AREA Chicago's Public Program Series for Pedagogical Factory: Exploring Strategies for an Educated City exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC), 5020 S. Cornell Ave.

Schedule Summary:

===========July===========

Sunday 7.22      
3pm-5pm How We Make a Pedagogical Factory (Opening Event)
      
Wednesday 7.25      
How We Remember
w/ Chicago Underground Library and other local archivists
      
Saturday 7.28      
How We Learn: Building an Educated City
w/ Mess Hall, Platypus, Free Geek, Chicagoland/Calument Underground Railroad Efforts, Bronzeville Historical Society, Chicago Women's Health Clinic, African Diaspora, The Odyssey Project, and more. Co-sponsored by Neighborhood Writing Alliance & Journal of Ordinary Thought
Free Food Will Be Served
+ Please join us at night for another event: Temporary Services "Group Work" book release @ Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone, near the corner of 61st and Dorchester in Woodlawn/Hyde Park) at 7:30pm.
      
===========August===========

Wednesday  8.1  
How We Remember: Oral Historians
 w/ Stephen Haymes and other oral historians
      
Saturday 8.4      
11am-1pm How We Move Workshop w/ Meredith and Lavie Raven
11am-1pm How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook w/ Stockyard Institute
      
Wednesday 8.8  
How We (and also I) Make and Tell Stories About What We Do
w/ Andrew Patterson (Visiting Artist from Finland)
      
Saturday 8.11      
12-3pm How We Peoples Make a People's Atlas of Chicago
w/ Daniel Tucker/Dave Pabellon aka The Speculators from AREA Chicago
Free Food Served
11-1pm How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook w/ Stockyard Institute
      
Wednesday 8.15  
How We Grow: Self-Education and Urban Farming Gathering
w/ Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester and Nicholas Wisniewski (Visiting Artists from Baltimore)
      
Saturday 8.18      
How We Listen
w/ Lou Mallozzi and Christina Kubisch (Visiting Artist from Germany)
11am-1pm How We Sound: Audio Workshop w/ Jesse Seay                
                
Wednesday 8.22
How We Use Vacant Spaces:
Screening of Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger's Film "Not Anymore - Not Yet"

Saturday 8.25      
How We Teach
w/ Various Artists, Activists and Educators
11am-1pm How We Make Educational Posters
w/ Watie White
      
Wednesday 8.29  
How We Felt
w/ Feel Tank Chicago

===========September===========
      
Saturday 9.1      
1pm
How We Brew/Bake/Mead Etc Cottage Expo @ Experimental Station
 (6100 S. Blackstone, near the corner of 61st and Dorchester in Woodlawn/Hyde Park).
+ How We Think Walking tour related to John Dewey history in Hyde Park (Meet outside HPAC at 11am)             
      
Wednesday 9.5  
How We Celebrate Peoples History
w/ Josh MacPhee of JustSeeds
How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook
w/ Stockyard Institute

Saturday 9.8
How We Build: Education and the Built Environment

Wednesday 9.12  
How We Listen
w/ Vocalo.org Producers

Saturday 9.15      
How We Make a Disorientation Guide to Our University
w/ Local University Activists
11am-1pm How We Engage w/ Anne Elizabeth Moore
      
Wednesday 9.19  
How We Fund
w/ Kristen Cox of Fire This Time Fund and guests
      
Saturday 9.22      
How We use AREA Chicago as a pedagogical experiment and also move towards an independent political and cultural education network in Chicago

PLUS Time/Place TBA

How We Coordinate w/ Local Independent Media Organizations
How We More Effectively Network Local Critical Culture 
How We Make Sense of Ren2010 and the Privatization of Chicago Schools

=============Details==========

===========July===========

Sunday 7.22       
How We Make a Pedagogical Factory (Opening Event)
Come check out the Pedagogical Factory: Exploring Strategies for an Educated City exhibit featuring works by:
Counter Cartography Collective, Justseeds, Stockyard Institute, Temporary Services, Andrew Paterson, Rum 46, ArtLink UK, Journal of Ordinary Thought and more.
       
Wednesday 7.25   
How We Remember
w/ Chicago Underground Library and other local archivists

CUL is a location-specific library of independent works from the area. Including anything and everything, regardless of perceived quality or importance, the collection uses the local context to bridge gaps between content, format, and commercial viability while encouraging cross-pollination in collaboration and research. http://www.underground-library.org, info@underground-library.org

CUL coordinator Nell Taylor presents items from the collection to illustrate the reasoning behind the CUL's atypical, highly detailed (and unscientifically approved) approach to indexing a community's creativity and the impact that access to unfiltered data can have on how we remember.
       
Saturday 7.28       
How We Learn: Building an Educated City
w/ Mess Hall, Platypus, Free Geek, Chicagoland/Calument Underground Railroad Efforts, Bronzeville Historical Society, Chicago Women's Health Clinic, African Diaspora, The Odyssey Project, and more.

You are invited to join a discussion with a panel featuring representatives of local educational initiatives committed to cultural learning for adults in Chicago. These organizations and projects operate outside of traditional paradigms such as ESL/GED and professional skill development. We hope to highlight a range of important work happening in the city and encourage new participation in those efforts where it is appropriate. Additionally, by showcasing innovative cultural education for adults, we will gain a better sense what possibilities are currently available to adults seeking stimulation outside of traditional educational settings and better understand what this means for all of our efforts and our city.

This public forum was made possible in part by the Illinois Humanities Council.       

===========August===========

Wednesday  8.1   
How We Remember: Oral Historians
w/ Stephen Haymes and other oral historians

What is the role of oral history in contemporary social movements? Come hear about new oral history projects and bring ideas or stories about your own.

Stephen Haymes is the author of the book Race, Culture and the City: Pedagogy for Black Urban Struggle, published by State University of New York Press. In 1996, his book received a national award from the Gustavus Myers Center at Boston College for "The Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in North America". He is currently working on a new book that will be published by Roman and Littlefield Publishers, titled Pedagogy of Our Ancestors: The Existential Wisdom of African-American Slave Culture.

Saturday 8.4       
How We Move Workshop w/ Meredith Haggerty and Lavie Raven

How We Move will be a workshop in movement and how it relates to social movements. The workshop leaders have been brought together by the University of Hip Hop, which has been doing movement education in the city for over 15 years. Contact haggerty@uchicago.edu for more information.

How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook
w/ Stockyard Institute

The Pedagogical Sketchbook began as an obsessive compilation of ideas and lessons, that stood in stark contrast to the typical offerings most adolescents were exposed to in their school art space. The project which now includes an audio curriculum is growing as artists, thinkers, map makers, socialites, ex students, construction workers, priests, addicts and ideologues to name only few have joined in making contributions to what will be presented as a new high school art textbook. The project will be published on demand and developed as an online resource. One copy of the project will be sent to every high school art department in Illinois.  factory07@gmail.com

Jim Duignan is an artist, educator and  activist and drives the collaborative artist project Stockyard Institute. Duignan directs Visual Arts Education at DePaul University in Chicago and works as an advisor to AREA Chicago: Art, Research, Education & Activism.
URL/website: http://www.stockyardinstitute.org

Wednesday 8.8   
How We (and also I) Make and Tell Stories About What We Do
w/ Andrew Gryf Patterson (Artist in Residence)

Calling All Storytellers! Find out what Andrew has been doing and where he is going!
From Andrew Paterson: My artist-organiser practice involves working in variable roles of initiator, participant, author and curator, according to different collaborative and cross-disciplinary processes. Recently, these roles have operated inbetween the fields of media or environmental activism, participatory and socially-engaged arts; where I like to engage with a devised workshop, situation, or performative event. url: http://agryfp.info

This residency period will be dedicated to exploring, refining and abstracting how other people - individuals and collectives - in the Pedagogical Factory process, make and tell stories about their projects and processes.  I will explore how the 'special embassy' and 'bare-bones' storymaking/telling can help.
       
Saturday 8.11       
How We Peoples Make a People's Atlas of Chicago
w/ Daniel Tucker/Dave Pabellon aka The Speculators
Free Food Day

Calling all mapmakers, radical historians, informal researchers and citizens with good memory!
How can we use maps to remember? What do we want to remember? Notes for a People's Atlas presents maps of the blank outline of the political border of the city. For this event we will get together and look at a map archive that was created on a recent trip to Zagreb, Croatia by AREA Chicago editors Daniel Tucker and Dave Pabellon. The other map archive is AREA's ongoing collection of Chicago maps by local artists, educators, students and activists. Please come and add your map to the archive! Because maps are never finished and only tell part of a story. Because they are visual tools for sharing with others. Because they can be produced by many people and combined together to tell stories about complex relationships. Because power exists in space, struggle exists in space, and we exist in space. Because we cannot we know where we are going if we don't know where we are from.

How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook
w/ Stockyard Institute (see August 4 description)
       
Wednesday 8.15   
How We Grow: Self-Education and Urban Farming Gathering
w/ Baltimore visiting artists    Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester and Nicholas Wisniewski

We will prepare a powerpoint slide show of the urban farming project we are working on in Baltimore which can serve as a point of departure for a conversation on many issues, from self-education and urban farming to land reclamation and community-based urban planning.
       
Saturday 8.18       
How We Listen
w/ Lou Mallozzi and Christina Kubisch

How We Listen will pair two important and very active audio artists, Lou Mallozzi and Christina Kubisch. Both will discuss their works - from projects performed throughout the world and provide insights to sound ideas, the nature of their work and to their vast audio networks.

Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 for the production and promotion of innovative approaches to the sonic arts. The mission of ESS is to make audio technology accessible and affordable as well as to encourage the creative process.

Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as magnetic induction to realize her installations. Since 1986 she has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound. Her work displays an artistic development which is often described as the "synthesis of arts" - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other.
 
Lou Mallozzi is Director of Experimental Sound Studio, responsible for general administration, fundraising, and programming. Lou co-founded ESS in 1986 with several artists and administrators, and was Associate Director until 1999. During that time, he established the public access recording facility at ESS. In addition, he was responsible for coordinating organizational collaborations and artists' projects, including co-produced performances and exhibitions with local galleries and cultural institutions, visiting artist projects with artists from the US and Europe, and the city wide Chicago Soundscape Project in 1996. Lou is an educator and an active audio artist.

How We Sound: Audio Workshop
w/ Jesse Seay       

Favorite Chicago Sounds (2006-2007) is a collaborative web-based project designed to showcase unique audio portraits of Chicago and mirror what Chicagoans think about their city's soundscape. Favorite Chicago Sounds (FCS) will explore the Hyde Park community as a site for audio research and will identify sites for recording and expanding the scope of this ongoing project.

The FCS web site invites visitors to answer a short questionnaire about their favorite sounds of the city. Once they've submitted a response, visitors gain access to the general catalog of submissions. Recordists then record selected sounds from the catalog, which are posted online in MP3 format and downloadable for free.

FCS is a project of Experimental Sound Studio and operates in partnership with Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ), who auditions FCS-collected sounds for broadcast as part of their ongoing Sonic Soundscapes project.         
       
Wednesday 8.22
How We Use Abandoned Urban Space
Screening of Not Anymore | Not Yet a film by Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger

Not Anymore | Not Yet reflects on the possibilities of abandoned city spaces. The film presents a new generation of cultural interventions in abandoned spaces: unconventional players, projects, and visions dealing with the reactivation of "urbanness" in very different sites. What could abandoned spaces communicate to the city dweller?

Daniel Kunle studied experimental film at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he lives and works as a film director, cinematographer, and editor.
Holger Lauinger works as an independent journalist in the field of urban and regional planning.
               
Saturday 8.25       
How We Teach
w/ Various Artists, Activists and Educators
An experimental forum about the act of teaching. Get in touch with factory07@gmail.com to get involved. More details TBA.
           
How We Make Educational Posters
w/ Watie White

Through the eyes of portraiture which finds part of its educational home in the work of Northwestern psychologist Dan McAdams' work that graphs personal life narratives, Watie White represents a more reasonable plan for exploring narratives as strategies for confronting realities. White's work exhibits a larger vision than indexing learned spaces and has enabled a pedagogical pursuit through his work that attracts some needed attention to the city. Attention that should be drawn by teachers, youth, and artists to see how work can direct activity for change and illuminate better questions of where we are going, what determines a city and what kind of space do we occupy.

       
Wednesday 8.29   
How We Felt
w/Feel Tank Chicago

In the Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed, Feel Tank Chicago and collaborators felt the feel and walked the walk -- and seethed the seethe, and balked the balk. Now we sigh the sigh. Members of Feel Tank Chicago discuss how Other People's Baggage Made Us Feel (and vice versa) in a report back from this summer's Pathogeographies exhibition. We'll raise issues of collaboration, funding, intensity, opacity, and publics. What does it mean to take and make the temperature of the Body Politic? What do we know and feel that we didn't before we started? Join in and share your feelings, experiences, critiques, and new directions.

===========September===========
       
Saturday 9.1
How We Brew/Bake/Mead Etc Cottage Expo @ Experimental Station
Today we will explore the world of do it yourself food production with Material Exchange and Monk Parakeet group at Experimental Station. There will be a several hour long workshop on making your own beer, and on baking bread. Space is limited (24 spaces total, 8 in each workshop) so PLEASE (you must) reserve a place by contacting info@material-exchange.org

How We Think Walking Tour: In Honor of John Dewey
The philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) fought for "civil and academic freedom, founded the Progressive School movement." A resident of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, Dewey published one of his most important works of educational theory "How We Think" in 1910. The study deals primarily with the concept of thought training, and its place in school environments. Today we will have a walking presentation and discussion about Dewey's impact on the field of education and visit some important sites in the neighborhood where he lived and worked.
       
Wednesday 9/5   
How We Celebrate Peoples History
w/ Josh MacPhee of JustSeeds

The Celebrate People's History poster series is an on-going project producing posters that focus around important moments in "people's history." These are events, groups, and individuals that we should celebrate because of their importance in the struggle for social justice and freedom, but are instead buried or erased by dominant history.  Posters celebrate important acts of resistance, those who fought tirelessly for justice and truth, and the days on which we can claim victories for the forces of freedom. These posters are posted publicly ( i.e. wheatpasted on the street, put up in peoples' home and storefront windows, and used in classrooms) in an attempt to help generate a discussion about our radical past, a discussion that is vital in preparing us to create a radical future. The project has also built a loose network of artists interested in creating radical public art as well as showcased the work of lesser known artists that want to create culture that is functional, carries a social message, and doesn't get buried at the bottom of the heap of the mainstream art world. http://www.justseeds.org/artists/celebrate_peoples_history/

Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator and activist currently living in Troy, NY.  His work often revolves around themes of radical politics, privatization and public space.  His second book Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (AK Press, co-edited with Erik Reuland) was just published. He also organizes the Celebrate People's History Poster Series and is part of the political art collective Justseeds.org.

How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook
w/ Stockyard Institute (see August 4 description)

Saturday    9.8
How We Build
Come discuss the state of architecture/design education. Where has it been and where is it going? We often discuss the ways in which the built physical environment affects us, but how does it get built in the first place? What is the relationship between architecture education and the built environment? How does what gets taught to children, adults and professionals impact the designed world? And how can we rethink it? To get involved in the discussion contact Charles Vinz charles.vinz@gmail.com or just show up!
       
Wednesday 9.12           
How We Listen will be a discussion with producers from the new Vocalo radio project, which aims make "community-created media" a major part of the mix on what will be a 50,000-watt broadcast. The project, by Chicago Public Radio, is starting out broadcasting this summer online at www.vocalo.org and in Northwest Indiana ( 89.5 FM). By late fall Vocalo will be on the air in Chicagoland and we thought that we should hold an event to hear what their plans are and get local media makers and concerned citizens together to discuss ideas and proposals for content on the radio project. Vocalo is unique in the world of radio because it offers greater potential for users to guide and produce content that will be aired on the radio. The station will be free form like the best college and experimental radio, but will have potentially greater reach and no ties to a university. We are excited to welcome Vocalo into the local media landscape and believe their presence is a promising addition. Come check them out for yourself.
   
       
Saturday 9.15       
How We Make a Disorientation Guide to Our University
w/ Local University Activists

In recent years many students and professors have turned their research interests towards the university itself. They have considered how to translate the activism and critique that is generally encouraged and supported when projected outward on the world, into a more inward practice that identifies the particular political economy of today's university system. What role and responsibilities do universities have in the urban spaces they inhabit, in the knowledge economies they facilitate, in the concepts about which they produce research, and the contracts they receive and provide? Today we will work with students from several local universities, including Northwestern and University of Chicago, to talk about one of the works in the Pedagogical Factory exhibit which displays such self-critical research about the US academic system in the form of a "Disorientation Guide" to UNC Chapel Hill. We will use this work as a starting point to discuss the possibilities of creating similar initiatives in Chicago academic contexts.

How We Engage
w/ Anne Elizabeth Moore
How do we voice dissent in an age when we know few listen? On what topics do we feel comfortable or expert enough to raise our voices? Are there ways to work collectively without sacrificing autonomy? In what media do we speak, and to what audience do we reach out? For 22 years, Anne Elizabeth Moore has been exploring these questions through the combination of printing, writing, and radical modes of distribution. These have included zine-making, flyering, newspaper appropriation, questionnaires, and participatory street comics, to name just a few. Come explore the different ways you might actively engage in dissent, even if you are kind of shy, don't think you know how to spell, or don't have anything to say right now: it's always good to practice for later!

Anne Elizabeth Moore lives in Chicago, where her work has been collected by art museums, gotten her permanently banned from a retail shopping establishment, and was called "Fun" by the business magazine FASTCOMPANY. She is unsure how she feels about any of this.

       
Wednesday 9.19   
How We Fund
w/ Kristen Cox of Fire This Time Fund

In recent years there has been increased scrutiny and critique of the funding structures within which cultural and political work in this country are produced. This gathering will look at some alternatives to foundation funding and the conventional non-profit-organization model and highlight some of the work that is going on locally to get money and resources into the hands of groups and initiatives that are doing vital and important work in the city. The event will be organized by Kristen Cox of the Fire This Time Fund (a two-year-old giving circle that strives to give money to radical cultural initiatives in Chicago). Other invited presenters will share their own experiences with experimental funding efforts with the hope that the conversation will help identify new directions, strategy and possible alliances to make our work more meaningful, grounded and sustainable. Email kristengcox@gmail.com to get involved.
   
Saturday 9.22       
How we use AREA Chicago as a pedagogical experiment and also move towards an independent political and cultural education network in Chicago

On this final session we will reflect on the work and conversations of the Pedagogical Factory Exhibit and the programs of the How We Learn series. We will look towards the upcoming "How We Learn" issue#5 of AREA and make plans for using the project in new and different ways as a freely distributed curriculum about critical culture in Chicago. Come and participate in the discussion and perhaps we will all build a school together. Topics to be discussed might include: Militant research, public curriculum, the limits of popular education, the drawbacks of critical pedagogy, and school versus the street, the street versus the art gallery, the page versus the screen, and why binary relationships have gotten us down. A short presentation about the past/present/future of AREA Chicago will be followed by group discussion and brainstorming. Please come with fresh ideas.

PLUS Time/Place TBA
Contact areachicago@gmail.com for more information

How We Coordinate pt.2
w/ Local publications who will coordinate together to produce a "right to the city" issue of each of their publications
How We More Effectively Network Local Critical Culture 
How We Make Sense of Ren2010 and the Privatization of Chicago Schools

Note:
Previous How We Events Leading Up to this series included:
How We Schedule @ A+D Gallery/Columbia College Chicago as part of the Pass It On: DIY art show.
w/ Gapersblock.com, New World Resource Center, Optionalevents, and InCubate Chicago.
How We Coordinate pt.1 @ Version Fest
w/ Contra Tiempo, Journal of Ordinary Thought, Lumpen, Skeleton News, and more.