http://www.versionfest.com/
This by far is definitely one of the things I am most excited about during the upcoming months. During the 10 day springtime art festival a series of parades, seminars, shows, performances, anything you can think of are enacted to facilitate discussion and create a space for people to come together. I have been following the Version Fest blog for the last month, checking up on updates about proposals and programming. Another fellow Art Theory and Practice student, Allison Putnam and I put together a brief proposal for the Mobile art projects category involving a mobile "waste management" cart that was designed to take excess food that is otherwise discarded by food establishments and redistribute it by creating traveling picnics. These picnics would take place in communities that are overlooked or neglected. For example, I have been interested in the areas of Chicago that are neglected by the El and how these communities are shaped by the concentration of El stops and access to public transportation or lack there of. These picnics would then hopefully create a safe place for people to come together, share food, stories, and interact with one another to create a kind of biographical map of the neighborhood.
More specifically I am going to check out the The NFO XPO, Shelter Corps, & Free University + MORE program which takes place at The Benton House complex, 3052 S Gratten Avenue. It's several things all in one really, an exploration of Chicago's architectural history and construction, a public platform for people to discuss radical art movements, and a show on "experimental material reuse" all rolled into one.
Lastly, plan to participate in the Chicago Art Parade. It sounds like a more fun, and maybe more active form of Critical Mass.
2. Adventureland (Film 2009)
I unexpectedly found myself standing in line to purchase a ticket for this film last Friday night. I vaguely remembered hearing about it, and had maybe seen one or two trailers on television. So as surprised as I was to find myself situated uncomfortably in a dingy movie theater seat ( I find them filthy, I think it's a combination of the weird stains and overwhelming smell of buttered popcorn. I also resent movie theaters for their overpriced ICEEs ) I was equally pleasantly surprised by the film. It narrates the experience James Brennan, a recent college graduate, has when he is forced to apply for a dead-end job at a local carnival to help finance a trip to Europe. Though it is set in 1987, even before I was born, his struggles are very much the same as the ones I expect to experience as soon as I graduate and am no longer able to rely on my status as as "student" to exempt me from life's expectations. Without exposing too much about the plot and outcome, I found it very refreshing, witty, quiet in its gestures, and definitely worth watching.
3. Gay -Marriage passed in Vermont
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
This last presidential election was the first major election for which I was eligible to vote. I registered as a voter for Evanston, IL, thinking that it would not make much of a difference whether or not my vote was cast here or as absentee in Los Angeles, CA. We're both blue states right? But aside from the huge victory achieved with Obama's election, the passage of Prop 8 in California was a devastating reminder that while you seem to make progress some things and some people are unwilling to change.
I feel that though there is a sense of safety and optimism that Obama brings to a table that is both fantastic and reassuring, we cannot let the large victories completely wipe out the fact that we did have losses as well and need to continue to fight for them. It is good to know that some states are questioning their policies on same-sex marriage and civil unions. Recent legalization of same-sex marriage in both Iowa and Vermont will hopefully inspire more states to reevaluate their own structures even if change needs to come one state at a time.
4. 'Touching' exhibition opens in Taiwan
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=915278&lang=eng_news
Honestly I am still not sure what to make of this. I just stumbled upon it when I was thinking about Dan Cameron's art biennial, Prospect 1 New Orleans, and then about the biennial he had in Taipei many years ago. I almost volunteered at the Prospect 1 biennial, then decided that the works of art being exhibited as a whole weren't compelling enough but this is all besides the point. What weirds me out the most about this is, the article states that the works being exhibited are exact replicas of the works in the Louvre in size, scale, and materiality. But doesn't the fact that it is a duplicate, a fake, strip the work of its content, character, and meaning? Doesn't that mean that all you are doing at this show is feeling cold marble? It wasn't made the same way, very likely with machinery. It just seems slightly ironic, but then again, I am not totally sure. There just seems to be something a little perverse or strange about it all. Maybe I'm just not used to it or being too cynical.
5. Orangette
http://www.orangette.blogspot.com
This is the latest food blog I follow. The author of this award-winning blog is Molly Wizenberg, who is also the newly published author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table. I've only recently begun to follow food blogs (it's a new obsession), and this is one of my favorites. There is such a sense of ease in her narration and something really beautiful and distant in her photography. I think she is living my dream.
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