October 21, 2014

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY OCTOBER 22, 2014

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A R T S , C U LT U R E , A N D P O L I T I C S

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S O U T H S I D E W E E K LY. C O M

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KUSANYA, SLOW ROLL, DESTRUCTIVE DELAY, BIT WARS, RADIUS ETC., OPEN HOUSE CHICAGO

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MORE INSIDE

Will the 25th Ward Send a Socialist to City Hall?

Logan Center Family Saturday Festival SAT, NOV 1 / 12–5 pm $5 single tickets, $20 families of 5+

Discover your child’s artistic passion with performances and hands-on art workshops!

The first Logan Center Family Saturday Festival includes special special guest performers, film screenings, drop-in activities, art workshops, and more!

Purchase festival passes at ticketsweb.uchicago.edu.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS Chicago International Children’s Film Festival: Best Buddies Join Best Buddies as they meet new friends and share adventures in these short films about friendship.

Storyteller Carmen Deedy This Havana, Cuba-born storyteller and author captures audiences with larger-than-life body language, wit, and humorous stories

+ Day of the Dead art workshops by the National Museum of Mexican Art and more!

Come back every month! Families can sample a range of activities for ages 2–10 through hourlong sessions led by local artists. This season features monthly Family Saturday workshop days and full-day Family Saturday Festivals in Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Teens interested in spoken word are invited to join The New Speak open mic following Family Saturdays and Family Saturday Festivals.

Family Saturdays 2–4:30 pm / FREE

OCT 11, 2014 DEC 6, 2014 FEB 7, 2015 MAR 21, 2015 MAY 16, 2015 JUN 20, 2015 JUL 11, 2015

Family Saturday Festivals 12–5 pm / $5 single tickets, $20 families of 5+

NOV 1, 2014 JAN 24, 2015 APR 18, 2015 AUG 22, 2015

LOGAN CENTER 915 E 60th St at Drexel Ave 773.702.ARTS

logan.uchicago.edu 2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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IN CHICAGO

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Editor-in-Chief Bea Malsky Managing Editor Hannah Nyhart Deputy Editors John Gamino, Meaghan Murphy Politics Editors Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Schastok Education Editor Bess Cohen Visual Arts Editor Emma Collins Music Editor Jake Bittle Stage & Screen Olivia Stovicek Editor Web Editor Sarah Claypoole Contributing Editors Maha Ahmed, Lucia

Ahrensdorf, Lauren Gurley Photo Editor Illustration Editor Layout Editor

Luke White Ellie Mejia Adam Thorp

Senior Writers Patrick Leow, Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Christian

Belanger, Emily Lipstein,

Noah Kahrs, Maira Khwaja,

Olivia Markbreiter, Jamison Pfeifer, Wednesday Quansah, Arman Sayani Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet

Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji Staff Illustrators Wei Yi Ow, Hanna Petroski, Amber Sollenberger Editorial Interns

Zavier Celimene, Denise Parker, Clyde Schwab

Business Manager

Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, spring, and winter, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover illustration by Wei Yi Ow.

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do CPS is breaking apart. After selling their headquarters at 125 S. Clark St. for $28 million, the organization has moved nine-hundred staffers to a smaller office at 42 W. Madison. Three hundred are relocating to what was formerly Dodge Elementary School, and the rest are going to a former school building at 501 W. 35th St., where the school district houses a large portion of its IT. Tom Tyrell, the district’s chief operating officer, predicts the move will save the district $60 million over fifteen years—$5 million of which has already been spent on new office furniture.

The President Lands But by the time you read this, he’ll have already left. President Barack Obama (and his extensive entourage) made a quick stop in Chicago this week to cast his early vote in the midterm elections and to campaign for his fellow Illinois Democrats. While he voted at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Center at 43rd and S. Cottage

Grove, a poll worker asked the President if he was who she thought he was. His response, like his stop at home, was brief. “That’s me,” the most powerful man in the country said before getting down to business. After voting, Obama stopped by Governor Pat Quinn’s campaign office and mingled with some wealthy fundraisers in Lincoln Park.

A House Is Not a Home After Chicago’s most anticipated arson attempt didn’t quite take last week, the colorful structures Redmoon floated down the river are still standing, housed in a Bridgeport lot. The scorched buildings proved too damp or sturdy to succumb to the Great Fire Festival’s flames, and sit upright, their paint marred by burns roughly as severe as those served up on twitter in the Festival’s wake. Redmoon spokespeople say the buildings will be repurposed for next year’s festival, a phoenix-style recycling that strikes as practical, if less exciting than the Up scenarios some editors had hoped for.

IN THIS ISSUE kusanya, one year in

jorge mújica

a sequel to genre

life after the second set

It begins by going to a place that respects you, that doesn’t treat you like a criminal.

runs for alderman

The track moves through jazzy bass, ethereal horns, and a shuffling beat that all recall a less hyperactive Flying Lotus.

Miles and the chair have an

john gamino...4

“If you make half a million dollars and you live in the 25th Ward, I am not going to be in City Hall to represent you.”

osita nwanevu...6

austin brown...9

uneasy alliance.

darryl holliday & jamie hibdon...10

templehead’s

slow roll rides again

2-D levels up

delay and dismay

hallowed halls

“It’s been a challenge, but it’s the challenge that keeps us here.”

Could the “Bit Wars” artists make Mario more than the sum of his pixels?

The report gives a voice to the undocumented immigrant population.

pizza boy lives

open house chicago

For a moment I thought modern art might actually be getting somewhere.

We set out to explore a cross-section of churches.

The performer is the true believer, praying to the god of all things weird, wacky, and wonderful.

eleanore catolico...12

mark hassenfratz...13

jake bittle...15

stephen urchick...14

rachel schastok...16

lucia ahrensdorf...15

Kusanya, One Year In

BY JOHN GAMINO

K

usanya Cafe had been brewing as an idea in Englewood long before it served its first cup. For five years its board of directors struggled to find financing or an affordable space for the proposed café. It finally opened last November, to appreciative, even glowing reviews, but the café has always aimed to be more than a coffee shop. It’s an idealistic place, with hopes of neighborhood empowerment, but one that knows the limits of its resources. Kusanya wants first to be a place where people can meet over coffee, within the neighborhood, and to see where things go from there. Before the café took over the previously vacant, hundred-year-old building at 825 W. 69th Street, that was something Englewood didn’t have. And Phil Sipka, who runs the café’s operations, says it’s still hard to picture how a for-profit café in Englewood could work—Kusanya is a 501(c)(3).

I sat down with Sipka to talk about Kusanya’s vision for the neighborhood, who’s behind it, and how it’s panning out.

The door says this café is “Englewood owned.” What does that mean?

We want to be a kind of homegrown space.

We don’t plan that many events but we try to let people who are passionate about something do what they do best here.

We’ve had knitting groups come in, we’ve had a bunch of local authors come and do book signings here. We’ve had a local karaoke artist put on karaoke nights for us.

We’ve had a local nonprofit put on yoga nights here. We’ve done storytelling events, we’ve done a wine tasting. These are all put on by people who say, “I really want to do this in the neighborhood”—they can do it here. We didn’t think we were the best ones to dictate what Englewood needs; we wanted to let Englewood decide. We want it to feel like it’s theirs. We want people to have control.

How do these events get set up? Do people just reach out to you, do you reach out to people you know...?

We haven’t really reached out at all. Most people come in, come to us, and say, “I’d really like to host an event here.” Our thing 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

is, we love to host things that are open for the neighborhood, that’s really important to us. When you host something, it’s not a locked-door event; we want this to be a place where resources are shared. We like things to be open to the public, we like things to be free. Our thing is, if you’re going to be free, if you’re going to be giving things out for free, then we’re going to be free with this space: we’ll let you use it for

means we don’t have to lie and BS our way into money all the time. In a certain sense you have to hustle as a nonprofit, you have to exaggerate what you do, and that’s not something we ever want to do. We want to be able to do what we think is best for the neighborhood, and to be honest, what we thought was best was just providing a space for things to happen. We can’t control anything that happens. We can allow a place for empowering interactions to occur but we can’t force them to occur. And that’s the hardest thing.

The problems that Englewood has faced have been happening, and it’s going to take decades, decades of justice to counter the injustice that’s happened. This coffee shop being on this corner is not going to change the neighborhood in any respect—it’s just not, at least in terms of a lot of the major swings. But, hopefully, it will provide a few empowering things for some people. If it even kind of begins to change the way people feel about their neighborhood, and feel about themselves, that’s a victory, I think, for us. It begins small. It begins by going to

“We’re going for the low-profit margin, high-volume model, and that fits more with what we want—we want to get more and more types of people in here.” free. Those are the kinds of events we like to do. So yoga night, karaoke night, the wine tasting night, those were all free.

We want to be self-sustaining, which

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a place that respects you, that doesn’t treat you like a criminal.

I don’t know where else in the neighborhood that could happen, to be honest with

you.

The café has gotten a lot of press so far, but most of it has focused on the opening (Kusanya opened last fall, on November 19). What are your thoughts on how the café space has turned out over the past year?

In some ways it’s been better than I expected, and in some ways it’s been worse.

One thing we weren’t sure of, which was the major x-factor, was would the totality of Englewood residents get it. Englewood residents are very diverse. And by “get it” I mean understand the concept, come and patronize, come and enjoy it, and make it their space.

There are a lot of different types of residents who live in the neighborhood. You could be a seventy-year-old resident whose kids have graduate degrees, who’s worked in the Loop, and who’s been living here since the fifties—very staunchly middle class, almost affluent. And then you have someone who came in five years ago after Cabrini got shut down, or Robert Taylor. There’s a really wide variety, more so, I think, than in most neighborhoods; it’s not racially diverse at all, but can we appeal to that wide of a swath of people? Because I think everybody doesn’t feel comfortable with everyone else, to a certain extent.

Financially I thought we’d be doing better than we are right now. I thought we’d be getting more people in than we are right now, but most of that I think is due to the fact that we opened in the wintertime, during one of the worst winters in Chicago history. We started building momentum in May but then school was out and we kind of had to start all over again. We’ve never really had a good month to be open yet, as a coffee shop; coffee shops are generally

COFFEE

slower during the summer.

Part of our model, to get that diversity, is to price ourselves really well. We’re cheap for a normal coffee shop, we wanted everybody to be able to afford something here. So we have a one dollar cup of coffee, if you get it for here, and that’s cheaper than Burger King. But that also means we have to have more people in here to make a profit. We’re going for the low-profit margin, high-volume model, and that fits more with what we want—we want to get more and more types of people in here.

You use Bridgeport Coffee, though.

That’s good coffee, but it’s also pretty expensive...

We spend a lot of money on coffee. We didn’t want to be cheap, we didn’t to say, “Oh, it’s just Englewood, they’re not going to care or notice if the coffee’s really good or not.” No, we wanted to do a shop that’s not just good for Englewood but good in terms of the city of Chicago, and place it right in the center of the neighborhood. That was what we wanted. That was the vision, because everyone deserves a really nice place.

But for right now, we’re just not getting enough people in yet. Hopefully we have enough reserves in the tank to make it to that point. In the meantime we’ll have to do fundraisers to keep the bills paid and stuff like that. Our model is that generosity will come back to you. And we’re a no profit, if you can’t be generous with that you should get out of the game.

How often do you have events here?

It depends, but probably three or four events a month.

That’s different from a lot of coffee shops—any coffee shop.

It’s kind of an inconvenience if you don’t have a heart for it. It doesn’t bring a lot of money, it’s usually not worth the time—but that’s not what we’re here for. We don’t think in terms of dollars, we try to think in terms of what’s empowering for the neighborhood. We try to do that in terms of who we hire, who we have on the board, what art we hang up—all that stuff goes through that filter.

It took you five years to get a space and set up shop. What was that like? I read somewhere that a major problem was that banks wouldn’t lend to you.

They won’t lend to commercial development, they don’t see it as a good financial decision. There are gigantic barriers. They’ll only lend to people who have pretty much all the cash on hand, and then you wouldn’t need a loan.

The owner of the building, who’s on our board, has tried multiple times, even with the more socially conscious banks, but they won’t lend a dime. Commercial development is so hard here. An Englewood resident can’t develop property in the neighborhood because they have no access to credit. Everything’s a large bank now, and they have so many limitations that they can’t give out any money. If someone wanted to start up a for-profit coffee shop in the neighborhood, I don’t know how they’d do it.

You’re determining the fate of the neighborhood, in terms of who you lend to. The more I live here the more I realize how many outside factors determine who builds this neighborhood, and how little opportunities we have to kind of change our own stars, to a certain degree. There are so many things that impact us that we can’t

change—and bank lending is one.

What’s the makeup of your board? What are the meetings like, and what’s the mentality? What are there expectations for this place?

Well, we’ve had a lot of people on the board. We had two full boards serve two full terms before we even opened. Demond was on the board for a time, he runs Englewood Codes. He did it for a while. Asiaha and Terry Butler who do R.A.G.E., they were on the board for a while. There’ve been a lot of people, in and out. You know, it was hard to be on our board, because for so long we were so unsuccessful, we couldn’t even get a space, but everybody kind of had the same vision to a certain extent were on the board for a while. There’ve been a lot of people-centered mentality. The kind of “for us, by us” model—it was always kind of unanimous.

OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Will the 25th Ward Send a Socialist to City Hall?

Jorge Mújica runs for alderman

BY OSITA NWANEVU

I

t has become commonplace to say that Chicago’s Lower West Side is changing. But even as an influx of students, young professionals, and creatives continues to raise the rents and profiles of Pilsen and the area’s other neighborhoods, the economic realities faced by many residents have changed little. Over a quarter of the Lower West Side’s households are below the poverty line. The majority of the area’s employed works in the service and construction industries, fields where, particularly for the undocumented, disputes over workers’ rights and compensation can be as contentious as they were over a century ago, when factory jobs brought German, Irish, and the first crop of Mexican immigrants to the area. It’s a mix of conditions ready-made for leftist politics, and leftist politicians.

Jorge Mújica claims not to be a politician at all. He’s an activist who wants to be 25th Ward alderman. As such, the petition drives, the door-to-door canvassing, and the social media efforts organized by an array of the city’s leftist leaders operating under the banner of the Chicago Socialist Campaign are, to hear him tell it, simply a continuation of his decades of labor and immigrant advocacy. He makes a point of not looking like a politician either. The black jacket and baseball cap he meets me in at Pilsen’s Efebina’s Café are part of the same workman’s wardrobe he led crowds in during Chicago’s leg of the nationwide immigration marches of 2006.

Those marches, which brought thousands of activists and immigrant sympathizers downtown that spring, were animated by opposition to the “Sensenbrenner Bill,” legislation that would have made undocumented immigrants felons. It was a moment many see as the beginning of a cohesive immigration reform movement in the United States, a movement that Mújica has helped keep alive in Chicago through informal work assisting individual workers at risk of deportation with legal advice and through his work as an organizer with, among myriad other organizations, Arise Chicago, a group that advocates for the rights of impoverished workers, including the undocumented.

This is his second run for office since immigrating to the United States from Mexico in 1987. In 2009, he ran in the Democratic Party primary against Congressman Dan Lipinski in the 3rd Congressional District, a campaign he 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

likely couldn’t have imagined making when he joined the Communist-Mexican Youth at the age of fifteen in 1971. He lost that race handily, but not for want of trying. That effort and this new campaign which, if successful, would unseat Danny Solis, who has served as 25th Ward alderman for nearly twenty years, both represent departures from the kinds of quixotic candidacies voters might expect from outsider figures. Mújica intends to go to City Hall. These are the ideas and concerns he wants to take with him.

In 2009, you ran with the Democratic Party for United States Congress with a focus on immigration issues. At the same time you say you’ve always been a socialist. Did you think, at that time, there was a place for you and other leftists in the Democratic Party that no longer exists?

No. No, what happened was that in elections, you can simply say, I’m running in the Democratic Party primary without ever having anything to do with the Democratic Party. That was my case. I’ve never had anything to do with the Democratic Party.

Never. I’ve never gone to any meetings, I’ve never filed a membership or anything like that.

It was a decision of a whole bunch of activists in the immigration movement that we had to give some opposition to Congressman Dan Lipinski. Dan Lipinski is one of the Democratic Party congressmen who voted in favor of the so-called “Sensenbrenner Bill,” which was the piece of legislation that prompted the 2006 marches.

It was the criminalization of immigration.

So he was our target. And when election time came, these immigration activists

said, “Okay, somebody should run against Dan Lipinski.”

And I was one of the few citizens, I guess, in the movement, and it was decided that I should run. Then the second part of the discussion was, “Should we run in the general election, as independents, or should we run in the primaries?” And we discovered—we didn’t know anything at the time about elections, really—that it was nearly impossible to run as an independent because within the Democratic Party primaries, you only needed 800 signatures, but if you wanted to run as an independent, you needed thousands more. So we said forget it. And the decision was made to run in the Democratic primary.

But again, I’ve never been a member of the Democratic Party, never had anything to do with it whatsoever—and we’ve always criticized both the Democratic and Republican parties. To us, it’s never been an option to go with the Democratic Party as a solution to anything. It’s always a controversy of the lesser evils, but we’ve never thought that the Democratic Party is going to solve anything.

POLITICS

Right now you’re running as a socialist at an interesting time for the left in America. Councilwoman Kshama Sawant has received national attention for being the first socialist to win a Seattle election in nearly a century. There’s talk that Senator Bernie Sanders might run for President in 2016. To what extent is your campaign motivated or influenced by these currents?

Well, obviously, Kshama Sawant had a lot to do with it. But basically, we saw the Occupy movement, with all its flaws. But it was an explosive movement. The anti-war movement, which really had a lot of strength at one point, was [explosive] too.

And then in Chicago in particular we had the teachers’ strike, which was half a revolution because of the public support. And then we had the school closings, and that was another half revolution in the community.

And so when Kshama Sawant won in Seattle, many groups on the left did something that they’re not used to doing: get together and talk about something practical for right now, for right here. You know, “Let’s see if we can do this in the City of Chicago.”

And that, to me, was fantastic. Socialists from every segment of the rainbow of the left. And they decided to create the Chicago Socialist Campaign, an umbrella to cover all of these socialist, leftist, left-leaning—whatever you want to call them— groups. And then they started a process of researching where to run, what kind of campaign. Did we want to run a campaign just for promotional purposes—just a propaganda thing—or did we want to run a campaign in which we could win? And we decided we wanted the second kind of campaign.

Then, the general conclusion was, let’s do it in the 25th. And of course, you have to live in the ward in order to run for alderman in Chicago elections. So they looked for a candidate who lived in the 25th. But it wasn’t about just running a guy. It was about running a platform and a perspective, and then finding a candidate who was suitable for that platform. So I happened to live in the 25th Ward. On and off, but ever since I got to the City of Chicago, I’ve been around the 25th Ward, because Pilsen is the heart of the Latino-Mexican commu-

nity. It doesn’t matter where you live, you’re always around here.

So I am the candidate of this campaign, not by personal decision, but as the candidate chosen by this array of leftist organizations.

That in itself is, I think, a very healthy process. It was widely discussed, they consulted with many people and everybody said, “Let’s go ahead and try it.” So, that’s what we’re doing.

Why the 25th?

Many, many things. For instance, Alderman Danny Solis is the president of the Zoning Committee of the City of Chicago.

That means he deals with the whole City of Chicago in terms of zoning. That means, you want a new business, you want a new building, you want to change your zoning from commercial to residential or from residential to commercial, you have to deal with Solis. But at the same time, he had to run a runoff last time. He couldn’t get the 50% plus one in the first election, so he had to go to a runoff and he only got, in this runoff, about 3,800 votes. That’s incredibly weak for a guy that powerful in the city.

Out of over 20,000 registered voters. So we said, “Hell, this is an incredible weakness.”

When I ran against Dan Lipinski, I got nearly 16,000 votes. Of course, it was a Congressional District. It’s not the same thing. But I got nearly 16,000 votes in the 2010 election. So for us to win 3,800 votes—it was like, “Well I think we can do it.”[Laughs] So many things came into play.

Many people are also pissed at the gentrification process here in Pilsen. Not the landowners, of course, but the residents.

We have lost like 10,000 Latino residents in Pilsen alone (over the past decade) because of gentrification. And gentrification is directly tied to the fact that Danny Solis is the president of the Zoning Committee.

And so everything comes full circle.

In an interview you did with In These Times, you said a lot of the people who might have supported a socialist alderman have already moved out because the community is changing. Given that there are wealthier residents moving in as gentrification continues, can you be sure that a socialist alderman can represent the in-

terests of the entire community? Are you interested in representing the entire community to begin with?

We don’t necessarily want to represent everyone and that has to be clear. We are here to represent basically the interest of the majority and the majority are poor workers. Pilsen has a high unemployment rate.

Most of the working residents are working poor. That’s the majority we want to represent. The minority? Sorry guys. I mean, if you make half a million dollars and you live in the 25th Ward, I am not going to be in City Hall to represent you. That’s the truth.

And we want everybody to know that’s the truth.

“They’ll say, ‘We have to vote for the Democrats again because there’s no alternative out there.’ Well, stop bitching and moaning. We are now presenting you with a different alternative.

You don’t have to vote Democratic anymore.”

I am not going to be representing the West, Southwest Loop portion of the ward with people that are making $100,000 and over.

I can work with them, I can talk with them, I can address some of their issues, but their issues are not going to be the most important concern of the candidacy and the most important concern of my acting as an alderman in City Hall.

I mean, let’s be realistic. This is not an inter-class kind of thing. We’re not all in the same boat. I’m sorry. The 99% is the 99% and the 1% is the 1%.

Is that class division also implicitly a OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS racial divide? Do you see the process of gentrification through the lens of racial division?

We are now presenting you with a different alternative. You don’t have to vote Democratic anymore.

Gentrification is not necessarily about skin color. Gentrification is about social class.

Then you have the people who vote consciously for the Democratic Party, believing that the Democratic Party is actually going to solve problems. And that’s the most important segment for us. That’s the segment we have to win. The other two are already won. But this is the segment we have to win. We have to say to them, “Listen. The Democratic Party has done this, and this, and this and has not done all these other things. The Democratic Party is not representing the 99%. The Democratic Party is not representing the interests of the Latino community. The Democratic Party is not representing the interests of the majority of the poor. The Democratic Party is not rep-

Half of the white people who have moved to Pilsen are not rich. They are poor whites.

A lot of them, for instance, are University of Illinois [at Chicago] students who cannot afford their dorms. The University is charging around $12,000 a year for dorms. $12,000 dollars a year in Pilsen gets you a room in a three bedroom apartment. I mean, come on. There’s no mystery there.

So they’re moving here.

Unfortunately, that means the displacement of the poor of another skin color. The people doing the displacing are not necessarily rich people. Now, of course, the other half of the white population moving in are the real gentrifiers and that’s not their fault.

It’s the fault of the developers.

All the Mexican immigrants take it as the most natural thing in the world. Because Mexico has had the presence of the left in electoral politics for the last several decades.

In 1979, I ran for Congress in Mexico as a member of the Unified Socialist Mexican Party. The Mexican left has come close to winning the presidency twice since then.

So when people from Mexico hear me say I’m a socialist, they say, “Oh, yeah. Sure.

Good. That’s fine.” There’s no questions about it. We also have another segment, which is the people who have been bitching and moaning about “the lesser evil.” They’ll say, “We have to vote for the Democrats again because there’s no alternative out there.” Well, stop bitching and moaning.

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

And then we have the business community, which would like to have the Republican Party here. But they’re just a tiny minority, so we don’t worry about them. As a matter of fact, I think some of them may end up voting for us. Because some of them have the same idea that the Democratic Party machine is not working. So they want to try something else. And we have found people while gathering signatures who say, “I’m

“This is not an inter-class kind of thing. We’re not all in the same boat. I’m sorry.

The 99% is the 99% and the 1% is the 1%.”

Because we have buildings that used to have eight apartments renting for $400 dollars each being converted, with the help of the Chairman of the Zoning Committee of the City of Chicago Danny Solis, into four deluxe apartments with $1,200 dollar rent. And Latino residents cannot afford that. And that’s happening in some spots and some segments of the ward, but it’s not all over. It’s not widespread, but that’s the real gentrification.

What voters are going to be the most important for you to reach? And how difficult will it be to sell socialism to those constituencies?

If the Republicans are the cause, then we shouldn’t have problems. We have been governed by the Democratic Party for decades. Everything from potholes to closing public schools—that’s the Democratic Party. You can’t blame the Republicans here. Forget it. They’re nowhere to be seen.

There’s not a single Republican in City Hall.

resenting the interests of parents who have their kids in public schools.”

So that’s the segment we’re focusing on, as the ones who can switch instead of just supporting straight Democratic tickets. That could be the swing vote. We can stop doing business as usual and start doing business anew, with a new perspective. One of the arguments we tell them is this: If you look at national politics, it is said that the Republican Party is the enemy. They are the bad guys. And the Democratic Party are the good guys. And the Democratic Party can’t do anything because the Republican Party doesn’t allow them. But where is the Republican Party in Chicago? Is there no enemy in the City of Chicago? So why do we have problems?

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

a Republican. But I’ll back you because I want change. If the only option for change is you, I’ll try your change and see if your change works.” [Laughs] And what kinds of policies are at the heart of your “change”? You’ve talked a fair bit about the tax system and TIFs in the past.

Are those core issues for you?

I think the tax system is failing profoundly, in so many ways. I think we have to do away with TIF and create a different way of administering taxes.

Unfortunately, the City of Chicago can’t solve all the tax and the taxation problems.

A lot of it has to do with Cook County, and with Springfield and with the Federal Tax System. But I want to take a good look

at the whole tax system. And how we collect and what we collect is one part of the problem. For instance, red light cameras and residential parking permits—these are just ways to drain communities of money for what? To pay the salaries of employees of the City of Chicago? The supervisors of supervisors? The guys you always see when you cross a traffic jam because a pothole’s being fixed sitting there watching another three guys actually filling the potholes? I think that’s a waste of money. I’m sorry, but that’s a waste of money.

Aldermen themselves make over $114,000.

It’s a part-time job. Many of them work in law firms and other things. They own businesses—the owner of the Ann Sather restaurants is an alderman. So why a six figure salary? For a part time job, it should be half that. If I’m alderman, $57,000 will come directly back to the community to fund community organizations for workers rights.

It’s not socialism. It’s just common sense.

Finally, how do you plan on addressing immigration as alderman? It’s a position that doesn’t give you as much of an ability to effect broad change as a seat in Congress, obviously. What do you intend to do locally for the undocumented?

We have a theme. If you live in the 25th Ward and you work, we are going to try to guarantee your rights as workers. Whether we have to talk to a business owner in Rolling Meadows or right here in Pilsen, your rights as a worker are going to be completely fulfilled.

Workers’ rights are at the center. And undocumented workers have workers’ rights.

With a couple of exceptions, they do have the full set of rights of any other workers.

We can’t solve the whole immigration conundrum. But at least we’re going to guarantee workers’ rights. And, we may even be able to do it in creative ways that keep you away from immigration problems.

As alderman, I’m going to be a labor organizer. Somebody said to me, “You know, you’ve been a labor organizer and an immigration activist for a long time. Why do you want to become a politician?” I said to him, “I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be a labor organizer and immigration activist in City Hall.” I mean look at me. [Laughs] I’ll never become a real politician.

MUSIC

A Sequel to Genre The future is real for Etc. Records

BY AUSTIN BROWN jenn phan

R

amon Norwood, known online as Radius Etc., creates hip-hop beats with few to no words, but his presence, both online and in interviews, is effusive. He is introspective and measured in his tone, but eager to talk about his work as an artist and a label manager. Uncompromising in his feelings toward the obtrusiveness of “mainstream” culture, he wants to create a space for like-minded creators and listeners to coexist, more focused on working outside the mainstream than against it.

Norwood has spent the last few years developing his presence in Chicago, both musically and commercially, in an effort to promote his new label, Etc. Records.

Before this month, Etc. Records had only released two records, from Norwood’s own Radius persona. But on October 14 the label produced its first album by another artist, DJ FreezRock, and will soon release projects from the former members of Beyond Luck, Norwood’s former experimental hip-hop group, Chicago-native Lanzo, a more ethereal and melodic producer, and Black Daddy, an artist whose trap style adds some energy to Norwood’s current network.

Norwood describes the music he hopes to release under Radius Etc. as “postgenre,” a somewhat arbitrary buzzword

that has become associated in recent years with such artists as Grimes and Haim.

There’s nothing to connect Norwood with those artists besides their use of hip-hop beats and their Internet savvy, perhaps, but the descriptor is more about the attitude than the music. With Etc. Records, Norwood hopes to bring together people with an interest in seemingly disparate genres, doing away with the exclusionary principles that govern a given “music scene” to create something exciting and new.

The Radius Etc. project realizes the post-genre ethos through many different means, but the most interesting and effective might be the way it unifies the Chicago house and hip-hop worlds: specifically, track speed. While hip-hop usually runs at speeds below 100 BPM, and house goes anywhere between 118 and 135 BPM, Radius Etc. tracks usually fit neatly between 108 and 117, never committing completely to either genre’s aesthetic. In doing this, Norwood wants to create tracks that can cross genre boundaries, but in ways more subdued or thought-provoking than the usual electro-rap hybrid found on modern pop radio.

Jazz and dub, two of Norwood’s childhood musical loves, also play heavily into the potpourri of influences on Radius Etc., making up most of the instrumental

framework for the tracks through sampling, and acting as an abstract view into Norwood’s thoughts. While Radius risks becoming somewhat soulless and technical, a meaningless exercise in genre-mixing, Norwood’s enthusiasm and passion translate into a unstable (read: exciting) beat structure that, while grooving and soulful, never feels content to stay in one place.

While mostly instrumental and abstract, the music of Norwood’s second release, Time Travel is Real (A Prelude to Japan), reflects this feeling in Norwood’s own off-kilter fashion.

One of the more immediately noticeable tracks is “Aquatic Sunset Sirens,” a reference to the warning sirens that go off in Hawaii in the event of an emergency.

Whereas the majority of the track is a stuttering bass line over a clacking hip-hop beat, a sample of the titular, high-pitched siren eventually fades in to replace the bass-heavy song.

“One For Ferguson (Healing Factor)”, the third track off of Time Travel, is another revelation in sampling as art: the track moves through jazzy bass, ethereal horns, and a shuffling beat that all recall a less hyperactive Flying Lotus, but eventually it all falls away to leave a monologue on the opportunities black men will never have in

America as a result of their race.

It’s hard not to be a little skeptical of Norwood’s ambitions, both in terms of his label and his post-genre aims. He couchsurfs in friends’ apartments while on tour, and his upcoming trip to Japan for the Beats for Change organization (the “prelude” anticipated by the title of Time Travel) has all but emptied his bank account.

And while elements of his music are transcendent, others fall flat, relying too much on repetition and too little on a melodic base.

Yet Norwood is committed to his music, his label, and his post-genre ideology (all of which he feels feed into each other), and he senses that many of his peers and musical collaborators share this commitment. His focus on such collaborative possibilities makes him just as much a musician among musicians as a manager or label head.

Not only that, but Norwood has heard that his records have ended up in European stores and have been picked up by curious shoppers there, giving him hope for a European tour within the next year. The impending entrance of Etc. Records and Radius Etc. into the international music world, along with Norwood’s own heavily booked schedule, are encouraging signs of a developing artist and label.

OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

The Illustrated Press blends traditional reporting with narrative-driven illustration. Read more at OCTOBER 22, 2014 ÂŹ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

VISUAL ARTS

Templehead’s Hallowed Halls

BY ELEANORE CATOLICO

I

t’s a moody September evening at the Church of Templehead—clouds bruise the sky, and bursts of rain seem intent on ruining the party. Templehead, a DIY artists’ living space converted into a queerand feminist-focused community venue, sits on the corner of 19th and Allport in Pilsen. It’s in a quiet pocket of the neighborhood, removed from 18th Street’s trickle of winers and diners. Tonight is JOSE FEST, a performance art festival named after Chicago-based artist Jose Hernandez and featuring an eclectic set of theatrical vignettes.

Within Templehead’s hallowed halls, the performer is the true believer, praying to the god of all things weird, wacky, and wonderful. Yet the performers in this church are not “anointed ones” possessing special knowledge. In fact, esotericism is the enemy.

In the contemporary mainstream, the definition of “performance art” is growing ever more elusive. The genre most recently recalls the celebrity co-signs of Jay-Z and his raptastic “Picasso Baby” or James Franco’s pseudo-oblivious staring contests with Marina Abramovic. Even David Blaine’s self-torture stunts fit the definition of performance art. To the untrained eye, performance art might seem to be a blanket term for almost anything that falls outside the artistic norm.

However, JOSE FEST offered works that were accessible to viewers raised on a steady diet of still lifes and linear narratives, without being boring.

A performance that might best be described as a Technicolor liturgy, for example, overlaid familiar rites with outlandish visuals.

A procession of men and women costumed in bedazzled vintage threads and dramatic make-up crossed the stage in unison, as though possessed, while two hooded men—one playing a synthesizer and the other reciting a haunting spoken word piece about political tragedy and war—served as organist and priest. The fi12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

rick majewski

nal tableau was a man and woman kissing, perhaps signifying a deeper union of souls.

In another act, a male and female duo re-enacted what appeared to be a senior citizen’s fever dream in “Virtual Florida.” An old overhead projector set the scene, casting a diaphanous palm-tree forest against one wall. The performers, wearing brightly colored wigs, sunglasses, and crudely sewn fatsuits, played retired girlfriends; in unison they drank heavily, pranced around, and, naturally, fell all over each other.

(Presumably what happens in Virtual Florida, stays in Virtual Florida.)

In keeping with its proclivity for this sort of theatrical hodgepodge, Temple-

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

head is the name of the title character in a post-apocalyptic feminist opera written by Heather Lynn, the space’s founder.

In the story, nature is destroyed and the surviving women all resemble garbage, an allegory for Lynn’s real-life struggle with the confusion, destruction, and alienation wrought by schizophrenia.

“Templehead was the imaginary friend of one of the girls living in this world,” Lynn says. “[Templehead] showed the little girl everything was possible. It seemed like a really powerful symbol for what we wanted to do.”

A self-taught interdisciplinary artist, Lynn, 35, began hosting events and work-

shops at Templehead with her partner, Michael Perkins, in 2012, after finishing an artistic residency at Reversible Eye Gallery in Humboldt Park.

Lynn is passionate about ensuring that Templehead is a safe and inclusive space, as well as an accessible platform for up-andcoming local artists.

“A lot of music spaces, they focus on touring bands. I’m really interested in building up Chicago bands,” she says. “I think Chicago is one of those cities that’s overlooked, and people come here as like a stepping stone to get to New York or L.A. and being from here, I’m pretty defensive about that.”

Slow Roll Rides Again BIKES

BY MARK HASSENFRATZ

“T

The weather man did not tell the truth,” remarked Oboi Reed, smiling defiantly despite the pouring rain. This was the sort of day that made me want to crawl back into bed, not the best biking weather. But there I was, setting out for a bike tour through the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods.

We met at the New Light of the World Ministries on 108th Street, where Oboi Reed and Jamal Julien, co-founders of the Chicago chapter of the Slow Roll movement, spoke to the assembled cyclists about the project.

Founded in Detroit, Slow Roll is a newcomer to Chicago. This was only the second of their planned monthly rides, but its events have exploded in Detroit, with roughly 4,000 riders attending weekly rides.

“Slow Roll for us is a tool to improve our communities,” Reed explained. “The potential for people to live healthier lives, to connect in a deeper way with one another, to shop locally, to explore their neighborhood from the perspective of two wheels. We look at communities on the North Side and we say we can have strong retail, we can have healthy families, strong schools, we can have communities that are

lexi drexelius

more bikeable and livable.”

Pastor Kirk Bell of the New Light of the World Church also sees the organization’s potential. “We been here about ten months…It’s been a challenge because of a lot of the gang activity,” he explained.

“The challenges that the kids have, that’s what brought us [the church] here. Being connected with Slow Roll has opened up another avenue to give the kids who live here an opportunity to get out of this community and to begin to see that there are other things going on outside of the drugs, the gangs, and the intimidation, give them opportunity to meet a diversity of people.

It’s been a challenge but it’s the challenge that keeps us here.”

Our ride maintained an easy pace that promoted conversation and allowed for riders of all abilities. There were about a dozen children (two of them Julien’s), as

well as a few older people and a blind man on the back of a tandem bike. Reed and Julien immediately addressed any passers-by with a little shameless self-promotion.

“Slow Roll Chicago, baby!” exclaimed Julien. “All are welcome! You got a bike, my man?”

We cut through the Chicago State University campus on our way to the first stop on our tour, the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, where we were greeted by founder Dr. Lyn Hughes and President David Peterson. The museum is dedicated to preserving and educating people about the legacy of A. Philip Randolph and the contributions made by African-Americans to the labor movement.

“People who were descendants of these men and women … began to send us things that you see on display here,” said Dr. Hughes. ”The membership cards, the

lantern, the cap, the keys, those kinds of things, buttons. We like to say that we are the missing piece to the Pullman story.”

After a stop at the Pullman State Historic Site we headed back to the church, but not before dismounting at our third and final stop, the Kids Off the Block Memorial. The memorial is a small lean-to filled with brick slabs arranged into rows commemorating dozens of young people lost to violence in Chicago. Riders somberly walked under the lean-to’s roof to read the names inscribed on the bricks.

Although the tour included moments of fun, the stop at the memorial made it clear that Reed and Julien also have a mission.

“It’s really important that we change the narrative,” Julien said. “Right now there’s a lot of projection of negative images of various communities within Chicago, but we find that it’s a lot safer than what’s projected in mass media. From a bicycle you have more of an opportunity to see and experience and absorb the neighborhood, and smell and hear the heartbeat of the community. We can bring people out of their houses and introduce them to some of the awesome things that we have in communities on the South and West Sides of Chicago.”

OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

VISUAL ARTS

2-D Levels Up V

BY STEPHEN URCHICK

“Bit Wars” at BLUE1647

stephen urchick

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

ideo games get a rough shake. If they’re not openly denounced as child’s play, few people give the rhetoric of procedure—the idea that “playing” can impart something unique—a second glance. As a visual art installation focused on video game aesthetics, “Bit Wars: Art Tribute to 8bit and 16bit Videogaming” had its work cut out for it from the start.

Installed at the BLUE1647 tech incubator space in Pilsen as part of EXPO Collective’s October exhibition, “ Bit Wars” had to negotiate the fraught line between fawning fan art and meditative homage. The artists chose to work with the imagery of a mass-market medium, drawn from one of its most commercial periods. “ Bit Wars” honed in on the eighties and nineties—times when corporate juggernauts like Sega and Nintendo dueled conspicuously in the advertisement pages of a growing games journalism. The threat of kitsch thus hung in suspense over every piece in the show. Could the “Bit Wars” artists make Mario more than the sum of his pixels? “ Bit Wars” found its answer in one of the hallmarks of eight- and sixteen-bit gaming: two-dimensionality. The exhibition’s featured games occupied a transitional moment in the history of gaming platforms, between basic vector graphics and the fully fledged 3-D polygonal worlds of contemporary video games.

The artwork of ”Bit Wars” calls attention to these first steps towards modern graphics by citing painting’s own preoccupation with flatness. In art history, whole atmospheres of hot air have been puffed out over the fact that a painting is stuff on a flat surface that depicts something through an illusion. “Bit Wars”’ own painters built up their canvasses sculpturally or tinkered formally with paint application. They gestured at the shared preoccupations of games and painting (i.e. making the 2-D believably 3-D and their artistic contrivances more credible).

Miguel Estrella’s “Masked Medium” falls into the first category of sculptural canvasses. Estrella painted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but he renders the ninja’s mask—the turtle’s beak—in a series of square mosaic tiles fastened to the artwork’s surface. The tiles at first reference blocky eight-bit and sixteen-bit pixel art, but more also hide a second ninja mask already painted into the composition. This second mask peeks out from beneath the tiles. In its almost total invisibility, it be-

comes highly visible. Estrella subverts the purpose of a mask by highlighting it—the ninja’s object of concealment is the artwork’s most salient feature.

Estrella consciously probes the tensions involved with working toward a realist style. To correct the flat shortcomings of two-dimensional art and make the turtle more elaborate and prominent, Estrella deploys three-dimensional elements.

However, the mosaic tiles end up calling attention to the painting’s basic flatness, just like the painting’s doubled masks give each other away. It brings to mind the dilemma of the “uncanny valley” in modern computer-generated imagery: as art approaches perfect simulation, flaws become highly discernible. By painting no eyes behind the mask—relocating the turtle’s eye in a pair of sunglasses hanging by his chest strap—Estrella flags these complex issues of looking and seeming. The result is an image that is neither entirely 2-D nor convincingly 3-D, as idiosyncratic as the canonical moments of eight-bit and sixteen-bit gaming.

“Game Over” by Adam Mageli questions the tricks used to signpost light and shadow. Mageli paints an explosion in the same pixelated style as Estrella, isolating it on a cyan field as its own self-contained object. He introduces two competing light schemes. The explosion is luminous because of the white core at its center and the cooling orbits of yellow, orange, and red expanding outwards. Yet the cyan background has been delicately worked so that it is lighter at the center and darker around the edges. Mageli juxtaposes the relatively limited color ranges of eight-bit and sixteen-bit consoles with the painterly practice of applying hundreds of intermediary tones to suggest that lightless, opaque pigments actually glow. He re-contextualizes this illusionistic technique against an art object that was first rendered on brilliant television screens before it was ever put it into paint.

The “Bit Wars” artists approached these perennial 2-D crises from different directions: with sleek panel painting, airbrushes and spray-paint, thick and glossy impasto. They made painting’s formal questions a jumping-off point for understanding gaming’s early adolescence. As art forms, both games and painting have attempted to make the imaginary authentic and present using sophisticated optical deceptions. Painting has spent centuries wringing its hands over the countless problems that follow from those attempts; “Bit Wars” hints that games are ready to tackle that tradition too.

Delay and Dismay

BY LUCIA AHRENSDORF

A

t the corner of 19th and Carpenter, Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) gathered for a public forum introducing their new report on immigration reform, Destructive Delay. Written in response to President Obama’s call for patience from immigration rights groups, and to bring to light the practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the report gives a voice to the undocumented immigrant population.

Tania Unzueta, the main author of the report led the evening’s presentation.

The presentation opened with criticism of President Obama’s handling of immigration reform in Washington. In March 2014, Obama made public that he was looking to make immigration policy “more humane.” The Obama Administra-

tion has continually delayed all executive action on this promise, and has asked for patience from immigration activist groups.

In response, Unzueta made clear her disdain by referring to Obama as “El Gran Deportador.” She insisted that now is the time for true reform, and that her organization, in coalition with others, will continue to put pressure on the federal government until something is done.

The rest of the presentation concerned ICE, the government agency tasked with the enforcement of immigration law and the removal of those who violate it. According to OCAD’s findings, ICE’s inhumane practices include mistreatment of transgender detainees, collaboration with law enforcement agencies under investigation for civil rights violations, and the revocation of visitation rights of detainees

POLITICS EDUCATION

Executive action on immigration

whose families protest ICE action.

ICE claims to only pursue undocumented immigrants who have been deemed “threats” to society. In response to that assertion, Unzueta responded with anecdotes from a mother of four, who was deported because of a single marijuana offense two decades earlier. After the presentation, a grandmother who failed to use a turn signal described her ordeal in a detention facility.

Both of these cases illustrate for Unzueta the latitude that ICE has in determining what these “dangers to society” can look like.

The field director of Chicago’s ICE office is Ricardo Wong, a figure who many in the room held responsible for their own mistreatment and broken families. His presence was felt both figuratively and literally. Before the meeting began, Unzueta

placed a chair behind her podium with a sign saying “Ricardo Wong (ICE)” in bold black letters. People in the room snickered and someone cracked a joke about throwing tomatoes. Unzueta noted that she had extended a warm invitation to Wong to come and listen to what they had to say, and to participate in the conversation. He did not make an appearance.

After the presentation, audience members stood up to relate their own stories and hardships. Most talked about the dissolution of families. The majority of people in attendance were women, many of them with young children. The giggling and running of toddlers in the background throughout the presentation served as a stark reminder of what the women giving the presentation wanted to stress—that the “draconian deportation quota” tears apart families.

Pizza Boy Lives “If They Mated” at the Honey Hole

courtesy of the honey hole

I

BY JAKE BITTLE

stepped off 18th Street and its panaderias and lavanderias into a firstfloor apartment filled with dozens of leather-clad, septum-pierced artists milling about sipping Charles Shaw. Knowing full well the distinction between Pilsen’s two art scenes—the former founded on predominately Mexican-American cultural

traditions, the latter chic, trendy, and usually strange—I entered the Honey Hole’s “If They Mated” expecting the obscure and prepared for the inane.

I was not disappointed: immediate standouts included a pair of boxing gloves holding churros and a photograph of a torso in a windbreaker holding a windbreaker. With no curator or host in immediate sight, I walked the gallery’s perimeter and

inspected the fifteen pieces, each of whose creator was on hand to enthusiastically fail to explain his or her work. I was unable to escape the feeling that I was not experiencing the scene in the way it was meant to be experienced—I had come to the gallery just to see the art instead of coming to mingle with all the other Pilsen art types who all seemed to know each other (and probably did). Frustrated with my perennial loneliness at gallery openings like the Honey Hole’s, I tried to befriend the photographer who did the windbreaker thing by asking him about his work over a can of PBR. He and his friends poked fun at my notepad.

Curated by Zachary Harvey, a grad student in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts, “If They Mated” takes its name and shtick from a frequent sketch on Conan O’Brien wherein two celebrities’ faces were morphed into one (usually very ugly) approximation of what their child would look like. Harvey asked fifteen artists to “create an offspring,” though the curator’s standards were much looser than Conan’s: according to the gallery flier, “anything and everything can mate.”

In this case, the fusion of “anything and everything” yielded, to name just a few, a photograph of a Boston cream doughnut smashed over a woman’s genitalia, a cray-

on drawing of a lizard woman, a pink papier-mâche phallus, and a brick stuck in the wall. The pieces were split about evenly between paintings and things that were not paintings; by far the standout entry among the former was a scene from 50 Shades of Grey done in the style of that one grotesque painter in the same room as “Nighthawks” at the Art Institute that I always see by accident right after “Nighthawks.” [The author probably means Ivan Albright—Ed.] On the floor of the gallery were two notable non-paintings. The first of them was a foil-covered baking sheet filled with green water, on top of which floated a piece of paper showing a scene from the Teletubbies and a quote from Heidegger. This one I didn’t like. I did, however, adore “Pizza boy.” The artist, Travis Fish, anthropomorphized a Little Caesar’s delivery bag on top of a pair of New Balance sneakers and left it standing in a corner. I laughed out loud when I saw this. For a moment I thought modern art might actually be getting somewhere. But then, maybe not: when I tried to take a picture of “Pizza boy” with my iPhone, my view was blocked by another dude trying to take a picture of it with his iPhone.

OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

Open House M Chicago

any South Side neighborhoods have changed hands over the years, each community leaving behind architectural remnants as they gave way to a new population. One striking example of this pattern is places of worship. This past weekend, 150 buildings of all kinds across Chicago opened their doors to the public for this year’s Open House Chicago event, organized by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

We set out to explore a cross-section of churches to see what they reveal about the history of neighborhood change on our side of the city. These four sites illustrate how a place’s history becomes imprinted on its buildings, and the different ways those legacies become masked or celebrated over time. (Rachel Schastok)

First Church of Deliverance

rachel schastok

BY RACHEL SCHASTOK

T

his was once the church of fashion,” John Stenson proclaims, standing in the aisle of the First Church of Deliverance at 43rd and Wabash. He’s a trustee (their term for deacon) at the church, dressed neatly in a black suit with purple tie and white shirt.

The church came humbly into being in 1929. Reverend Clarence H. Cobbs established the ministry in a former hat-lining factory, and the original altar was fashioned from the pastor’s mother’s ironing board.

In 1939, Walter T. Bailey, the first licensed African-American architect in Illinois, designed a façade and interior for the building in the Streamline Moderne style, a late form of Art Deco architecture whose horizontality and curves constituted a stripping-down of more elaborate earlier designs. The lime green walls inside echo the bands of green tile on the exterior.

Flanking the altar, the two choir sections are sheltered by a low, stepped wall, its curving chrome border almost reminiscent of a 1950s diner.

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Stenson, a lifelong member of the church who has served under four pastors, recalls the days decades ago when the church’s 1100 seats were nearly full for weekly services. “You could hear [the choir] a block away,” he says. “We just don’t have that kind of entourage today.” Stenson estimates that the congregation has fallen to about 175 people.

Today, the same features that once accounted for the church’s popularity have made holding on to members hard. Cobbs wrote many of the hymns that became FCD standards, including “Jesus Is the Light of the World,” a slogan that appears on the church’s exterior sign. The church choir continues to sing hymns in this older gospel style with sparse instrumentation, choosing not to introduce the “hip-hop hymns” that Stenson says younger generations want to hear, and can find in megachurches across the South Side.

Until the late 1990s, women were not allowed to enter the church dressed in pants. “But then women’s lib got on our case,” Stenson says. Despite this concession to changing times, the majority of church members are senior citizens, according to him. Stenson’s own children don’t regularly attend services. Starting in the mid-twentieth century, he says, young people “didn’t come in here and plant seeds like I did. We usually have a funeral once every week.

Members, members, members.”

While Stenson is pessimistic about FCD’s potential to grow again, the church’s place in history has not fallen under the radar. It was designated a protected city landmark in 1994 for its architectural significance as well as pioneering place in African-American architectural history and gospel music broadcasting. All told, the church, in its structure and practices, is a space that has witnessed shifting notions of “modern” as they’ve faded into—and sometimes clashed with—one another.

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

Our Lady of Peace

choloe hadavas

BY CHLOE HADAVAS

O

n the corner of South Jeffery Boulevard and East 79th Street, sits a “Blue Jewel” hidden in a plain stone exterior. The staid and sober facade of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church belies its interior—a large, open structure of carved plaster and woodwork with a ceiling of ornate designs and geometric patterns, nicknamed for the abundance of blue terra cotta that gives the space a faint cool glow.

Lining the walls are two rows of stainedglass windows that depict the apostles and biblical scenes.

Today, Our Lady of Peace is the official host of the Haitian Catholic community of Chicago as well as the local parish church of the neighborhood’s Catholic community, but the 95-year-old church has had a long and diverse history.

Our Lady of Peace was founded, the story goes, by a priest who fought in World War I. Seeking divine assistance in deciding whether he should fulfill his dream of building a church, the priest believed that he had finally received a sign from God

when he came across a soldier on the battlefield who was confused, unarmed, and separated from his regiment. The soldier told the priest that he was lost, but that an unknown woman with open arms had appeared before him and led him to the priest. The priest then hid the soldier in a foxhole, saving his life. When he returned to Chicago after the war, the priest founded the church in 1919.

Designed by architect Joseph W. McCarthy, the structure was completed in 1935. Initially, it was home to the Irish and German Catholic communities of the South Side. The African-American population began to attend its services in the early 1960s, but they did not form a large portion of the parish until the 1970s. Within the past decade, it has become the official center of the Haitian Catholic community, and it now holds services in both English and French. In fact, according to parishioners, the French mass is far better attended than its English counterpart.

Despite the church’s strong ties to the Haitian community, the parishioner population has been dwindling. The question of greatest concern to the current members is the church’s survival both as a physical structure and as a community of worshippers. Like many other urban churches, Our Lady of Peace is searching for ways to retain younger members who are either leaving for the suburbs or abandoning their parents’ faith. The closing of the parish’s K-8 school about fifteen years ago is indicative of this decline.

One possible solution? Michael Hughes, a parishioner, believes that if the church survives well into the twenty-first century, it will be a result of the increasing Hispanic immigration into the neighborhood. Regardless of what the future might bring, Our Lady of Peace has endured for generations, providing a spiritual home to each community it has hosted.

BUILDINGS

rachel schastok

rachel schastok

Shrine of Christ the King Sovereign Priest

A

BY ZOE MAKOUL

lthough the Shrine of Christ the King remains only partially furnished, the delicate beauty and rich history of the church do not fail to strike the worshipper, community member, or casual visitor. The Shrine was built by Chicago architect Henry J. Schlacks in 1923, modeled after a tower that lies on the Seven Hills of Rome. The Shrine’s story is closely linked to the history of the surrounding neighborhood. Gang activity became more prevalent in the Woodlawn area with the rise of the Blackstone Rangers, later the Black P. Stone Nation, in the 1960s. A fire destroyed most of the interior of the church in 1976, during a time when it was common to see buildings in the area go up in flames. Whether the fire was an accident or arson is unclear, but the Shrine is still recovering from the disaster. Even now, the church lacks utilities, and its intricate ceilings and floors have yet to be replaced.

Following the fire, the building was closed and scheduled for demolition. It wasn’t until 2003 that Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, entrusted the church to the Institute of Christ the Sovereign King, a body that had previously restored churches elsewhere in the country. The institute restored the church and officially named it the Shrine of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in 2006.

The church’s near demise and exciting recovery have accompanied other develop-

ments in Woodlawn. New and restored houses and condominiums have appeared around the church in the past few years, and the area is quickly becoming a popular destination for people interested in neoclassical architecture. The Shrine is now home to the monthly Great Devotion to the Infant King, the centerpiece of which is the church’s main altar, an 18th century statue of the Christ Child, imported from Spain. A new organ system has also been installed in the Shrine, though music must be enjoyed on the church’s donated or handmade provisional furniture.

One of the few churches that still offers a traditional weekly Latin Mass, the Shrine also hosts devotions, spring and fall concerts, and many other artistic, musical, social, and educational opportunities for the community. The Latin Mass is often performed for a full house, as the Shrine attracts people—primarily Roman Catholics—from around Chicago and around the world. But the majority of worshippers are from the immediate area, and they appreciate the Latin liturgy as a highly traditional form of Catholicism.

In 2004, the church was declared a Chicago landmark building, signaling its importance to the surrounding community.

And while the Shrine has not yet been totally repaired, beauty can be found in the close proximity of the lavish altars to the exposed and charred brick foundations—a reminder that it is possible not only to recover from disaster, but to thrive.

Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church

I

BY MARI COHEN

n the vast sanctuary of Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, a large cross sits front and center, presiding over a sign that proclaims the church’s name in blue letters. Just feet away, Stars of David, intricately carved and painted white and gold, decorate the walls and ceiling. The interaction of these two distinct symbols exposes the history of this Grand Boulevard building, which has changed hands three times in the last century.

Mount Pisgah was built in 1912 and designed by Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler for the Reform Jewish Chicago Sinai Congregation, which dates back to 1861. At the time, the area was populated mainly by German Jews and other Europeans, and full of Jewish-owned businesses.

In its mission to create a social and intellectual center as well as a house of worship, Sinai also built classrooms and a gymnasium. However, with the onset of the Great Migration, Grand Boulevard soon went through a period of racial transition.

Many Jews left the neighborhood, and African-American residents began to move in. In 1944, Chicago Sinai left for a new home while their former building’s classrooms and gym were converted into a new African American Catholic school, Corpus Christi High School. In 1962, Corpus Christi sold the building to Mount Pisgah, a Baptist congregation that still holds the space today. Much of the original architecture remains, including dark woodcarvings

that frame the organ pipes, stained glass windows, and the many Stars of David.

As a Baptist church located on the wide boulevard then known as South Parkway, Mount Pisgah has been a central fixture in the Bronzeville community. Martin Luther King Jr. preached there in 1967, and South Parkway was renamed in his honor after his assassination in 1968. In 1969, as Chicago churches commemorated the anniversary of King’s death, Jesse Jackson led a service at Mount Pisgah attended by over a thousand people.

While the sanctuary has enough bright blue seats for 1,800, the congregation currently numbers just two hundred, according to Deacon Matthew C. Clay. Still, about half the congregants joined in the last seven months since the arrival of a new pastor, and Clay says Mount Pisgah is hoping to recruit more. Pointing to a black-and-white photograph on the wall of the sanctuary filled with people, Clay says that’s what he hopes to return to. Still, he’s unashamed of the church’s current state. “We’ve never missed a bill, and we keep it up,” he says with pride. Mount Pisgah’s hallways are full of framed photos depicting past and present. A collage of pictures from a church event last year shares a display case with portraits of important leaders, like a young Jesse Jackson and a solemn Martin Luther King Jr. The pairing is fitting—this is a congregation with many reasons to recall its vibrant history, even as it moves into the future.

OCTOBER 22, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

STAGE & SCREEN The Retrieval and The Way of the Jegna It’s not every evening that one gets to travel back to 1864 for an hour and a half before returning to the present to hear from two empowering modern voices, but the DuSable Museum’s October 23 film and lecture pairing promises just that. The night begins with The Retrieval, a film about a thirteen-year-old black boy who stays afloat in the midst of the Civil War by working for white bounty hunters. The film, which explores themes of loyalty, survival, and the price of freedom in a time of slavery, will be followed by a lecture from “Kwesi” Ronald Harris and Kwaw Oscar Lester (a.k.a. Triple Blak). Harris, director of the African Male Resource Center of Chicago State University, and Lester, a spoken word artist and art educator, will discuss “The Way of the Jegna.” Jegna is a celebrated title in African culture, referring to a brave hero who protects the culture and the way of the people while continuing to grow and learn. DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Thursday, October 23, 6pm-9pm. $10, $5 for DuSable members and students with ID. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Mari Cohen)

Putney Swope “I’m not going to rock the boat. Rockin’ the boat’s a drag—what you do is sink the boat,” growls Putney Swope, an advertising firm’s token black executive who is accidentally elected chairman of the board in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 cult satire, Putney Swope. Comedian and former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac will present the film as part of “The Black Cinema Is…” series at South Shore’s Black Cinema House. Hailed by one critic at the time of its release as “vicious and vile... the most offensive film I’ve ever seen,” Downey’s acidic low-budget masterwork chronicles Swope’s overhaul of a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency. With deft force, Swope transforms the buttoned-up corporate office into “Truth and Soul, Inc.,” a predominantly black operation with an unabashedly liberal agenda. The film’s frenetic energy and biting take on race relations have rocked the boat considerably since its release—Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and the Coen Brothers all cite the film as an inspiration for their work. Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, October 26, 4pm.

Free. RSVP recommended. blackcinemahouse.org. (Olivia Myszkowski)

Two Twenty-Seven Get a rare look at 1950s Bronzeville life with Two Twenty-Seven playing at Kennedy-King. The comedy follows housewife Mary Jenson, who tells the tale of herself and her neighbors in a predominantly African-American apartment building as they juggle their interpersonal relationships and the tribulations of everyday life, all while in pursuit of the American dream. After its debut in 1976, the play went on to win the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and was adapted into the NBC sitcom 227. With this production, the play returns to its debut stage at Kennedy-King College, the alma mater of the playwright, Christine Houston; Two Twenty-Seven was inspired by Houston’s childhood growing up at 227 E. 48th St. Kennedy-King College Main Theater, 740 W. 63th St. Through October 24. Friday–Saturday, 7pm. $35 adult, $25 senior, $15 student. (773)7523955. etacreativearts.org (Kyle Jablon)

Englewood International Film Festival Exhortations to say “I believe” come from many quarters.

Priests. Peter Pan. The Englewood International Film Festival. But only in the case of the EIFF is the entreaty also the theme of an intriguing lineup of films, panels, and a day of talks about careers in the film industry with local schools. Calling on participants to choose to believe in something positive, the festival emphasizes faith in the Englewood community; the co-founders, one of whom is an Englewood native, talk about inspiring residents and being inspired in turn. Though the festival’s films come from as far afield as France, its roots show through in its three films with Englewood connections, including the opening night film, Englewood, by award-winning director William Cochran. Englewood is a story of growing up on the South Side. The EIFF, now in its fourth year, is growing up, too. Chatham 14 Theater, 210 W. 87th St. Panels and workshops at various locations. October 23-26. $40 full festival pass, $25 opening night, $8 for individual movies; panels free. (773)837-0145. eiff.org (Olivia Stovicek)

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

BEWARE or Be Square!

Step aside, Orson Welles—spoken-word performer Andrew Gregory Krzak of the hard-to-pronounce Odditorium is here and ready to rumble. If you thought War of the Worlds was the only radio show that induced widespread terror in the populace during the Golden Age of radio, you thought wrong—late-night horror series abounded for listeners in need of a good shiver. Now, just in time for Halloween, they’re coming back from the dead for three nights, thanks to the necromantic powers of BEWARE or Be Square! Under Krzak’s direction, he and a bevy of actors will reenact three hair-raising episodes from The Hermit’s Cave, Lights Out, and Suspense using only their voices. Sure, the front page of the newspaper can raise your hair plenty these days, but if supernatural spookiness is more your speed, old-time radio’s got you covered. Bring a folding chair and get ready for goose bumps. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3221 S. Morgan St. October 27-29. 8pm. Free. (773)837-0145. coprosperity.org (Julia Aizuss)

Skelebration Halloween and children go hand in hand: the candy, the Party City costumes, Hocus Pocus. Redmoon attempts to bring Halloween eeriness and children together in the best way they know how: a conceptual and creative art experience called Skelebration. After the event’s successful launch last year, the Pilsen-based experimental theater company has brought back Skelebration’s multisensory playground. Families can enjoy immersive experiences including a sonic representation of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds from designer/composer Jake Ruttenberg and “The Devil’s in the Details,” a haunted series of sideshow-like rooms. They can also enhance their Skelebration experience by spinning a wheel to pay a fee for more activities, one of which is “The Nest,” a Dracula-inspired maze. After one afternoon at Skelebration, adults and children alike will return to see how many more of their Halloween dreams Redmoon can make come true. Redmoon, 2120 S. Jefferson St. Saturday, October 25, 1pm, 4pm, and 7pm; Sunday, October 26, 1pm and 4pm. $20 adult, $12 youth, children 3 and under free.

Advance ticket purchase recommended. redmoon.org (Jola Idowu)

Fatal Frame The scary movies playing on October 30 at Fatal Frame are not the ones that kept you lying awake late at night when you were a kid. There won’t be serial killers intruding homes, puddles of blood, or ghosts and vampires jumping out from every corner. No, this program of five short avant-garde films by five different artists is not going to let you get away that easy. These films, ranging from the early 1920s to the late 1990s, materialize our every fear and internal disturbance. Using a variety of surrealist and experimental techniques, Fatal Frame guides us through the twisted realm of the supernatural, which inevitably overlaps with our world every now and then. Exploring themes of destruction, insanity, and the unknown, these movies will expose their brave viewers to a provoking dose of the violence of our everyday lives and of the lives that await us beyond mortality. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3221 S. Morgan Ave. October 30, 7pm. $7. southsideprojections.org (Emiliano Burr di Mauro)

La Casa de Satanas: True Terror Why simply see a spine-chilling performance when you can be part of one? That is, provided you’re not paralyzed with stage fright. La Casa de Satanas melds the concept of the haunted house with performance art, the immersive experience adding to both the artistic inquiry and the scare factor. The show is the brainchild of a collective of Pilsen artists, all of whom have collaborated for over three years to create a vast range of experiences for audiences using sound, mixed media, and visual art events. This performance explores the terrifying truths of our world within a hauntingly beautiful aesthetic born from the space between the otherworldly and the tangible. Plus, it takes the form of a haunted house, and who doesn’t love those? Cowards, that’s who. Don’t be a coward. Slumber Room Gallery, 1654 S. Allport St. October 27-November 1, 9pm. $13-$25. Advance ticket purchase recommended. 18+. (872)216-1009. la-casa-de-satanas. ticketleap.com/la-casa-de-satanas (Mark Hassenfratz)

Obama in India Om Obama, the third film by acclaimed Indian journalist and filmmaker Janaka Vishwanathan, can’t be easily cat-

¬ OCTOBER 22, 2014

egorized. It is at once a social commentary, a love story, and a political drama. Low-budget but high-energy, the 2011 film revolves around the fictional Kedarapalayam, a rural village experiencing economic upheaval following the construction of a local garment factory. When politicians convince villagers that President Barack Obama is planning to visit Kedarapalayam, they are seized with hope that the American head of state will be able to ease their economic woes. In a film peppered with subplots, director Vishwanathan says the binding tie is that “the only solution to every issue is Obama’s arrival.” Catch Om Obama, followed by a Q&A session with Vishwanathan, this Saturday at Doc Films. Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St. October 25, 3pm-5pm. (773)702-8574. docfilms. uchicago.edu (Olivia Myszkowski)

MUSIC Cocoa Tea at the Shrine Although reggae virtuoso Cocoa Tea will be performing on Halloween, the socially conscious dancehall star is sure to be more smooth than spooky. One of reggae’s most illustrious and consistent artists, Cocoa Tea is well known for his outspoken style and piercing cultural messages. The concert is part of his “Sunset in Negril” tour, which kicks off on October 22 in the United States and moves to Nigeria and Europe in December. The tour will showcase plenty of new material from Cocoa Tea and the Step by Step Band, including the title track “Sunset In Negril” and a cover of Bob Marley’s “War.” Reggae star Louie Culture and DJs Ringo and Papa G. will also be in attendance, so throw away that costume, grab your dancing shoes, and head on over to the Shrine. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. October 31. Doors open at 9pm. $35.

Tickets available online or at the door. 21+. (312)753-5681. theshrinechicago.com (Zoe Makoul)

Regina Carter Quintet at Logan Make no mistake—Regina Carter isn’t your average violinist. She’s drawn her virtuosic and imaginative music from creative sources as varied as the blues history of Detroit, the traditional folklore of the South, and the rhythmic culture of the African Diaspora. Carter’s technically dazzling and emotionally articulate performances have been recognized for exploring the artistic confluence responsible for American music-making.

This MacArthur Genius Grant recipient has been hailed as “the foremost jazz violinist of her generation.” Her quintet will be joined by Edmar Castaneda, acclaimed Colombian harpist and composer, for an installment of the UofC’s “Jazz at the Logan” series. The performance promises to be a musical spectacle as the two daredevil musicians join together onstage. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. October 24, 7:30pm. $35 general admission, $5 for UofC students. (773)702-ARTS. chicagopresents. uchicago.edu (Teddy Watler)

The Ready Set at Reggies Jordan Witzigreuter, an alternative-pop singer hailing from Fort Wayne, provides the vocals, instrumentals, and everything else as the sole member of the indie act The Ready Set. After creating the “band” in his basement, Witzigreuter was signed to Pete Wentz’s label Decaydance Records before moving to Razor and Tie Records. Since its creation in 2007, The Ready Set has released three studio albums and four EPs, the latest being The Bad & The Better. A mainstay on the Vans Warped Tour stage, The Ready Set combines a variety of influences into a diverse sound and has been praised by Spin Magazine for its “pop-punk style soaring choruses, smooth R&B-style passages, and quick-fire sing-rap verses.” Catch Witzigreuter on the South Side for a free in-store performance before he heads to the West Loop for a show at Bottom Lounge with Metro Station and The Downtown Fiction. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. October 26, 2pm. Free. All ages. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Shelby Gonzales)

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Best known for his 1999 song “I See a Darkness” and its subsequent Johnny Cash cover, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, or Will Oldham, makes folk music that’s thematically more appropriate for the nihilism-tinged post-punk of the twenty-first century than the idealistic values and up-tempo atmosphere of the 1960s. Relying in his best moments on both his fragile, world-wearied voice and a spare instrumental backing, Oldham’s oeuvre exposes a long-neglected avenue for a traditionally masculine figure in the world of indie rock, engaging in the genre’s

trademark self-examination without being overly introverted. Most publications will steer new listeners towards I See a Darkness for an introduction to Bonnie “Prince” Billy, but Oldham’s former work under the alias Palace Music holds up just as well, especially the Steve Albini-produced Viva Last Blues. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. October 31, 8:30pm. $25-35 advance, $32-42 at door.

(312)526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com (Austin Brown)

Black Milk Rapper and producer Curtis “Black Milk” Cross has been telling Detroit’s story over a soulful beat for over a decade. With five solo albums under his belt and another on the way, Black Milk’s success has been built on deft navigation between the underground and mainstream scenes—he’s worked with a diverse and impressive range of artists, including Fat Ray, Jack White, and Danny Brown. Black Milk will bring his frank lyrics and smooth production to headline a Midwest hip-hop lineup at Reggies, featuring fresh and seasoned performers alike. Acclaimed Chicago freestyler MC Juice (who famously defeated Eminem in 1997’s Scribble Jam rap battle), Detroit native Denmark Vessey, and South Side newcomer ADaD will all take the stage on Friday evening, setting out to prove that Tech N9ne was right when he referred to the Midwest as “the only real place to be.”

Reggies, 2105 S. State St. October 24, 8pm. $13-$15. 18+.

(312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Olivia Myszkowski)

Pharaoh Sanders Saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, described by renowned musician and composer Albert Ayler as the figure of “the Son” in the holy triumvirate of free jazz (with John Coltrane as the father and Ayler himself as the Holy Ghost), will play Saturday at the Promontory in Hyde Park. Sanders, a pioneer of the free jazz approach, will perform alongside the Chicago Underground Duo, the Ari Brown Quintet, and other jazz musicians as part of the Old and New Dreams Festival. The festival marks the rebirth of the nightclub and cultural hub HotHouse, which closed in 2007 and hosted a wide variety of readings, movie screenings, and concerts. Plans for HotHouse’s reopening at a location in Bronzeville are expected to be announced at the concert, so come to witness the first step in the new life of a storied Chicago institution. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. October 14, 8pm. $22-40. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago. com (Emily Harwell)

Marsha Ambrosius R&B artist Marsha Ambrosius will take the stage at the Shrine on Monday, October 27, with a second performance the next night. The ex-Floetry member has received a total of six Grammy nominations as well as a “Songwriter of the Year” award from BMI. She’s still celebrating the success of her 2014 summer release Friends & Lovers, a self-written and -produced sophomore solo album which included a collaboration with Dr. Dre on the single “Stronger.” Ambrosius has also worked with Alicia Keys, Kanye West, and Busta Rhymes. She’s no stranger to love, and her moody and soul-filled songs don’t hesitate to play with nostalgia, passion, and sexuality. If you’re willing to drop some extra cash, the Shrine will be hosting a meet-and-greet for guests to catch Ambrosius before she starts her set. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Monday, October 27 and Tuesday, October 28, 8pm. $35 general admission, $50 VIP, $70 meet and greet.

(312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com (Teddy Watler)

Off the Record: Rita J Born and raised in Chicagoland, Rita J writes upbeat music that tells stories of courage and strength. Inspired by everyone from Björk to Fiona Apple, from MC Lyte to Michael Jackson, Rita J is making her way up the ladder of female MC’s as a motivating artist. She’s been in Atlanta for the past five years recording music at her own pace, but she’s back in Chicago making music and telling stories of the time she lost while not making music. Arts + Public Life brings together South Side artists through artist-driven activities such as design apprenticeships, exhibitions, and even knitting. Off the Record will start with a workshop on the music industry, followed by a listening party to promote Rita J’s sophomore album, Lost Time, and perhaps even an impromptu performance.

Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Saturday, November 15, 8pm-10pm. (773)702-9724. arts.uchicago.edu/artsandpubliclife (Denise Parker)

ARTS CALENDAR

VISUAL ARTS Borderlines

Black Girls Rock...In Art!

We tend to view art as the embodiment of free expression and creativity. It challenges others’ perceptions by pushing the boundaries of the physical world through aesthetic representation. With this conception of art as something fundamentally unconstrained, it’s often easy to forget that artists face limitations surrounding the act of creation. “Borderlines” explores the physical and psychological boundaries of art and “the borderlines that artists place on themselves.” The purpose of the exhibit is to invite viewers to consider not only the artists’ borderlines, but also to ponder their own personal borderlines.

“Borderlines” also celebrates the ten-year anniversary of 33 Contemporary, a fine arts gallery in Bridgeport. 33 Contemporary Gallery, Zhou B. Art Center, 1029 W. 35 St. Opening Reception, October 17, 7pm-10pm. Through November 15. Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm. Free. (708)8374534. 33collective.com (Chloe Hadavas)

Black girls rock, and an exhibit at Pilsen’s Lacuna Artist Lofts is going to prove it. This charismatic showcase of artwork from three Chicago-based artists aims to highlight both successful black females working within the South Side’s artistic community and the “beauty, strength, and dynamism” of the African-American community as a whole. Expect to see endearing illustrations of little girls jumping rope framed side-by-side with powerful pieces that shine a light on the beauty and power of African-American women. If this alone doesn’t satisfy your craving for some good old-fashioned girl power, come for the artists’ talk on opening day to hear the perspectives of featured artists Dana Todd Pope, Kudzai B. Mutasa, and Rhonda Gray. Lacuna Artist Lofts, 2150 S. Canalport Ave. Friday, October 24, 4pm6pm. Artist talk at 6pm. Free. (312)841-7561. lacuna2150. com (Meaghan Green)

Black Eutopia

Boundaries OUT/Boundaries IN

William McKinley’s barber George Meyer was active in the Republican Party. Novelist and playwright Zora Neale Hurston worked in a barbershop during her college years. From the black-staffed, white-clientele-only shops of the late nineteenth century to the social and political hubs of the early twentieth century, barbershops have helped shape and define black history. For these reasons, “Black Eutopia,” an interdisciplinary event exploring the role of art in the black community, is set in a barbershop.

The highlight of the six-hour event is a discussion led by artists from various backgrounds—visual art, music, arts education, and art therapy. They will cover topics like the relationship between art and labor, portrayals of black bodies by non-black artists, and art outside traditional gallery spaces. In addition, there will be musical performances, hair styling, and pieces of visual art on display. Carter’s Barber Shop, 3620 W. Cermak Rd. October 24, 1pm-7pm. $5. (312)600-8716. chicagoartistsmonth.org (Julie Wu)

Boundaries, binaries, and biases shape our lives, whether we are aware of them or not. Infamous in recent years for its high crime rate, Englewood has had one such boundary erected around it, built from incendiary headlines and troubling statistics. As a response to this one-sided characterization, Englewood’s Crushers Club Gym is inviting Chicagoans to engage with the vibrant South Side community through an eclectic mix of boxing, music, and visual art at various Chicago Artists Month events. As the second half of a two-part series, Crossing the Boundaries: IN promises to put a dent in the walls we put up around each other. Crushers Club Gym, 1406 W 64th St. Opening reception Friday, October 24, 4pm, musical performance at 6pm. Through Friday, October 31. Free.

(312)850-9630 www.crushersclub.org (Michal Kranz)

10x10 Chicago Heroes Who are your heroes? So asks Project Onward as, in a tenth anniversary event, they honor ten unique Chicago heroes who have “shaped this city and helped it succeed” through portraits by ten contemporary Chicago artists.

Artists include Jacqueline Cousins, an Illinois Institute of Art graduate known for her “nonstop action” style, and Bill Douglas, inspired by his Tennessee childhood and recognized for his elaborate and vibrant paintings.

By presenting the “heroes” in these unique portraits, artists seek to represent heroes chosen by Project Onward from their own perspective and recognize their achievements. Project Onward, a Chicago-based nonprofit, serves as a gallery and professional development center for artists with “exceptional talent and challenges, ranging from autism to mental illness.” Experience Chicago’s history of heroes through a new perspective in this remarkable show. Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St., 4th floor. October 17-November 14. Tuesday- Saturday, 11am-5pm. Free. (773)940-2992. projectonward.org (Clyde Schwab)

Paul Germanos

IRL Paul Germanos counts among his achievements a graduate degree in political philosophy, a number of years as a taxi driver, a motorcycle odyssey across the United States, and an Illinois peace officer’s license—but online you’d never know it. On the Internet, Germanos is strictly a humble chronicler of the art world. He tweets straightforward news about art show openings in Chicago and posts photos of galleries on his Flickr photostream and blog as part of a decade-long effort to document Chicago’s contemporary artists and exhibitions. Now these photos are taking on a life outside the computer screen in a photographic installation at the antena project space in Pilsen. The opening night will also feature a presentation of Germanos’s portraits of forty artists, art administrators, and critics, as well as some of these artists’ own work. Antena, 1755 S. Laflin St. Opening reception Friday, October 24. Through November 22. 6pm-10 pm. Free. (773)340-3516. antenapilsen. blogspot.com (Julia Aizuss)

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