AREA Chicago ART RESEARCH EDUCATION ACTIVISM

AREA Chicago
AREA Chicago Art/Research/Education/Activism is a publication and event series dedicated to researching, supporting and networking local social, political and cultural movements. See About for more information.

AREA News

News specifically related to AREA and affiliated projects

  • AREA #9 Call for Participation - July 1 Deadline

    by AREA   |   Published June 24, 2009
    Call For Proposals
    AREA Chicago #9: Peripheral Vision
     
    People think of Chicago as the center of a vast suburban galaxy (sometimes called Chicagoland or even “the Chicagoland area”) and beyond that, the greater Midwest. 

    Chicago is a population center, a transportation hub, a capital of commerce and research, a magnet for culture workers and immigrants. But whenever we say that Chicago is a center, we are saying that other places are not: that they are instead “peripheral.” Thinking of the city as center privileges those activities and phenomena that can be gathered in urban density:  the built environment, industries of finance and capital, bureaucracies, cultural institutions, wealth and poverty.  There is no center to deer hunting. Is there one for immigration, or postindustrial blight, or solar energy?

    Social scientists often speak of “core” and “periphery”; together, as a “core-periphery model,” these terms have been used to describe and project development at the global scale. As a single explanation for global patterns of development, they have also been critically interrogated and contested by advocates of other models. There are other ways of thinking the periphery: for ecologists, the “edge” presents a specific type of habitat. Within cultural politics, being on the “margins” has risks, even as it sometimes appears fashionable. But do the margins lose their identity if assimilated into the center? Peripheral vision may actually reveal what’s taken for granted, yet crucial.  AREA #9 will explore this mental map in its common application to Chicago and its surroundings.  

    In order to do this, we invite writers, teachers, activists, and artists to take a point of view outside the center. This might be a view from the fraying edges of the metropolis, from marginal communities within the city, from the non-human world, from the suburbs or the hinterlands, from a conceptual position outside the mainstream—and to show us Chicago from ”out there.“ Contributions should have some relationship to Chicago and should focus on specific practices (policies, projects, action, art, travel, resistance). They might address environment, housing, history, immigration, labor, or other issues. By virtue of origins and continued economic connections, places like Mississippi or Michoacán might also be considered peripheries of Chicago—or is Chicago their periphery? Where once there was periphery, there will someday be a place on the edge, with all the disruptive and rich potential of an edge habitat. Now is a good time to ask, “What do you see in your peripheral vision?”

    Text/Project Ideas for AREA#9: Histories of movements that have linked Chicago to other places; maps of flows in and out of Chicago; visionary plans for different edge zones near the city limits of Chicago; interviews with suburban activists; stories of Chicagoans and downstate prisons; studies of wildlife in the city and suburbs; maps of the decentralization of homelessness and public housing; views of Chicago from far-flung activist and artist correspondents; visits of CPS students to suburban public schools; walking tours of neighborhoods at the city limits; ethnographies of public transit in the suburbs; reports from diasporas in Chicago, and the Chicago diaspora; drawings of what you see out of the corner of your eye.

    Timeline:

    June 14. Those interested in contributing to the issue are urged to attend an introductory brainstorming session at the Orientation Center, 2129 N. Rockwell, Sunday, June 14 at 4pm. It’s an opportunity to think through ideas, generate new ones, make suggestions, seek collaborators.

    July 1. Proposals (no more than 250 words) due. We recommend being in touch sooner with initial ideas.

    August 10. First draft for accepted proposals.

    September 10. Final draft due September 10.

    (Deadlines will be strict, and all pieces will go through an editorial process involving at least two readers.)


    Email proposals to Dan S. Wang and Rebecca Zorach at areaeditors@gmail.com
Read More in AREA News.

Report Back

  • ReportBack #1: Tamms/Laurie Jo Reynolds @ Hyde Park Art Center

    2008-03-25
    A report back on the day of the tenth anniversary of Tamms CMAX prison, concerning an event called TalkingPoint at Hyde Park Art Center, December 10, 2007 by Laurie Palmer It felt like a great weight falling off; or like a stone decomposing in response to vibration. The weight was an old calcified idea, a prohibition that [...]
    Read the full article

  • AREA Chicago Announces a New Web Project: Report Back

    2008-02-11
    A new weblog dedicated to documenting events and people’s impressions of them throughout Chicago AREA Chicago, the publication and event series, has initiated this as an extension of its ongoing interest in documenting activities at the intersections of arts, education, research and activism in Chicago. The site is meant to fill in some of the gaps [...]
    Read the full article
Read More at reportback.areachicago.org
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