I’ll be spinning for the opening of this… The record store is completely modular and made to encourage the kind of listening-based cultural interchange that makes record stores awesome. Over 4,000 records on loan from community members’ collections. None of them are for sale, but visitors can listen to them all: from “Belly Dancing Favorites” to the Moody Blues to Earth, Wind, & Fire.
Record Store — an installation presented by Seattle Art Museum in collaboration with [storefront] Olson Kundig Architects (MacDowell architect Tom Kundig’s firm) — December 13th in Seattle! Attempting to remove the barrier between artist and audience, Record Store encourages the community to participate in the curation of this Olson Kundig Architects-designed traveling installation. Record Store is on view at Olson Kundig Architects (406 Occidental Ave., Seattle, WA 98104) from December 13 to January 31, 2012, Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. An opening event will be held on December 13, 2011 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm. Special DJ listening parties will take place during the installation’s run.
I am perhaps best known for spinning classic Chicago Soul records, but on Thursday, October 27, I plan to play cuts from the trippier and (even) grittier side of my Chicago Music collection. I will also feature what I like to call the Rock Hand Side of things.
Artists like Rotary Connection (pictured above), Hudsen Bay Company, New Colony Six, Howlin Wolf, Young Turks, Elmore James, Spanky and Our Gang, Lost Generation, Magic Sam, Five Stairsteps, The Family, Shadows of Knight, The Buckinghams, John Klemmer, Bobby Rush, Little Milton, Junior Wells, Aesops Fables, Baby Huey and the Babysitters, Syl Johnson, and much much more will be on deck. Of course, all will be spun on vinyl. Jive on!
(above, taken by me during Dorchester Projects’ Summer Daycamp, 2011)
The last installment of The Dorchester Projects’ Outdoor Home Movie Film Festival is this Thursday, August 11th at 9pm and will feature Live Musical Accompaniment… Sounds like a fantastic way to spend the last little chump change of summer. Organizers request you RSVP to dorchester.projects@gmail.com.
Featuring work by LTAB all-stars, alumni, and co-creator Kevin Coval Friday, August 5 & 6, 2011 7:30pm Zacek McVay Theater
TWO NIGHTS ONLY!
This will be one of the most exciting nights at the Victory Gardens this summer!
Don’t miss out on ENGLISH CLASS HERETICS: LOUDER THAN A BOMB IN CONCERT! The stage artists from the largest and most explosive youth poetry slam in the world, Chicago’s own Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB) will take over Victory Gardens with an evening of great performances.
This exclusive concert presentation features the best LTAB performances from recent years as well as performances by LTAB staff, teaching artists and alumni (including poets from the critically acclaimed LTAB documentary.)
The Ladies Ring Shout as a Performance was born of a weekly workshop, dialoguing space, and “jam session” for women.
Participants talked, wrote and moved in the spirit of collaborative experimentation and explored what an urban feminine discourse looks and feels like. What are our notions of an Urban Feminine? What is her legacy to/for future women/humans? What defines the urban woman’s community?
LRS is comprised of three core members Felicia Holman, Abra Johnson and Meida McNeal, who proclaim:
Performance is our therapy, our catharsis, our way to community. Performance is the haven that welcomes us to rediscover our own value and worth. Performance and expression bring our dormant, unsaid emotions to the surface and urge us to work them out within a community that not only bears witness, but also empathizes through experience.
dance locally to vintage sounds culled from Dorchester Projects’ Dr. Wax Collection heavily leaning on music that ‘jus grew’ out of our community: this friday, june 24th, 7pm til 10pm.
bring your favorite summertime dish to share with friends
"Scorched Earth" (2006), The Artist pictured in Foreground
So, I am totally late on this one… which is inexcusable really, because I was at the Opening of the exhibition. Least I could have done is pub it. But, alas….
Mark Bradford‘s Exhibition currently on view at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art is a Retrospective that really gives a sense of the artist’s use of layers to establish history and depth in his work. A number of the pieces displayed (like “Strawberry”, [pictured below]) feature small square wrapping papers (the sort used in beauty parlors to augment rollers) as a medium. One particular work utilizes sun faded wheatpaste movie posters. A good measure of his materials are, in fact, well known residents of his neighborhood, and his work whispers of larger community-based issues. Some of his work even echos Topographical maps.
In part due to his works’ scale, and in part due to his use of texture, his work needs to be seen in person, rather than in print or on a screen.
On the Collaborative tip, during this past year, the Artist was Skyping and Zipping back and forth between his homebase of Los Angeles and our fair city working with youth from both Lindblom Math and Science Academy in West Englewood and the YOUMedia Program at the Harold Washington Library culminating in a well received Pop-Up Gallery exhibition of the Students’ work. The exhibition (a part of the MCA-backed Mark Bradford Project) dealt with issues of community and mapping, while using a variety of mediums. Many of the students agreed that they learned as much about life as they did about artistic practice from Bradford, who beautifully validated the burgeoning voices of the self-proclaimed “Art Kids”.
Mark Bradford’s work will be on display at the MCA from May 28-September 18, 2011
Visit us at Theaster Gates’ Dorchester Projects (recently featured in the Chicago Reader) this Friday Night (June 3rd from 7p-9p), as well as on Sunday, June 12th, from 3p-5p. Come with a story about how music has impacted your life….
About the Dorchester Projects:
Dorchester Projects seeks to explore the ways in which thoughtful spaces committed to art, public education, design, and advocacy can contribute to the cultural and economic redevelopment of a neighborhood.
“[Gates] says: I was always making art that was asking questions about the city, and why the city functioned the way it did. How does cultural and economic disparity happen? How can we fight it? I was trying to present these questions in the form of little abandoned ceramic houses and drawings or performances that spoke to the issue. And I just got tired of pointing a finger at it and wanted to actually do something about it, challenge it in a real way.” — Chicago Reader, June 2, 2011
This Month, Chicago welcomes back both springtime and Versionfest (BTW, I think I saw a daffodil on South Shore Drive the other day).
Organized by the good folks behind local Arts & Culture publication Lumpen, the Fest runs from April 22nd until May 1st in Bridgeport (a neighborhood that’s been going through a lot of changes in recent years). Speaking of change, according to their website:
These years of recession, insolvency, uncertainty, and calamity have affected us
in ways we couldn’tve imagined before.
…But there is hope… Version 11 is a
celebration of the Chicago communities — projects, spaces, groups, individuals
– creating their own strategies for participatory economies, co-prosperity,
and the pursuit of genuine happiness. Version will demonstrate the possible,
celebrate the impossible, and showcase the ingenuity, spirit and passion that
create The Community we aspire to take part in together. This is an invitation
to share your community, your goals, your dreams for a better Community of the
Future. It’s all we have left.
I’ll be spinning for the opening of this… The record store is completely modular and made to encourage the kind of listening-based cultural interchange that makes record stores awesome. Over 4,000 records on loan from community members’ collections. None of them are for sale, but visitors can listen to them all: from “Belly Dancing Favorites” to the Moody Blues to Earth, Wind, & Fire.
