...Networking
...Map Making
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Thoughts on Chicago and Working Locally
“Chicago a nexus point where people pass through and people settle. As a locally focused publication we aim to identify the influences and activities of people working and living in Chicago. As a critical publication, AREA will focus on projects/texts that represent or embody alternatives to the dominant social and political systems availalb here and elsewhere. Changing conditions in Chicago and the world require new ways of interacting, communicating, resisting and living. AREA hopes to respond to, document, critique and celebrate all this.” From Welcome to AREA issue number one Summer 2005.
“AREA is moving forward, developing a lens for looking at the world through the practices and resources of the local context of Chicago in the early part of the 21st Century.”
“AREA is not concerned with “representing” Chicago arts, education, and activism. The goal of this publication is more focused on self-representation and on documentation for the purpose of celebration, critique, historical preservation, and community building/strengthening.” .” From Inheriting the Grid, the editorial introduction to AREA #1.
“AREA will aim to be a shared space to fuel, debate, refine, express and implement our collective goals for a more desirable and livable Chicago and world.” .” From Inheriting the Grid, the editorial introduction to AREA #1.
“Our primary work is producing publications that deal with the context of Chicago. Specifically focused on the work that is happening there in the fields of art, research, education, and activism that in some way address the conditions of the city and offer up critical understandings of its past or present and struggle towards a better and more livable city for the future. Our publication, AREA Chicago, is intensely local. It was initiated as a way to network local social and cultural movements and also as a way of researching and learning from the city’s complexity and possibility. Its functions as a research project, where a theme of great importance to people living in the city (for instance – food systems, prison, privatization, social movement history, informal education have all been themes) and through spreading a call to create interviews and articles on the topic – a 40 page newspaper that documents local responses to that trend or question is produced by a team of 5 editorial group members, 15 advisors, and over 25 contributors.
In addition to the publication (you can find out more at www.areachicago.org), AREA has initiated a project called “Notes for a people’s atlas of Chicago.” This project involves producing maps that correspond to the themes of our publication, in addition to circulating a blank map of the city through our networks in order to produce subjective and focused interpretations of the city’s geography. It has been particularly important to focus our attention on the map because of the city’s vast geography that disconnects and isolates residents.
Chicago is a city that has to constantly explain its existence, it’s nickname is “second city”, it’s the biggest continental city in the US, and its constantly engaged (like most cities these days) in city-to-city competition for everything from international investment in our futures financial market and corporate headquarter relocation to enticing “creative class” entrepreneurs, academic research and tourist spending. A single family has essentially run the city for 60 years and the current mayor loves to put his name on everything and is notorious for a populist approach to politics that still sells out the working class residents. It’s a city characterized by neoliberal experiments in the interest of opening up of new markets in spheres of life previously protected or thought to be limited in their profit earning potential. The mechanisms that facilitate this experiment include deregulation of labor and markets, and the privatization of resources and services. From public schools to public housing, the city policy makers cannot resist the temptation to disinvest in the public sector at the expense of any commitment to social welfare.
It is from this kind of urban landscape that great resistance and struggle, as well as inspiring vision and strategy, have emerged and inspired us to create a publication that can support, document, critique and celebrate the kind of movements that the city needs. It is this context that has encouraged us to focus attention locally, to understand the current historical moment through the lens of one urban context. It is with this intentionally local framework, that we also have to travel and learn from intertwined and also drastically different contexts. Through our travels, we collect inspiration and knowledge to take back home.” - excerpted from How do you get from Chicago to Zagreb, an essay dealing with an attempt to reproduce AREA Chicago’s Notes for a Peoples Atlas of Chicago, in Zagreb Croatia in the summer of 2007.
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Thoughts on Networking
“On one level, AREA is an investegation into movements of resistance and creativity that are gathering force in Chicago. On another level, it is a social networking project: within the pages of the publication, through the interactions and encounters at our public events and meetings, and in the very distribution of ideas throughout the city.” From Inheriting the Grid, the editorial introduction to AREA #1.
“Part of the reason we focus on practices is because we want to learn about ideas through the lens of things people are doing, in order to have hope for the future. Part of the reason that the texts ask people to talk about things that didn’t work, or questions they have for themselves and those working around them is that we think people can benefit from sharing more about failure, and having a critical approach to each other.” – From the editorial introduction to AREA #5
“Communities of Culture and Geography: It’s often said that Chicago is a “city of neighborhoods.” What’s not always openly said is that these neighborhoods are not only rich in history and traditions, but are also divided by boundaries that often seem difficult if not impossible to bridge. Because of geography, absence of shared language, and a sense of competition for scarce resources, many groups don’t talk to one another. Major citywide cultural institutions largely serve white and wealthy residents of lakefront communities. The El offers a good illustration of this phenomenon: lines intersect in the Loop, but hardly anywhere else. Neighborhood boundaries and a lack of venues for communication have prevented the adoption of a citywide scope in most cultural and social change work.
As a publication and event organizer, AREA has developed a strategy of “roving” around the city in order to seek the most geographically diverse base of contributors, allies and audience. Every public event associated with the publication happens in a different part of the city at a different kind of cultural venue or public space. This has allowed the organization to engage different audiences, to encourage people to traverse the massive scale of the city on a regular basis, and to avoid any misperceived association with a given neighborhood or organization that could limit our audience’s or collaborator’s understanding of our project.” – From AREA Chicago’s first grant proposal.
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Thoughts on Map Making
“At the recent international meeting of the Peoples Global Action (PGA) alternative globalization network in Haridwar (India), there was an explicit call for pga-affiliated groups to literally map themselves on the globe. Articulating the scale of its own organization and the various relationships to local contexts across the globe, the amorphous pga can better understand its own makeup, shape and potential impact.1 Being aware of the scale on which our work takes place, and the scale at which we hope to intervene, is essential in evaluating our impact, and in reexamining what’s at stake in our struggles and our praxis. Our goals determine our scale.” – From the editorial introduction to AREA #3.
