2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ OCTOBER 26, 2016
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent 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. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 4, Issue 5 Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Support Ellie Mejía Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor
Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta
Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Ariella Carmell, Jonathan Hogeback, Andrew Koski, Carrie Smith, Kylie Zane Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Web Editor Camila Cuesta Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editors Baci Weiler, Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Sara Cohen, Bridget Gamble, Christopher Good, Anne Li, Michal Kranz, Zoe Makoul, Lewis Page, Sonia Schlesinger Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Social Media Intern
Ross Robinson
Webmasters Alex Mueller, Sofia Wyetzner Publisher
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, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com
Cover photo by Terry Evans Cover design by Ellen Hao
IN CHICAGO
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
“Ode to Herb Kent” by Jamila Woods Your voice crawls across the dashboard of Grandma’s Dodge Dynasty on the way home from Lilydale First Baptist. You sing a cocktail of static and bass. Sound like you dressed to the nines: cowboy hat, fur coat & alligator boots. Sound like you lotion every tooth. You a walking discography, South Side griot, keeper of crackle & dust in the grooves. You fell in love with a handmade box of wires at 16 and been behind the booth ever since. From WBEZ to V103, you be the Coolest Gent, King of the Dusties. Your voice wafts down from the ceiling at the Hair Lab. You supply the beat for Kym to tap her comb to. Her brown fingers paint my scalp with white grease to the tunes of Al & Barry & Luther. Your voice: an inside-out yawn, the sizzle of hot iron on fresh perm, the song inside the blackest seashell washed up on a sidewalk in Bronzeville. You soundtrack the church picnic, trunk party, Cynthia’s 50th birthday bash, the car ride to school, choir, Checkers. Your voice stretch across our eardrums like Daddy asleep on the couch. Sound like Grandma’s sweet potato pie, sound like the cigarettes she hide in her purse for rough days. You showed us what our mommas’ mommas must’ve moved to. When the West Side rioted the day MLK died, you were audio salve to the burning city, people. Your voice a soft sermon soothing the masses, speaking coolly to flames, spinning black records across the airwaves, spreading the gospel of soul in a time of fire. Joycetta says she bruised her thumbs snappin’ to Marvin’s “Got to Give It Up” and I believe her. Originally published by Poetry Magazine. Go Cubs, We Guess On Saturday night, fans of a certain baseball team on a certain side of the city took to the streets to celebrate the potential end (or definite end, depending how you look at it) of a curse that has lasted, it must be said, a pitifully long time. There’s nothing bad about this, really. Good for them. Many fans of the baseball team whose field is geographically closer to this paper’s offices—that is, the Chicago White Sox—had already thrown their support behind this other team as they competed in the National League championship, from which they will now advance to the World Series. If Sox fans had done their best to be nice about this, then why, why did the national media have to snub them so brutally? On the Monday morning after the Cubs clinched the series, CBS This Morning tweeted: “Wrigley Field is prepping this morning for an event Chicago hasn’t seen in 71 years: the World Series.” SportsCenter, which really ought to know, tweeted: “71 years later, Chicago is finally back in the Fall Classic.” Really? Does it even need to be said? The White Sox won the World Series in 2005, and what’s more, they went to the World Series in 1959. We all know the mainstream media doesn’t exactly excel at covering Chicago equitably, but come on. Willie Cochran Lawyers Up Twentieth Ward Alderman Willie Cochran is facing a federal investigation over his use of campaign funds. The crux of the probe is Cochran’s failure to disclose, within the time required by state law, the payments he made to himself from his campaign fund. After making seventy (yes, seventy) revisions to his campaign finance documents in the past year alone, it turns out that he used over a third of his campaign expenditures to pad his own pockets. It’s not illegal for aldermen to reimburse themselves, but usually not to the tune of more than $120,000 over four years. To put that in perspective, Cochran makes $116,208 a year as an alderman, in addition to his $60,280 annual police pension. In contrast to many aldermen who have declined raises in light of the city’s financial issues, Cochran’s accepted every raise offered; in 2014, he advocated for a salary increase for all aldermen, citing how hard he works for his ward. That said, he still found time for a Las Vegas vacation (complete with a rented convertible) to celebrate his reelection last year. The vacation turned sour, however, when he was hit with his third foreclosure lawsuit of the past few years—two of which were on his home, and one of which was on a laundromat he’s staked in. (All three were eventually dismissed.) Regardless, let’s hope his newly-hired criminal defense lawyer is better than his bookkeeper.
IN THIS ISSUE looking for economic revival in chatham
“I have faith that we will continue to grow.” adeshina emmanuel... ......................4 some darkness, some light
The feeling of a scene from a passing dream. leah menzer......................................6 the englewood i see
“These are my friends in this picture! I see them all the time.” kylie zane..........................................7 celebrating 100 issues
south side weekly............................8 fugitive dust
A firm grasp on the absurdity of the situation. christopher good..........................10 new, like it used to be
One of Chicago’s most storied arts institutions tries to change with its community. josh kaplan......................................11 from the flood
This is community found. daniel mays.....................................13
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OCTOBER 26, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
Looking for Economic Revival in Chatham BY ADESHINA EMMANUEL
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his summer, Nedra Fears moved from Atlanta to Chicago’s South Side at a time when affluent blacks are more likely to do the opposite. Sixty-year-old Fears is living at her mom’s house in Chatham and looking for a home to buy in the historic black community, whose fortunes have declined in the past several decades. The serene street lined with bungalows and tidy lawns where Fears grew up alludes to Chatham’s reputation since the 1950s as a bastion of black middle-class excellence. Blackowned mom-and-pop shops dominated nearby South Cottage Grove Avenue and West 79th Street. But economic decline set in about a decade after the area’s 1970s heyday, and today those business corridors are marred by empty storefronts and fading facades. These retail strips are critical to a revitalization effort Fears has returned to lead. “We need to be the change we want to see, but how do you do that?” said Fears, executive director of the Greater Chatham Initiative, a collaboration between elected officials, the private sector, and community residents meant to reverse Chatham’s economic decline. “How do you self-invest and make that change happen, and how do you galvanize others to make that change?” The Greater Chatham Initiative (GCI), when it rolls out this fall, will aim to revive the old heart of Chicago’s black middle class by focusing on wooing more businesses to Chatham and nearby communities, bolstering existing establishments and improving retail strips, Fears said. Part of the problem is excess retail capacity—vacancy rates commonly top out at twenty to thirty percent—and Fears said some of the buildings could become coworking spaces or be rezoned for apartments. A 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
GCI collaboration with the Chatham Business Association, the office of 6th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer, and other community development groups will look to rebrand the 79th St. retail corridor from Cottage Grove to King Drive, Fears said. But even now, before the revitalization effort kicks in, business still operate each day on Cottage Grove and 79th. Their experience shows there is opportunity in the neighborhood—despite years of neglect and stigma—as well as major hurdles that the community and Fears’s GCI programs must confront before bringing about a true renaissance.
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n a sweltering summer afternoon in a South Side martial arts gym, a tween dutifully strikes a punching bag with his wooden staff. Watching from
spots on Cottage Grove. On the 79th Street corridor, Captain’s Hard Time restaurant and Mather LifeWays café are other popular destinations. But this diverse variety of establishments is an outlier on the two retail strips. Of the 208 licensed businesses between both the Cottage and 79th commercial stretches, six types of businesses account for more than half, according to a City Bureau analysis of city data. About one in five businesses either do or sell hair and haircare products, including barber shops and beauty supply stores. Nearly twenty stores are fashion apparel retailers, and fourteen are fast food joints. These three categories encompass the goods and services people tend to buy locally, rather than look outside the community for, according to Lauren Nolan, an economic development planner at the Voorhees Center for Neighborhood & VIDURA JANG BAHADUR Community Improvement. the sideline is Steven Kinison, a cheerful but Business owners said public safety is stern personal trainer with a clean-shaven one of the biggest challenges to economic head and mustache who co-owns Combat- growth on the corridors, and that creating an zone, on 82nd and Cottage Grove. environment where shoppers, including local The Edgewater resident admits the professionals, feel comfortable walking the loitering and news of shootings on Cottage stretch would help their bottom lines. This Grove gave him pause two years ago when he summer, Kinison said he saw how a visible and his business partner opened the gym. But police presence discourages bad behavior on Kinison says he saw more businesses than he the street, even if that hasn’t been a panacea. anticipated in the area, and that there was a Some business owners, including Dat lack of businesses like his focused on fitness. Donut co-owner Darryl Townson, said that He knew he’d have an edge. addressing unemployment in the area could “I was kind of skeptical at first but now I make a difference by deterring people from can see it,” Kinison said, touting the gym’s 200 using crime to support themselves. members as proof he made the right call. “I Fears said she wants to focus on have faith that we will continue to grow.” reintegrating people whose criminal records Businesses like Combatzone, local make finding work tough. To that end, GCI is favorites like the famous Dat Donut, and partnering with the Chicago Cook Workforce community staples like the sixty-year-old, Partnership to open a new workforce center, family-owned Tailorite Cleaners are all bright at a location to be announced by the end of
BUSINESSES
the year. CCWP will spearhead running and staffing the new center, which will have more than a dozen staff, a computer lab, classes in digital and financial literacy, and space for other organizations focused on workforce development; CEO Karin Norington-Reaves said her agency’s responsibility “is to make sure we have access to a wide array of services so we meet people exactly where they are.” Earlier this year the Walmart Foundation gave CCWP, one of the biggest workforce agencies in the country, a $10.9 million grant to offer free education and employment services for retail workers looking to advance their careers within the industry in Chicago and ten other sites around the country. Norington-Reaves said that there are also plans for a satellite location in Chatham targeting locals with similar efforts. Fears also said that she is working with Skills for Chicagoland’s Future to link more Chatham-area residents to corporate employers over the next two years. She is currently identifying “high-impact, high-growth business owners” in sectors like transportation, logistics and distribution, food processing and packaging, and fabricated metals, to connect
them with partners NextStreet and Case “so they can take their firms to the next level, employ more residents, and create more wealth.” Other business owners said that the city should spend money-improving infrastructure to make the area more attractive to potential businesses, something Mayor Rahm Emanuel named as a goal of a $4.7 million streetscape project underway from 77th to 83rd Streets on Cottage Grove. Chatham does boast a Target, Nike Factory Store, Payless, Walgreens, and Garrett’s Popcorn that are clustered on the southern end of the Cottage Grove retail strip near 85th and 87th Streets. Businesses like McDonald’s and Family Dollar have footprints in the area. Yet the backbone of Chatham’s local economy is small business, and the neighborhood has a proud history of black-owned establishments. However, the latter sentiment conflicts with the current reality, where many shopkeepers are immigrants from countries like Jordan, Korea, and Pakistan. Fears said she welcomes any business owner who invests in the community, provides quality services, and is a good steward of their
space. She suggested that increasing black business ownership is one way to combat people’s discomfort. “What we need to be able to do,” she said, “is make people believe that they can start their own businesses, and support them.”
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ut black-owned businesses face serious challenges, not least among them the structural obstacles and racial discrimination that have made it difficult for black entrepreneurs acquire sufficient startup capital or credit to open, grow, and sustain businesses. Despite Chicago’s long history of institutional racism, which Fears acknowledged, she and the GCI report still lean toward more race-neutral explanations of Chatham’s woes. She points to deindustrialization, the difficulty posed by living far away from jobs, and how many Chatham residents didn’t update their skills and education to ride the wave into the “new economy.” Diversifying the types of stores in the area remains a challenge. Businesses of similar type and quality tend to cluster, in what urban development researcher Molly Gallagher calls
the “snowball effect” of retail. This makes it difficult to both quickly change the mix of small businesses or attract businesses to serve as catalysts for change, she said. For that catalyst, Fears said “you typically need to have a big anchor institution, and that anchor institution drives that development, [or] you have someone with outside influence and capital who decides to put money in an area.” At the neighborhood level, experts prescribe several solutions, including individuals banding together to establish business cooperatives to reap tax benefits, utilizing public funding opportunities, and cutting costs by pooling funds to cover overhead expenses like rent and product costs. Some of these options already exist. The city’s microlending program helps business owners overcome capital hurdles; tax increment finance districts offer business improvement grants to help entrepreneurs renovate their spaces; and credit unions and community banks are key alternatives to big lenders, but not everybody has access to or education about these options. In addition to her plans to bring in new businesses, Fears says the initiative will include training and connecting residents to jobs to boost their social mobility, thawing a frozen housing market, and rehabbing distressed apartment buildings. Details are still scarce for these initiatives, but business development can be a vehicle for driving broader improvements, she said. Gallagher agrees, adding that changing the tone of an area has to be a holistic effort. The test will come when the plans begin rolling out this fall, when Chatham residents will hopefully begin to see the effects of the ambitious project. Among other factors, Fears touts the mayor’s commitment as one reason why the GCI has the potential to succeed where other revitalization efforts have fallen short. “We have accomplished great things with far fewer resources than we have now,” Fears said. “We can do this. And I think people need a vehicle in order to get it done. This is the vehicle. And I’m not doing it alone. This is a collective effort.” ¬ This report was published in collaboration with City Bureau, a Chicago-based journalism lab.
VIDURA JANG BAHADUR
OCTOBER 26, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
Some Darkness, Some Light Steve Badauskas, owner of Bernice’s, gets a solo show
BY LEAH MENZER
JUSTIN HONRA
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n the first floor of the Lacuna Artists Lofts, near the abstract floating reclaimed wood sculpture, past the neon Converse All-Stars wall hanging, around the eleven-foot-tall vintage cowhide couch-swing with USB port armrests, you enter a narrow room. “Join us at Lacuna Artist Lofts for ART PARTY, our monthly second Friday art opening. The October feature is the first solo exhibition of works by Steve Badauskas,” reads Lacuna’s e-vite for their October Art Party. “Ah, yes, Steve Badauskas,” thinks an art connoisseur, in Hyde Park,or West Loop. “I think I’ve heard that name.” “Ah, yes, Steve Badauskas,” thinks a multitude of Bridgeporters, “Steve’s having a show? I gotta go!” The room: bright white yet dimly lit, thirty-two drawings hung with dollhouse simplicity upon the walls and squeezed onto the shelves. The gallery has optical illusive proportions—it distorts reality. It gives the viewer the feeling of a passenger train car, a living room, a scene from a passing dream. The show at Lacuna, The Longest Night That Ever Was, is all pen, ink, and marker on paper, mostly black and white, with minimal splashes of color. The three-hour opening was on October 14. The room was pleasantly crammed with visitors and well-wishers, including one man who proclaimed he would have “rise[n] from his 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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deathbed” to attend the event. Who is Steve Badauskas? Why did his opening have hordes of attendees and raise the dead? Why were there bustling sales of pieces that night, when your classic tatterdemalion artist goes home from a first solo show with breadcrumbs and stale water? Steve Badauskas is a neighborhood fixture in Bridgeport. He’s the proprietor of Bernice’s, a watering hole that has been open for fifty-one years, located at 32nd and Halsted. You’ve seen it on “Best Of ” lists. Bernice’s is low-ceilinged, has the feeling of a train car, a living room, a dream. People come to Bernice’s for advice, sanctuary, and “night before the wedding” pep talks. Steve has a quiet passion. “Steve has showed individual pieces here and there for the past ten years, but when I found out he hadn’t had his own show, I knew I had to ask him to be our monthly feature,” says Elizabeth Isakson-Dado, his curator at Lacuna. “About a year ago the building [Lacuna Artist Lofts] approached me, I own a print shop called Felix Tandem Letterpress upstairs, which is how I met Steve, and the building asked us to help put together monthly events to draw people to Lacuna.” A “lacuna” is a “gap or blank space in something: a missing part.” Fitting that Steve’s first solo show would be at a gallery by that name. Art is his missing part. “When Steve first came to our work-
shop to print with us, I slowly started to realize how big of a part art was in his life,” says curator Isakson-Dado. Art is not only part of his life, but of his life beyond life. His art is a reflection of the unfathomable depth of the subconscious. Many people—perhaps it is more accurate to say patrons, friends—at the event describe scenes of Steve sketching and drawing while watching over Bernice’s, using the bar top as a drafting board. He has shyly shown the occasional piece, or else promised to show a piece to a friend before quietly backing out. “Steve has two different styles,” says Isakson-Dado. “One is ‘pre-drawn paper,’ which means he draws what he sees in the grain of the paper. The other is the ‘dream world.’ ” Isakson-Dado says that sometimes he’ll have images that he can’t get out of his head, images that return to him night after night in dreams, and in waking hours. The exhibition’s title, The Longest Night That Ever Was, is in reference to Steve’s affliction masquerading as muse, insomnia. His curator describes Steve’s style as similar to that of sketchy Brit Sue Coe, or of 14th-century Netherlander Hieronymus Bosch, the latter more for the subject matter than style. The empathetic simplicity in Badauskas’s more restrained pieces reminded me of Shel Silverstein. A gesturally drawn young girl on a sea shore (Girl With
Wagon, $160), for instance. A small boat in a dense-tropical setting (Bangkok Blues, $120), for example. These two small drawings are emblematic of the “waking dream” category described by Isakson-Dado. The other half of the show is the Boschers, the “pre-drawns”, as she described them—pieces straight from Dante’s inferno. Faces on faces, drawn with black-penned, feverish devilry. The title piece of the show, at the back of the room, where the walls began to draw close to the ground, was The Longest Night that Ever Was. The picture depicts a man in an armchair, oddly smudged light blue letters floating above him, the only use of this color. He is facing a TV and beset on all sides by intense devilish darkness, featureless figures surrounding his small area of “light.” As Steve said, “Many of these pieces came from a very dark time in my life, which is where I was able to gather the inspiration that created them. But I hope to never go to those places again, and I don’t wish for anyone else to go there.” Badauskas posed next to the aforementioned piece for the Weekly’s photographer, and smiled with the genuine peace and happiness that is afforded to those who have been surrounded by well-wishers for three hours straight. There was no trace of darkness on that night. ¬
VISUAL ARTS
The Englewood I See Hamilton Park Advisory Council’s first annual art fair meets with resounding success
COURTESY OF FEATURED ARTIST TONIKA JOHNSON
BY KYLIE ZANE
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he stately Hamilton Park Cultural Center is home to an overwhelming variety of community programming. In a given month, the auditorium’s stage might be the backdrop for a yoga class, a film screening, or a footwork showcase by dance crew The Era. On Saturday, October 15, it served as the site of the first annual Englewood Art Fair, which drew over a hundred attendees. Teenage girls circled booths selling jewelry, drawings, t-shirts, bags, and aromatherapy oils, snacking on complimentary tea sandwiches and brie. An African art pop-up store took up a side room by the entrance, displaying dozens of West African carved statues and paintings for sale at unbelievably reasonable prices. In the auditorium, toddlers climbed up the stairs to the stage, where featured artist Tonika Johnson’s photos were displayed. Johnson’s vivid photographs celebrate the everyday moments of life in Englewood. “My passion for Englewood and community work, plus my belief in the power of contemporary art [as] a conduit for social awareness, motivated me to use my art to challenge public perception of Englewood,” she wrote in an email. “The ongoing media vilification
of Englewood is not a true reflection of the community I was so lovingly raised in. The Englewood I know has little girls picking dandelions from vacant lots with overgrown grass; young groups of black boys riding their bikes happily and freely; [b]lack men pushing their children in park swings; teenagers turning the dirt for their grandmothers’ backyard gardens; and young women sitting on their front porches laughing and relaxing—this is the Englewood I see and decided to photograph five years ago.” These aren’t just empty words—as I stood in front of Johnson’s prints, she was approached by a teenaged girl. “How much are these?” the girl asked, referencing a stack of prints displaying five boys on their bikes, “’Cause these are my friends in this picture! I see them all the time.” Connections between the art on display and the real people who participate in its creation were everywhere at the fair. Krystal Webb, an art teacher at Wentworth Elementary, talked with pride about her students’ art, which was on display in a corner of the room. There were colorful drawings dealing with negative space, objects related to movement and travel from her segment on the Great Migration, and a contour portrait of Neil de-
Grasse Tyson, backed by a collage of stars and galaxies. She told me she emphasizes the process of creation with her students, often using unconventional materials, to develop her students’ confidence in their own ability to shape their communities. Much of Hamilton Park Cultural Center’s programming of late is coordinated by Asiaha Butler, who is herself a study in the ability of individuals to shape their communities—she’s the co-founder and president of R.A.G.E., the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, founded in 2010. More recently she’s added the title of president of HPAC, the Hamilton Park Advisory Council (which celebrates its second birthday this month) to her long list of achievements. In addition to coordinating the fair, she’s responsible for the aforementioned impressive collection of West African art, a recent donation to R.A.G.E. The profits from the sales of the pieces, as well as the fifty-dollar vendor fee for artists, she tells me, will all go toward HPAC’s upcoming events, from a turkey drive in November to a toy giveaway in December. She took a break from her whirlwind pace to tell me the fair was successful in “bringing people in and out of Englewood to see the
beauty of the Hamilton Park Cultural Center—many people forget about this beautiful asset we have here.” And with that, she was off again, to arrange more food platters, chat with vendors and friends, and help the event’s cameraman interview attending artists. Despite being only two years old, HPAC has already taken strides toward becoming a powerful organizational force in Englewood. “[We are] getting our foundation in order with officers and members who are truly committed to the success of Hamilton Park Cultural Center [and are] making residents and stakeholders more aware of Hamilton Park,” said Butler. They elected their new officers in April and have already hosted a back-toschool drive, held a house music event to recruit more members, and conducted surveys to get the input of park users on how to best direct their efforts. The dedication of HPAC, R.A.G.E., and the Englewood artists at the fair demonstrates how misguided the public perception and media coverage of Englewood can often be. For Johnson, that sensationalized coverage “is not the Englewood I know or experienced as a young girl growing up. Even today, this is not the Englewood I see through my lens—Englewood is my home!” ¬ OCTOBER 26, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
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ART
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VISUAL ARTS
Fugitive Dust
“Tracing Dirty Energy” at the MoCP BY CHRISTOPHER GOOD
I TERRY EVANS
TERRY EVANS
10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ OCTOBER 26, 2016
n the middle of an empty room was a Plexiglas cube, and at the bottom of the cube, a fine sheet of black powder. An imaginary moonscape? An abandoned terrarium? Perhaps anticipating these questions, Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann, the Chicago-based artists behind the installation “Prevailing Winds and Relative Distances,” pasted several pages of text around the room. The pages explained in blocks of Courier Bold—the typeface of screenplays and, at one point, of the U.S. State Department— that the U.S. had produced 56 million metric tons of petroleum coke in 2014. According to Geissler and Sann’s arithmetic, this would break down into “5.68 grams [of ] petroleum coke per square meter to cover all of the U.S., land and sea, evenly.” But petroleum coke (or petcoke, as it’s commonly known) isn’t evenly spread across America. Rather, the dust, which according to the Environmental Protection Agency “poses an acute and chronic health threat to sensitive individuals,” is concentrated in manufacturing plants and open-air storage terminals across the Midwest. Zones like these were the true nexus of “Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy,” a group exhibition that recently closed at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP). The center of gravity binding the artworks together wasn’t in the Loop, where the MoCP is located, but one hundred blocks south in Calumet Heights—more precisely, at the Koch Brothers-owned KCBX petcoke terminal.
Though the MoCP’s name suggests it would curate sedate Ansel Adams imitations or Diane Arbus homages, “Tracing Dirty Energy” worked successfully across mediums, seen in the inclusion of Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter’s film I Can Only See Shadows. According to the film’s description, Benedict and Rueter paired real footage of processing plants with fictional dramatizations to “create an imagined, parallel world where fossil fuel has been replaced [by an] untethered carbon particulate” which “transmits both energy and data.” Both wordless and plotless, Shadows failed as a conventional film: I don’t think I would have picked up on the narrative at all if not for the explanation. And yet, like the best science fiction, it used a hypothetical world to depict our own, and presented a familiar scenario as something alien. There’s something uncanny about seeing towers of black dust and knowing not only that it’s not CGI, but that it’s not fiction. “A Library of Tears,” an installation by SAIC professor Claire Pentecost, was more approachable, while it verged further into the surreal. The “library” suggested in the title referenced the array of blown glass teardrops suspended from the ceiling, each filled with detritus and ranging in scale from the size of a radish to a basketball. The list of materials accompanying the work splits the difference between a travelogue and a dystopian wine-tasting catalogue: it told of “South Dakota crude, Texas sweet crude, Alberta tar sands,” and
STAGE & SCREEN
“Athabascan River mud.” But Pentecost’s work also played with more familiar substances: one misshapen teardrop was stuffed with shredded U.S. bills, while another was piled high with the corpses of tiny dead flies. It was this sort of metaphor and allegory that kept “Tracing Dirty Energy” from getting too deadpan. Geissler and Sann, in particular—who included in their work a transcript of MoCP’s refusal of their original proposal to fill the gallery with petcoke dust—brought pitch-black humor to an otherwise straight-faced exhibition. The gravity of petcoke is impossible to miss, of course. But what “Prevailing Winds” and I Can Only See Shadows shared in common— despite their disparate mediums—was a firm grasp on the absurdity of the situation. If these abstract pieces served to recontextualize the way we approach petcoke (i.e. as a nation inured to the costs of industrialization), then it was the literalminded works which drove the message of “Tracing Dirty Energy” home. Consider Petcoke vs. Grassroots, a work by Hyde Parkbased photographer Terry Evans. Here, the tension between the industry and the public was rendered visually: the first half of the work comprised bird’s-eye views of petroleum facilities; the second, interview transcripts and extreme close-ups of activists from the Southeast Side Environmental Task Force (SETF) and Coalition to Ban Petcoke. Evans, who cites both Naomi Klein and the Pope as influences, spoke with me about aerial photography and her time organizing with The Coalition to Ban Petcoke on the Southeast Side. “It’s one big example of how climate change is systemic,” Evans said. “They [Koch Industries] seem to have no regard for the local people. So for [locals] to organize and put enough pressure on the city, BP, and Koch Industries that they actually made some changes is a huge success.” These changes gave us some good news to discuss: the EPA’s increased supervision of petcoke facilities, the election of 10th Ward Alderman Susan Garza—a local activist against petcoke pollution, and the class-action lawsuit against KCBX and other plants which concluded in a $1.45 million payout.
But what comes next, Evans acknowledged, isn’t that simple. For one thing, the narrative isn’t yet won—even after the settlement, KCBX has denied wrongdoing. Even more damning is the fact that the $1.45 million sum boils down to only about $60 for each eligible Southeast Side resident. Then there’s the uncomfortable fact that facilities still in operation can apparently circumvent regulation with just a slap on the wrist—take the BP Whiting Refinery, for instance, which was investigated by the EPA for “water and air violations” after it dumped thirty-nine barrels of oil into Lake Michigan in March 2014. This August, the plant was found to have dumped into the lake five times the legal limit for waste, to the tune of 26,621 pounds. Then there’s the fact that the issue of petcoke goes altogether beyond the fight on the Southeast Side— some companies have already moved to states with more lax regulations, where production will continue unimpeded. This tragic Whac-A-Mole dynamic was made explicit in Brian Holmes’ s “Petropolis,” which was simultaneously the least artistic and most disturbing offering of “Tracing Dirty Energy.” “Petropolis,” which can be viewed online, is not art so much as data visualization: it’s a topographical map of the United States, crosshatched by red lines depicting the routes that fossil fuels take in transit. But an accompanying poster, labelled “Chicagoland on Fire,” brought genuine unease to this glut of information. “On July 6, 2013,” it began, “a train hauling Bakken crude exploded [after derailing] in the town of Lac Megantic, Québec, killing 47 people. Forty of these oil trains roll through Chicago area neighborhoods every week. All we know for sure is that they carry the 1267 hazmat placard.” We don’t know what most of these freighters carry. We can’t say for certain how runoff waste will affect Lake Michigan, and we don’t know what the respiratory health of Calumet Heights residents will look like in a decade or two. We can make disturbing hypotheses about the future, but we can’t quite predict it. And so, “Tracing Dirty Energy” dwelled on the uncertainties: the known unknowns of the anthropocene. ¬
New, Like it Used to Be
“The Colored Museum” and the future of eta Creative Arts Foundation BY JOSH KAPLAN
I
f you ask Kemati Porter, the executive director of eta Creative Arts Foundation, about the future of her theater, she will first tell you about its past. It’s the only answer that makes sense. How could anyone understand what eta needs to be right now if they don’t know that Maya Angelou used to line-dance in its back room? Porter has been part of eta off and on for almost forty years, and has been at the helm for a difficult period in the foundation’s history: in the fall of 2014, its home of almost thirty years failed to meet building codes and then caught fire. The recovery period has been long and arduous. But if anything, these recent troubles made it clearer than ever how much eta’s rich past matters to its community at large. Porter says that the community banded together to help them rebuild. “When we had to move a couple of our productions out and take them over to Kennedy-King, our constituents told us, ‘We’re going to go,’ ” she said. “ ‘We’re going to be there. But we’re very unhappy. Please let us know when we can come home....When are we going to be back in our theater?’ Everything is ‘our.’ And now we’re home.” Eta has been “the place, the cultural hub,” in its community for generations, and Porter says the community has “made it clear to us that we must be here. It is important to their holistic existence as a community that they have art that reflects who they are.” Even disregarding all of the problems eta has had recently with its physical space, the foundation is in what Porter calls “a
transformation period.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the community is in transformation, and that eta is trying to figure out how to change along with it. “People ask, ‘What’s eta going to do differently?’ ” says Porter, “I’m not sure if that’s the question you want to ask. What’s eta going to continue to provide to this community?” Many of eta’s patrons have been involved with the foundation since its early days, and the foundation must continue to serve them. Part of that task is continuing to give them, and also their children and grandchildren, art that speaks to “where they’ve been and where they’re going.” Porter is trying to figure out how to do all of that at the same time: “What does it mean to be a cultural arts institution going forward?” she asks. “It’s about connecting generations to generations….How do we figure out the bridge that connects to the next generation and puts this in their hands?” As part of this project, Porter has been looking for three years to start staging full-scale productions in collaboration with young, vagabond theaters. (Last year, eta collaborated with younger companies as part of its Magic Box series, but it has never before brought another company into its space for a full-scale production.) This finally came to fruition this year, when Porter brought in the two-year-old Pulse Theater Company to stage The Colored Museum. Pulse’s artistic director and cofounder, Aaron Mitchell Reese, is twenty-six years old. He often digresses from conversation
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to talk excitedly about his ideas for new shows. In Reese (who also has served as an assistant director and dramaturge for past eta productions), Porter felt that she had found a young director whose values and ambitions aligned properly with eta’s own. She says that in order to work at eta, one would need to understand “how important it is for our community to see themselves onstage.” Reese graduated from Columbia College Chicago a few years ago, and his experience as one of the only black men in his class helped convince him that theater needs to change. He felt pressure during school to “direct the Black play,” usually a “lionized classic” like A Raisin in the Sun, and this felt incredibly constricting because, as he says, “we are so much more than that.” So he founded Pulse to give him the freedom to innovate as a storyteller and to “try to break the archetypes of traditional theater.” Doing this in a place with as long and storied a following as eta seemed an especially powerful opportunity to break with tradition. “Coming from a twenty-six-year-old, theater’s going to be something different,” Reese said. “They’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’ve never thought of it that way.’” The Colored Museum, whose run at eta ended on October 23, was written thirty years ago, but under the deft direction of both Reese and Donterrio Johnson, it still shocks. Reese’s refusal to accept the familiar representations available to Black America is at the center of The Colored Museum. As an audience member, you may laugh and sing and clap and cry, but you are not allowed to feel comfortable. The play opens with a flight attendant, Miss Pat, welcoming the audience aboard the “celebrity slave ship.” A sign flashes above the set: “Fasten Shackles.” Minutes later, when drums begin to sound backstage, she loses her temper and interrupts her speech, telling us to repeat after her: “I don’t hear any drums, and I will not rebel!” A couple people in the audience chuckle. But she doesn’t let us remain removed spectators, and begins to scream: “REPEAT AFTER ME! I DON’T HEAR ANY DRUMS, AND I WILL NOT REBEL!” This time, most of the audience 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
uneasily obeyed. By the time she leaves the stage, the viewer is aware that this play will make you engage in ways ways that are entirely new and even a bit scary. That is the first of the eleven satirical vignettes that make up the play. Moving rapidly from target to target, it’s driven by the sense that existing representations of Black America are completely inadequate to Black America’s complexity, but also by the idea that by pushing and pulling at these stale icons, one might be able to get at the truth they conceal. This mission is most powerfully (and hilariously) achieved in a parody of A Raisin in the Sun, which mocks stuffy, politically inert depictions of abjection and middle-class aspiration in tenement housing. The protagonist of this playwithin-a-play is Walter-Lee-Beau-Willy Jones. Lips trembling, vowels stretched to impossible lengths, he raves at “the Man” and at his mother. When he is interrupted by his wife’s refusal to make dinner, he drops their two children out of the window. His wife throws herself onto the ground, sobbing. The “director” then runs onstage, clapping manically, and hands the wife an Emmy. After Walter-Lee-Beau-Willy is killed by a stray bullet, the suffering becomes “too much to bear” and the actors switch from melodrama to an all-Black musical (the other officially sanctioned genre of Black theater). The singing is fantastic. That’s one of the key reasons this production works so well. While it beats its message into you, the spectacularly funny jokes and enchanting music ward off any didactic tone. It keeps the audience engaged in a very complicated way. You begin to get carried away by the musical number, and then you remember that the actors are mocking the way musicals sanitize Black experience. You feel uneasy
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COURTESY OF PULSE THEATRE COMPANY
about your pleasure, even as you continue to feel it. The play flickers continually between joy and sadness and anger, and the result is both exhilarating and disturbing. There is only one vignette in The Colored Museum where the pathos is not tempered by Black comedy, and it haunts all of the fun that follows it. A soldier (played by Jelani West, in a performance so compelling that you hold your breath) walks to the very edge of the stage, points his finger into the audience, and bellows, “I know the secret to your pain.” He proceeds to tell the viscerally disturbing story of his death on the battlefield, and of how he came back to life and killed his squad to put them out of their misery. The Colored Museum makes this soldier the unexpected emblem of Black suffering. When he’s finished with the story, he returns to the edge of the stage. “I know the secret to your pain,” he says. “To yours, and yours, and yours.” Part of the point is that this link between “you” and the soldier should not feel as unexpected as it does. War is as common an aspect of African-American experience as any of Black theater’s tropes, and given that Black suffering forged America, it’s all too appropriate to emblematize Black pain with an all-American icon. Nevertheless, West is making a demand of the audience: you will identify with what is happening on this stage, only not in the ways that you are used
to. You may have never been to war, but this soldier’s suffering—raw and confusing and deeply, painfully American—will stand for your own. If, as Kemati Porter says, a community needs to have art that “reflects who they are,” The Colored Museum expresses the difficulty of providing this, for every representation is bound to fall short of that community’s infinite complexity. But this play is also full of hope. It proclaims that by refusing to become unsurprising, art might at least make us feel the force of that complexity, and of all the joy and sadness that it is made from. Going forward, Reese hopes to keep staging new, exciting collaborations with eta on a regular basis. His ambitions are very much tied to the dramatic tradition eta helped to create: “We want to continue the legacy of Chicago theater, which is experiment and play.” ¬
STAGE & SCREEN
From the Flood
A screening and an exhibition join in exploring the Great Migration BY DANIEL MAYS
T
he flood is a story about community building, of community won and community lost. That was the lesson of The Great Flood, which South Side Projections and Blanc Gallery screened October 19. The film, a collaboration between experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer/musician Bill Frisell, was intended to correspond to Blanc’s current exhibition of David Anthony Geary’s “The Great Migration: In Three Movements.” Morrison explores the Mississippi River flood of 1927, considered by some the most destructive flood in U.S. history, and, Morrison argues, one of the causes of the Great Migration of Black Americans to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. The Great Migration’s root in Jim Crow rural violence is a familiar idea, as is the boll weevil crop destruction that resulted in economic depression. Morrison’s idea of the flood as a factor in the migration, however, was new knowledge to me, and I needed to investigate. From the first frames on, the film has no vocal narration; the only sounds heard throughout it are Frisell’s musical interpretations. In this sense Morrison keeps to an experimental tradition by presenting the film in the ultimate traditional manner: like the silent films of the cinematic past. Just like those films, in which dialogue appeared in writing, there is no dialogue in The Great Flood, but the segments are divided by written words: “Sharecroppers,” “Mississippi Flood 1927,” “Swollen Tributaries 1926,” “Sharecroppers,” “Politicians,” “The Poydras Dynamiting.” In the film’s first frames, the camera pans across a map highlighting the route of destruction the Mississippi took in 1927. At this point the map has no names of towns—just swamps, bayous, the dwellings of snakes and other wildlife, kept as a natural flood plain. Gradually names of towns
begin to appear. “Durant, Leakesville, Kickman,” one person at the screening recalled after the film was over. “Those are towns I remember visiting and living in as a boy.” He wasn’t old enough to have witnessed the flood, but he carried with him its legacy. With his words, I realized this was a story of community lost. In much of Geary’s artwork, which seems to span the Great Migration period, the characters are outlined in a manner that resembles the lines on the map in Morrison’s documentary. After watching The Great Flood, the outlines of Geary’s subjects seem to reflect the flood’s enduring influence on the culture and heritage of the people in the present. The subjects are depicted in period clothing worn in the rural towns shown in the film. One of the canvas paintings shows children on urban bikes, their banana seats reminiscent of the Schwinn Orange Krate, Lemon Peeler, and Apple Krate 1968-1973 models. This is community found. Archive is crucial to each artist’s representations of migration. Morrison scoured archival footage from the national archives as well as other sources to find the content of his film. Geary, meanwhile, scoured “photographs found, and donated, of family images which chronicle that migration as his inspiration,” according to the exhibition pamphlet. But one point of departure for the artists is the use of birds in their work. Besides one grand, catastrophic scene in which chicken are among the livestock attempting to flee the flood, Morrison pays little attention to a classic symbol that Geary dwells on: birds as departure, migration, freedom—a subject “depicted as powerful forces in almost every major culture,” the gallery pamphlet notes. Take Geary’s monotypes on paper, for instance. I had to approach this grouping of fourteen pieces twice before I could ar-
DANIEL MAYS
ticulate an understanding of what I saw. Here, both the human form and birds figure heavily. The human form is suspended in mid-air, as a diver would be upon leaving the diving board, and placed vertically in the drawings was what I could only perceive as a diving board. Geary places the human form on different sides of the vertical diving board in the monotypes in groupings that create the feeling of the diver in-motion when the viewer looks from one monotype to the next: a motion one could imagine as migration. Geary bends the diving human form in the shape of how he depicts the bird’s form: the human form flying away from a community lost, and flying to a new community found. Of course, the birds will have to
build a new nest, just as many Black Americans had to build a new life in their found urban environments. Morrison’s film ends with recently migrated blues musicians singing and dancing along what seems to be Chicago’s Maxwell Street—the same music you can still see performed in streets and subways today, a privilege to listen to, and for any onlooker, a temporary community found. ¬ “The Great Migration in Three Movements,” Blanc Gallery. 4445 S. King Dr. Through Saturday, October 29. Closing reception and artist talk Friday, October 28, 6pm–9pm. (773) 373-4320. blancchicago.com
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BULLETIN Pumpkin Carving with MAKE! Chicago MAKE! Chicago, 1048 W. 37th St. Friday, October 28, 6pm–9pm; Saturday, October 29, 11am–2pm and 2pm–5pm. $25 for one adult and child. Register online at bit.ly/2ezcrCc before October 27. (312) 925-2627. makechicago.com Jack up your jack-o-lantern skills with a pumpkin carving class at MAKE! Chicago. The Bridgeport woodworking shop transforms into a gourd-gouging studio, complete with saws, carving knives, and power tools primed for all the pumpkin purposes you can conceive. (Sara Cohen) Panel Discussion on Human Trafficking Lindblom Park, 6054 S. Damen Ave. Saturday, October 29, 10am–1pm. Free. (773) 567-1805. Voices of West Englewood invites parents and students to this panel, presented by The Chicago Alliance on Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation. The group aims to raise awareness of how these issues affect local communities, and engage the audience in “dynamic discussion.” (Hafsa Razi) Black Girls CODE Chicago Chapter Presents: Build a Webpage in a Day! Blue Cross Blue Shield, 300 E. Randolph St. Saturday, October 29, 10am–4pm. Registration opens 9am. $35 plus fees. Limited scholarships available. Waitlist available online at bit.ly/2cXUyfC. Intended for girls ages 7–17. blackgirlscode.com Black Girls CODE, an organization dedicated to empowering girls of color through technological education, is hosting a oneday website-making workshop in Chicago. Daughters of the digital age can learn the basics of coding and web structure through engaging and entertaining activities. (Rachel Kim) PERRO Halloween Walk National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Saturday, October 29, noon–2pm. $10 for students, $15 general admission. Register online at bit.ly/2eMqm5G. (312) 854-9247. pilsenperro.org 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
The Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization is a grassroots group of Pilsen residents that has dedicated itself to environmental justice issues in Pilsen since 2004. Join PERRO’s Halloween tour to learn about activism in Pilsen while exploring the neighborhood’s numerous cultural offerings. (Lorraine Lu)
The Hyde Park Art Center presents its two newest exhibits: “(Re)Public” is the work of a group of Irish artists in various mediums, reflecting on society, the environment, and politics in Ireland and on Chicago’s South Side; “War Stories” is a series of drawings, paintings, and collages on the toll of wars, both historic and modern. (Hafsa Razi)
Día de Los Muertos: Festival Para Niños
Dear Sludge, Cruel Sludge
La Catrina Cafe, 1011 W. 18th St. Sunday, October 30, 11am–2pm. $5 for the first child, $1 for additional siblings until October 29. $6 for first child, $2 for additional siblings at door. Register online at bit.ly/2f29lIu. (708) 912-2062. Chicago Latina Moms present their second annual Día de Los Muertos Festival for Children. Families can have their faces painted, visit an altar for deceased loved ones, watch a presentation to learn the significance of the holiday, and participate in a number of additional activities. (Rachel Kim)
VISUAL ARTS Hecho en CaSa National Museum of Mexican Art, Rubin & Paula Torres Gallery, 1852 W. 19th St. Opening reception Friday, October 28, 6pm–8pm. Through May 7, 2017. Tuesday– Sunday, 10am–5pm. Free. (312) 738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org Francisco Toledo has spent the past fifteen years of his career not only as an individual artist, sculptor, and painter, but also as someone who builds capacity for others, helping found a multitude of artistic institutions in Mexico. This year, the work he brings to the National Museum of Mexican Art highlights one of those institutions, the Centro de Artes San Agustín. (Hafsa Razi)
(Re)Public and Mary King’s War Stories Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. “(Re)Public” through January 15, 2017; “War Stories” through January 22, 2017. Opening reception Sunday, October 30, 3pm–5pm. Monday–Thursday, 9am–8pm; Friday– Saturday, 9am–5pm; Sunday, noon–5pm. Free. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org
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4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Opening reception Sunday, October 30, 4pm–7pm; Through Sunday, November 27. Saturdays 1pm–5pm or by appointment. Free. (773) 203-2991. 4wps.org As you muck through the dregs of October, plan to come out to 4th Ward Project Space for Ellis von Sternberg’s latest exhibition. The Connecticut-based artist molds wads of polyurethane into plastic-y sculptures, both shiny and shining a light on our culture’s affection for oil. (Corinne Butta)
Dumping Trump Elephant Room Gallery at C.C.’s Art Garage, 2727 S. Mary St. Opening Thursday, November 3, 5pm–9pm. (312) 361-0281. bit.ly/2epDsdw Gallerist Kimberly Atwood and artist Keelan McMorrow have organized a one-night exhibition to “Dump Trump”—conceptual works, Election Day wearables, and a Trump piñata included. Proceeds from the event will go towards scholarships for undocumented students in the Chicago area. (Corinne Butta)
MUSIC An Afternoon with PWR BTTM The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, 5733 S. University Ave. Wednesday, October 26. 4pm-6pm. Free. All ages. (773) 702-9936. arts.uchicago.edu The duo responsible for last year’s explosive, queer-as-all-get-out Ugly Cherries and, frankly, a dope Twitter account, are swinging by the UofC before their sold-out show for a discussion at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Roll through for an intimate event with the most glitter-glazed punk duo currently touring the States. (Austin Brown)
Derrick Carter Punch House, 1227 W. 18th St. Wednesday, October 26. 9pm. Free. 21+. (312) 526-3851. punchhousechicago.com Derrick Carter has been instrumental in the Chicago house scene ever since helping spearhead its second wave in the mid-nineties. Now he’s pushing yet another venture with a residency at Pilsen’s Punch House. “A lil belated birthday party for this special man,” reads a description for the event on Facebook—with Carter’s reputation, we’ll see how “lil” it is. (Austin Brown)
Esperanza Spalding Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Thursday, October 27. Doors 7pm, show 8pm. $37 standing room. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com If you’ve heard her spellbinding, ecstatic jazz-pop album Emily’s D+Evolution, released this March, you know you can’t miss this chance to jam with one of pop’s finest contemporary composers. Feel the “Unconditional Love” of Spalding’s bass as she and her band play the new album in its entirety. (Neal Jochmann)
Halloween Cover Show 2040. Friday, October 28, 7pm–11pm. $5 at the door, or pay what you can. bit.ly/2faku9t (Message for address on day of show) At DIY space 2040 on Friday, the musicians won’t just be donning Halloween costumes—they’ll also be channeling the spirit of other bands: Poison Idea, Buzzcocks, Rudimentary Peni, Pixies, and even ABBA plan to make appearances, among others. All proceeds will go to the Chicago Community Bond Fund, which pays bond for individuals charged with crimes in Cook County who cannot afford to pay themselves. (Olivia Stovicek)
MDC, Wartorn, and More Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Sunday, October 30. Doors 6pm. $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 17+. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com The music is hard rock; the politics, hard left. MDC currently stands for “Millions of Dead Cops” (the meaning updates with each album release), and Wartorn plays “pissed-off socio-political crustpunk/hard-
EVENTS core.” Don’t care for politics? Chicago’s Johnny Automatic may have just the punkpop for you. (Neal Jochmann)
STAGE & SCREEN Harriet Tubman: Making of an Opera Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, October 28, 7pm–10:30pm. $20. (773) 667-0241. southshoreopera.org As a part of the South Shore Opera Company’s Harriet Tubman Project, join the cast and the composer of Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom for a preview of the opera’s music. A conversation about the production with members of the cast and the composer will follow. ( Jonathan Hogeback)
The School Project—50th Anniversary Screening Kartemquin Films. October 28–November 3, 5pm. Free. (773) 472-4366. Watch online at watch.kartemquin.com
Celebrate Kartemquin Film’s fiftieth anniversary by tuning in—or rather logging on—for a free screening of their film The School Project. Take a deeper look into the public school system in Chicago with exclusive extras and content related to the film from Kartemquin’s archives. ( Jonathan Hogeback)
Verité: Documentary Filmmaking Master Classes with Gordon Quinn and Leslie Simmer DePaul CDM Theatre, 247 S. State St., LL 105. Saturday, October 29, 10am–4pm. Free. (312) 362-8381. eventbrite.com/e/veritemaster-classes-tickets-28491340366 DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts will host Gordon Quinn, founding member of Kartemquin Films, for a master class on the different roles in documentary filmmaking. And if one Chicago-famous documentarian isn’t enough, Quinn will be followed by Leslie Simmer, Kartemquin’s senior editor, who will discuss the editing process in film. ( Jonathan Hogeback)
Other People’s Business: Halloween Show Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, October 29, 4pm–7:30pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org This pre-Halloween marathon of home movies will be presented by the South Side Home Movie Project, which will showcase selections from its large archive of “historical footage and [footage of ] everyday life” from around the South Side. In honor of Halloween, it’ll be spooky—or will it? How spooky can home movies be? This is your chance to find out. ( Jake Bittle)
Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 South Shore Dr. Sunday, October 30, event begins at 4pm, opera starts at 5pm. $75 for show, $250 for VIP ticket and dinner. (773) 667-0241. southshoreopera.org
Shore Opera’s annual gala and “Cultural and Social Event of the Year.” The two-act opera follows Tubman’s remarkable life of sacrifice and bravery, incorporating historical material from recently published biographies. ( Jake Bittle)
37th Annual Muertos de la Risa Dvorak Park, 1119 W. Cullerton St. Wednesday, November 2, 3pm–8pm, afterparty 8pm–11pm at La Catrina Café. Free. (312) 226-7767. elevartestudio.org What better way to commemorate the lives of loved ones lost than with family, friends, and neighbors? ElevArte, the Pilsen community art organization, will host its thirty-seventh annual Dia de Los Muertos community event, featuring a procession, face painting, circus and dance performances, and, of course, traditional holiday foods—and don’t miss the after-party! ( Jonathan Hogeback)
The Chicago premiere of a new opera about Harriet Tubman by the composer Nkeiru Okoye provides the occasion for the South
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