Chicago Centric Work
Over the last 10 years I have produced a number of projects focused on the conditions of the city itself. The city I live in has been the lens through which I have attempted to understand contemporary issues ranging from neoliberal economic policies to the political potential of art and the power of social movements. These efforts include:
- AREA Chicago: A publication and event series focused on the intersections of art, research, education and activism in Chicago. I worked on this project from 2005-2010 and helped co-organized the production of 10 magazine issues and hundreds of events across the city. The online archive and ongoing work of AREA can be found here areachicago.org
- Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago: Working with collaborators from AREA, I launched this mapping initiative where hundreds of Chicagoans were invited to make their own maps about their impressions or specialized knowledge of the city they live, work and play in. The project inspired similar efforts in over 15 other international cities and was featured in the touring exhibition Experimental Geography. A book about the project is currently in the works and many of the maps can be found on flickr here and from exhibitions here.
- Contested Chicago Bus Tours: From 2005-2008 I gave bus-tours of contested histories in Chicago as part of the University of Chicago Masters in Social Sciences orientation. The tour was two and a half hours long, 32 miles and focused on the intersections of incarceration, displacement, migration with a strong emphasis on local social movement history. The tour was tailored to social science graduate students who were new to Chicago and looking for research subjects and ways to be socially useful graduate students. Much of the research for the tour was presented in a map/timeline presented in the print edition 3rd issue of AREA Chicago (designed by Dave Pabellon).
- Chicago Torture Justice Memorials - an effort I support as an advisory group member and webmaster. See torturememorial.wordpress.com
- 5 Questions about Art in Chicago: Developed out of the Town Hall Talks project I co-organized with Nato Thompson and Creative Time – this interview project focused on 5 questions of concern to 40 socially and politically engaged artists in Chicago. The transcripts are here 5questions.areachicago.org
- Critical Art in Chicago – 5 Part Series for H-Art Magazine: Inspired by the incredible response from the 5 Questions project, this series of articles attempted to frame key issues surrounding social/political art in Chicago for an outside audience. The texts were presented over the course of a year in the international section of the Belgian magazine H-Art and focused on history, groups and spaces, institutions, media, and community building led by individuals.
- Visions for Chicago: A public art project launched upon the fall 2010 announcement that Mayor Daley would not be seeking re-election after his reign of 22 years in office and taking place over the subsequent months when activists tried to re-imagine what the city could be and candidates competed for the vacated position. Over 50 people throughout Chicago made their own election signs about their long-term visions for the city as part of this effort, as well as a class of high school students from West Humboldt Park. Additionally, I made my own installations of yard signs in public spaces throughout the city. The documentation and writing from this project was compiled into a book by Green Lantern Press and released the day that Daley’s replacement, Rahm Emanuel, took office. See the project website here.
- CHAos: A campaign launched on behalf of affordable housing activists and concerned residents of Chicago that attempted to address the privatization of public bus shelters for advertising in parallel to a public relations campaign by the public housing authority attempting to neutralize the social consequences of their mass eviction of public housing residents through the so-called Plan for Transformation. Check out a video here.
- Daley Village: A response to corporate-public art campaigns like Sweet Home Chicago and the Cows on Parade, Daley Village attempted to intervene in the media by installing a shanty town of shacks with statistics about loss of affordable housing under the first decade of Mayor Daley’s administration in one of over 20,000 empty lots in the possession of city government.
- Trashing the Neoliberal City: A publication co-edited with Emily Forman dealing with art projects in Chicago that took place between 2000-2005 including: Pioneer Renewal Trust, Daley Village, Principality of Podmajersky, Artists Against Artist Housing, Real World Protests, CHAos, Haymarket 8-Hour Action Series, God Bless Graffiti Coalition, Pink Bloque, Department of Space and Land Reclamation, Feel Tank Chicago, Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, Pilot TV, Autonomous Territories of Chicago, ASK ME!, and iNfo-eXpo. The publication was developed during a month-long residency at the Learning Site in Copenhagen (Denmark) and is available here for download or in print through Half Letter Press for $7.
Collective Research:
- Neoliberal Cities
- History of the Left
- Chicago Critical Art
- Continental Drift
- Inquiry to Action Group: Chicago Movement Building Center
- Bad Jobs in Goods Movement – a collaboration between AREA Chicago and Warehouse Workers for Justice
Cooperatives:
A significant part of my time and practice has involved forming and contributing to groups, communities and cooperatives. I enjoy the challenges and benefits posed by working in groups and feed off of the collective creativity. Here are a few of the groupings I have been involved with over the years:
- Chicago Torture – Justice Memorials Project advisory board
- Chicago Coffee Confederation (Ongoing – Small coffee roasting group that shares resources)
- In These Times (Ongoing – An office cooperative and art gallery)
- Dill Pickle Food Coop (Grocery store which I have participated in since its early stages)
- Spaulding Collective (Ongoing – An affordable housing cooperative where I live)
- StreetRec (Graphics and media collective known for producing “heads” graphics and the Retooling Dissent documentary between 2001-2003)
- Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor (Loose-knit group of artists and activists living in the midwest of the US)
- Counter Productive Industries (Loose-knit group of Chicago artists from 2000-2005)
- Orientation Center (Office cooperative and cultural center shared with AREA Chicago, InCUBATE and Chicago Underground Library from 2009-2010)
- AREA Chicago (Founder and Editor from 2005-2010)
- Art and the Public Sphere Journal (Advisory Board 2010-2011)
- Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (Advisory Board 2003-2004)
- Gapers Block (Contributors Board 2007)
- ThreeWalls SOLO (Selection Committee 2008-09)
- Version-Fest (Organizer, 2004)
- UCIRA (Staff member and organizational structure consultant)
Educational Research:
- How We Learn
- AREA Chicago
- University of California Institute for Research in the Arts
- Mixing It Up - Study Guide
- Chicago Public Schools – Editing the education section of City as Lab; Interviews with Jesse Senechal and Maura Nugent on the Myth of School Choice; Pauline Lipman and Eric Rico Gustein on Teachers for Social Justice; and editorial support for Notes on the Political Economy of Charter Schools by Eric Triantafillou
Food and Ecology:
- Farm Together Now - The book and blog! Launched in 2010.
- Food Sovereignty - A video I produced with the National Family Farm Coalition
- Fooday – A day long festival of food and art organized at the Autonomous Zone in 2001 with Brett Bloom’s Alternative Curatorial Practices Class
- Creative Ecologies
- Energy Plans with Futurefarmers
- Coffee Roasting
Public Space:
Social Movement Documentaries:
Over the years I have come to understand much of what I make as “social movement documentaries” which are intended to be made by/for/with the movements they attempt to document and archive. A few of those projects are:
Urban Planning:
