Love Abide With You, The Birthplace Quilts - Philadelphia Fringe Festival

Love Abide With You, The Birthplace Quilts

mike durkin projects

Interactive Experience, Interdisciplinary, Storytelling & Spoken Word, Visual Arts

A series of performative quilts exploring the concept of “birthplace”
by mike durkin

What does it mean to be an American today? What does it mean to be born and reside in the birthplace of America?

Love Abide With You is a performance and quilting project looking at those questions. mike will be working with members of the Kensington area community in story-sharing circles on the concept of birthplace. Participants will collaborate to create a series of performative quilts. This process will culminate in an airing of the quilts, as well as a story-sharing event where audience members can contribute to the final quilts.

With each participant making a square symbolic of the concept of ‘birthplace’ all of these squares will be sewn together to make a series of quilts. Participants will share stories, memories, hopes, and dreams of the Philadelphia landscape. Thinking about where we were, where we are, and where the city is heading.

The project is ultimately about slowing down and being present with each other. We will engage in conversations of the past, the history of the birthplace of America, while also dreaming about the future, how to bring new life into this world. But this is a project that keeps us grounded, all hand-sewn, process-driven, building of community. As we see the country gearing up with the 250th anniversary, American fervor has and will continue to run high. Meaning, there will be a deeper sense of “American pride” prioritizing a pro-American narrative. This project confronts and challenges this narrative, finding a balance between celebrating and critiquing what it means to be American today.

This will all lead to a series of community quilts reflective and referencing the Kensington area in vacant lots, parks, or other spaces in the neighborhood with participants sharing their stories around birthplace. The airing of the quilts will occur at parks and will combine poetry, live-quilting, dance and ritual.

Details

Run Time: 80 mins

Ticket Price: FREE (PWYW)

Venue: Kensington Corridor Trust Garden

Dates: September 18, 2026 - September 19, 2026

Buy Tickets

September 18, 2026 6.00pm

3238 Kensington Ave

General Admission: FREE (PWYW)

September 19, 2026 3.00pm

3238 Kensington Ave

General Admission: FREE (PWYW)

About the Artist

mike durkin (he/him/y’all) is a multidisciplinary social practice performance artist based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and travels throughout the country. The intersection between art and the everyday guides mike. 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 has taught and led artistic projects at the Future Fresh Farm in Charleston, SC, West Chester University, UNC-Asheville, UPENN, University of Rochester, LSU in Baton Rouge, LA, with Reed College in Portland, OR, the Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn, the University of Arkansas Design Department, the Broad Art Museum and Department of Theatre at Michigan State University, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center at the University of Houston, the Performance Studies program at Texas A&M University, with the College of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences at the University of Central Arkansas, Mural Arts Philadelphia and the Color Me Back Studio, Brandywine River Museum, Barnes Foundation, Mt. Moriah Cemetery, the Life Do Grow Farm, and in parks, churches, and fields, diners, virtually. mike has held residencies with Revolve Art Gallery in Asheville, NC, Space at Ryder Farm, Drop Forge and Tool, the Hambidge Arts Center in Rabun Gap, GA, and the Greenhouse Lab with The Orchard Project. mike is part of the 2017 MFA in Devised Performance class with Pig Iron Theatre Company/University of the Arts. For more information, www.mikedurkin.info

Accessibility & Content Considerations

Contact the Fringe Festival Box Office for up to date accessibility information.

This event is appropriate for all ages

Audience Interaction

Outside experience. Little seating options.

Covid-19 Safety policy

This event does not require masks to be worn