The United Congress is a long-standing artist collective active in Calgary, Alberta from the late 1980s to the present day. The group combines conceptual art, silkscreen, music, constructed language, abstraction, and anti-art in its activities. Alberta visual artist and original Congress member Lisa Brawn describes the group as "interested in dadaist instigation, politics, intense productivity, anonymity and relentless propagandizing” . Beginnings The United Congress was formed in 1988 at the Alberta College of Art and Design, by White-Field Senate, who is the group's longest-standing member . Membership in the collective was loosely knit and fluid. Earliest collective members were White-Field Senate, Lisa Brawn, Doug Nachtigall, Catherine Fisher, Connie Lambrecht, Andrea Ford, Elmer Xavier and Richard F. . Milo Dlouhy, Conroy Nachtigall, Kenneth Doren and Richard Cole also made contributions to the United Congress in its early days, and Dlouhy and Doren continued to be involved in Collective projects. Yuriko Iga, one-time director of Blim Gallery in Vancouver, also contributed to the United Congress' later projects in Calgary. Early Projects The House of Israel The House of Israel was an art event held in response to the vandalism of a former downtown Calgary Synagogue by members of the Final Solution Skinheads, who covered the front of the building with white supremacist graffiti in November 1989. The show made statements opposing racist and anti-Semitic violence in Calgary, using music and visual art. The House of Israel show was set up shortly after the vandalism, at ACAD. The Castration of St. Paul The Congress' most notable public show was The Castration of St. Paul, at the Nickle Arts Museum on the University of Calgary campus in February/March, 1991. Castration was intended to critique what The United Congress called the patriarchal nature of Christianity, and the show created "a virulent reaction" in the local press. "The Castration of St. Paul" featured thirty low-resolution colour xerox enlargements of Polaroid photographs of naked male torsos. Each enlargement was carefully framed and labeled with the name of a historic Christian religious figure, including the twelve Apostles, seven Old Testament Prophets, five early Christian Saints, the Trinity, John the Baptist, Martin Luther, and Pope John Paul II. Also part of the exhibit was a public lounge area featuring select pamphlets and literature promoting Christian organizations who espoused traditional values which the collective considered to be encouraging the subordination of females in family and public life. Other Projects Early