IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JANUARY 2012
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: MARCH 1, 20112
What happens when you invite cultural workers,community developers, urban entrepreneurs, artists, designers, foodies, public space hackers, urban planners, cultural geographers, and dreamers to swarm a neighborhood and transform it for one month? Version 12: Bridgeport: The Community of the Future.
This May 2012, we're inviting you to come visit us in Bridgeport, a Chicago neighborhood, and join in on our month-long urban experiment. During the Eleventh Annual Version Festival, we will be opening and remixing twelve temporary spaces, businesses, enterprises and projects, all to celebrate the neighborhood we love and call home. And then we're going to use these places as home bases, networks, and maps, all to energize our local environs for long-term change - but we need your help to make it happen.
Version 12 seeks collaborators and partners to help us re-imagine the tactical urbanization of our hood. We will supply the spaces for your project and help coordinate the activities and ideas that you would like to share with our communities.
Right now our plans include opening up the following: a used bookstore, a nightly performance space in a church, a home brewing club kitchen, a department store/gallery showcasing all locally manufactured small batch and artisanal products, nomadic collaborative restaurants and community kitchens, parking lot flea markets, a neighborhood tourism bureau, and a rotating exhibition space for artists and designers. And we're still looking! We need groups and individuals to open or manage temporary stores, co-working spaces... any choose-your-own pop-up space endeavor you can imagine.
Of course, there are other ways to participate too. You could also create or install public art in the hood, volunteer at a space, bring your food cart or truck to the neighborhood, conduct a public space hack, farm in a local urban garden, perform at one of our venues, or just stop by and dive in. Everyone is welcome!
The festival is co-produced by Public Media Institute (PMI) and dozens of our neighbors, community groups, friends, and business owners here in Bridgeport. PMI is a non-profit 501(c) 3, community based, arts & culture organization located in Chicago, Illinois. Our mission is to create and incubate innovative arts programming and cultural infrastructures to transform people - socially and intellectually – through the production of festivals, art spaces, events, exhibitions, community projects, artifacts and media. Public Media Institute is committed to the region's cultural ecology and is evident through our series of programs, spaces and projects. http://www.publicmediainstitute.com
WANT IN? LET US KNOW HOW YOU'D LIKE TO GET INVOLVED.
PLEASE RESPOND BY MARCH 1, 2012
THEN EMAIL YOUR RESPONSE TO --> versionfest12@gmail.com
PLEASE CHOOSE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS:
[ ] opening up a space
[ ] performing
[ ] making or installing public art
[ ] providing a service to the neighborhood
[ ] having your product featured in our department store
[ ] volunteering
[ ] other
YOUR NAME:
EMAIL:
TELEPHONE:
WEBSITE (it's OK if you don't have one though):
ONE PARAGRAPH PROPOSAL - let us know what you want to do!:
PLEASE INCLUDE 3-6 images up to 1,000 pixels wide
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Version 11: The Community took place April 22-May 1, 2011>>
These years of recession, insolvency, uncertainty, and calamity have affected us in ways we couldn'tve imagined before. The debt crisis, atomized and divisive political culture, a lethargic economy that sees almost one of out of eight people out of work, and attacks on our collective social welfare can only mean one thing: It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
But there is hope. In the dusty corners of the world, individuals, friends, collaborators, and affinity groups are cementing bonds and creating methods for survival in this so-called "marketplace" where we all work, play, and inhabit. These artists, art workers, writers, activists, and organizers (also their enthusiasts, supporters, and fans) still believe in growing the gardens of our social and cultural ecology, despite the hardships we collectively endure.
Version 11 is a celebration of the Chicago communities -- projects, spaces, groups, individuals -- creating their own strategies for participatory economies, co-prosperity, and the pursuit of genuine happiness. Version will demonstrate the possible, celebrate the impossible, and showcase the ingenuity, spirit and passion that create The Community we aspire to take part in together. This is an invitation to share your community, your goals, your dreams for a better Community of the Future. It's all we have left.
Produced by the Public Media Institute, a non profit 501(c)(3) arts organization, Version is an annual arts convergence that brings together hundreds of artists, cultural workers, and educators from around the world to present some of the most challenging ideas and progressive art initiatives of our day. The ten day festival showcases emerging trends in art, technology and music.
The festival presents a diverse program of activities featuring an exposition/art fair called The MDW Fair, guest curated exhibitions, a massive reenactment of the Haymarket Square riot, community garden projects, public interventions, video screenings, performances, live art, presentations, talks, workshops, art rendezvous and action.
NEWS AND UPDATES
January 22, 2012
Version 12 Call for Participation
April 28: Art Chicago is More than About Art
April 25, 2011: Bad At Sports Notes on the MDW Fair
April 25, 2011: New CIty: Meeting Midway
April 25, 2011: New CIty Fair Play
April 24, 2011: Readymade: Version Festival The Beauty of Enthusiasm
April 22, 2011: Huffington Post: The People's Art Fair
April 21, 2011: The Onion: AV Club
April 21, 2011: Chicago Tribune: Alternative art fair a local showcase
April 20: 2011: The Chicago Reader
April 20, 2011: Gaper's Block: A Different Kind of Fair
April 20, 2011: ReadyMade
April 07, 2011: Solidarity Forever! A Historical Reenactment of the Haymarket Riot
April 7, 2011 - Facebook invitation to MDW Fair
April 2, 2011 - LET THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE BE HEARD!
a full-scale reenactment of the Haymarket Affair
March 25, 2011: The MDW Fair Website
MARCH 15, 2011: NEW CITY coverage of MDW Fair
MARCH 8, 2011: VERSION 11 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
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