Saturday November 13th, 2010 3-6pm

Socially engaged art; political art; critical art; community art; public art; conceptual art; relational art – no matter what you call it, there is no question that a lot of artistic practices at the intersection of community, politics and everyday life are taking place in Chicago today (and have been for quite some time!). A group of us (Temporary Services, Stephanie Smith, Rebecca Zorach, Abby Satinsky, Lori Waxman, Daniel Tucker, Jerome Grand, Dan S. Wang and others) have been talking about getting folks involved in this kind of work locally together for an event where we would talk about what kind of work we have been involved in and observing taking place in the city and how it could best be archived for us and future generations to access. We didn’t want to get everyone in a room with a pre-determined shape already in place and so our hope is that this event would allow us to all brainstorm collaboratively about what kind of categories would best represent the current and historical artistic activities we want to document. And since we are getting folks together, it also seemed like we should spread out lotsed of materials for folks to look at and get a sense of together, and for some interviews to be conducted in a video-interview booth about discreet histories of Chicago arts.

A couple of projects have already been conceived of (potentially library special collections, a museum collection at the Smart Museum and the Van Abbemuseum) and plans are underway for a book that Daniel Tucker received funding through the Propeller Fund to create and we want to know about what else people might want to do. There is no point in putting lots of energy and work into building a history if the people involved in that history cannot be a part of conceptualizing how it should be presented to the world. That is what we want to do together on Nov 13th.

Please come and bring a collaborator.

Bring ephemera from projects past that you want to share with other people!