). Some participants choose to have their items photographed and published in an archive on the World Wide Web.

Others donate the objects outright. When the mobile Factory is operating in 2004-05, some of those objects will tour with it and others will be pulverized and turned into new products offered for sale in the Factory’s gift shop.

The Black Factory is “aimed at anyone interested in issues of what makes us different,” explains Pope.L, a lecturer in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ theater and rhetoric department. “Calling it the Black Factory is just a way of making it concrete. It’s not specifically for black people — it’s using the black experience as a funnel to talk about difference.”

Anyone is welcome at the Nov. 13 Check Day. It’s the third at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½; another took place in Portland. Objects brought to prior Check Days have included quilts, photographs, jewelry — and birthmarks.

Chris Schiff of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ library staff submitted the identical birthmarks he and his daughter have on their arms. “It’s something that connects him with his daughter, so he sees it as this amazing, positive thing,” says Julie Hammond, a 2003 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate and Pope.L’s assistant with the project.

“When his daughter was born, the doctors wanted to remove it,” she adds. “But he showed the doctors that he had the identical one and said, ‘Oh, no, it’s not a problem at all. It just runs in the family.’ ”

While Pope.L and Hammond are building a virtual Black Factory on the Web, the factory’s touring manifestation is also under construction: a truck that, oddly reminiscent of an old-time medicine show, will go from town to town in 2004 and 2005. Working with designers in the Portland area, Pope.L is fitting out the truck with expandable bays for a library, pulverizer and gift shop.

First stop: the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the cutting-edge institution that, since it opened in 1999, has revitalized both a derelict complex of 19th-century factory buildings and the city of North Adams.

The Black Factory is supported by grants from the Rockefeller and Creative Capital foundations and the Mellon Foundation Summer Research Apprenticeship Program at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. Ideas are products too, he says, and “the notions that we have about these things are part of a marketing of what we are. So the educated consumer should be critical about how ideas are marketed. ‘What’s on the market’ may not be the only things available.”

With past works that have included crawling through the streets of major cities, eating and regurgitating the Wall Street Journal, and mapping the United States in hot dogs, Pope.L is no stranger to controversy. Yet the ideas behind the works are invariably sophisticated and enduring, and the strength of his concepts has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for eRacism, a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York. Pope.L has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for 12 years.

“Tales of the Lost Formicans,” told by aliens who look just like people, is a warm, quirky story of a family trying to cope with the father’s case of Alzheimer’s disease. Question-and-answer sessions will follow the Nov. 7, 8, 13 and 14 performances.

Directed by William Pope.L, a performance artist and lecturer in theater at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, all performances will be in Schaeffer Theatre. General admission is $6 and $3 for students and seniors. The Schaeffer Theatre box office opens one hour prior to performances. Call 207-786-6161 Monday-Friday, 3-5 p.m. for more ticket information.

“Bingo,” written in 1974 by British playwright Edward Bond, speculates on how the great Bard’s wealth and fame prevented him from fully loving both family members and humanity. Directed by William Pope.L of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater department, the production portrays Shakespeare, a wealthy landowner, as an absentee father engaged in a difficult relationship with his daughter, Judith.

“Bond has taken a revered superstar of the 17th century and imaginatively re-examined his life as a lesson to all of us today,” Pope.L said. “The story is not about Shakespeare but about us and how we must not lose sight of what is really important: people, not profits; children, not obedience; love, not security.”

Pope.L has set Bond’s play between the 17th and 20th centuries. The director considers Shakespeare “a 17th century Elvis, a successful superstar who wakes up one day to find himself all dressed up with no place to go,” Pope.L said.

The production will be set predominantly in Shakespeare’s time with resonant references to the 20th century, including a peasant rock ‘n roll jam about medieval Christianity and death.

The play features three senior theater majors at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½: Gregory T. Arata of Bangor as Old Man/Ben Jonson, Margaret Hopper of Brielle, N.J. as Judith and Steven Young of Concord, Mass. as Shakespeare.

As a tribute to Lewiston’s working class culture, Pope.L has re-worked and included French-Canadian step-dance routines as an integral part of the play’s peasant culture. “I hope to provide the audience with an entertaining theater experience which is adventurous, multi-cultural, timely and fun,” he said.

William Matthews, of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ music department, has composed original music for the production. Marcy Plavin, of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater department, provides the choreography. Josh Williamson and Barbara Rodgers, both of the theater department, provide the lighting and set design respectively. Jennifer Moore ’96 of Rindge, N.H. has designed the costumes.

For further information , call the box office at 207-786-6161.