On a sunny Saturday, amidst the live music, water balloon fights, and petitions at Woodlawn’s Art in Action festival, four University of Chicago students were manning a table, armed with markers and blank maps of Chicago, and encouraging passersby to make their own maps. Their idea was to produce a collection of maps that would chart people’s impressions of where the neighborhood of Hyde Park begins and ends. The mapping society provided three blank maps: one of Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Kenwood, and Washington Park; another of the greater South Side, extending south to 95th, further west, and north through Bronzeville; and a map of the entire city of Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

In her last days as a University of Chicago student, fourth-year Jackie Todd hopes to revive “Vita Excolatur,” the sex publication made by and for students that contains questionably pornographic material. Taking its name from the University’s motto, the magazine attempts to show “the life enriched” by sexuality. Although “Vita” has been short of writers, photographers, models, and a leadership structure since the magazine last made it to print in 2007, Todd has a strong interest in carrying out the project she inherited after her first year at the College. Many have expressed interest in “Vita” since then, but Todd says the problem has been students’ fears of commitment. Getting people to lay bare their bodies and thoughts about sex has proven difficult, even in a periodical that anticipates selling only 200 printed copies and will not be posted online, and editors have received last-minute requests to use pseudonyms or pull nude portraits. Contributors to the magazine cite anxiety of potential discovery by future employers or law school admissions officers as reasons for their preference for anonymity. Todd, calling herself the “Vita girl,” does not share this anxiety, stating plainly, “This is the bed I made for myself.”

UofC second-year and photographer Edward Menéndez, the only other actually named Vita contributor, is proud of the work he has submitted, although it was not shot for the magazine specifically. Like many UofC students, Menéndez is interested in questioning sex and gender roles, and believes “Vita” would be the appropriate venue. In this upcoming issue, he poses one female model in such a way that “it’s hard to draw sex out of the image.” A black-and-white side profile of a girl staring into a window located outside of the frame, the light spilling onto her slightly slumped shoulders, offers to its viewers no suggestions that are explicitly sexual. And yet by virtue of the fact that she is a naked woman, he admits that her image is sexualized. Menéndez prefers to inspire reflection rather than hand viewers any definite assignment or conclusions. “It’s a provocation, be it sexual, physical, psychological.”

As a rule, Todd would not ask “Vita” contributors to do something that she herself would not feel comfortable doing, which includes shots of penetration or masturbation. For her, a spread that involved any live sex act would be “crossing a line I’m not comfortable with,” adding, “There are some things you don’t get to see.” Though Todd’s boundaries may have influenced the direction of this last issue, her bold direction sets the bar high for issues to come, as she will be posing for “Vita”’s staple photo of “hot chicks reading books.” Said one of the magazine’s photographers, Tuncay Esref, “People are scared of other people’s judgments, which I think is why ‘Vita’ is necessary.” Esref hopes to find a future venue for “a shoot that involved sweat and bulges of skin and pubic hair.” With Todd graduating in just a few short days, her hope to “bring sex to a more public arena,” beginning with her own full exposure, is the first step to reclaiming the world of academic erotica. And with students like Esref and Menéndez sticking around, “Vita Excolatur” will live on as the counterpart to this crescat scientia institution.
“Vita” will be printed and ready for sale by the start of the second week in June in the UofC Reynolds Club.

In the center of the dark space a woman in black held a silver bowl. Around her stood a circle of seven women in simple dresses, three in dark purple, four in pale blue. Seated around them on the wooden floor of the University of Chicago’s Bartlett Arts Rehearsal Space, a cramped crowd of about a hundred watched quiet and captivated. The woman in black split the circle and moved around the outside. She reached into the bowl and brought out bread, handing pieces to the dancers, who spread themselves across the few feet of the floor to distribute pieces to the crowd around them. Read the rest of this entry »

All-white walls enclose an unidentifiable treadmill-like device, the whoop, whoop, whoop-ing of its enormous belts sounding throughout the room. This gallery-within-a-gallery at the University of Chicago’s DOVA Temporary exhibition space in Harper Court was created by graduating Master of Fine Arts candidate David Cordero. The artist began thinking about his thesis project, “Grind,” using a set of tiny models set in shoebox-sized boxes, as a live sketchbook for the works he could create for a full gallery exhibit. This “testing space” for his ideas required the construction of simple, recognizable objects scaled down to thumb-size. Playing with the ambiguity of those shapes we commonly utilize, the blown-up result is majestic proof of technological innovation; it’s confusing and beautiful, and mechanically perfect, begging the question, so what does it do? Read the rest of this entry »

Around a rectangular table in a conference room at the Bessie Coleman Library, a group of University of Chicago students and community members are meeting to discuss this year’s Art in Action festival. “Okay, who is taking care of sign-making Monday?” one student asks. Several hands go up from the planning committee, made up of seven students and seven community members, including a local pastor, several artists, and members of various South Side organizations. Enthusiasm is high and periodic chatter interrupts the main agenda: the logistics of an event meant to bring the UofC community into contact with those around it. Read the rest of this entry »

At 8:20am on a beautiful spring morning, sunlight is streaming through the chipped windows of a third floor classroom of Woodlawn Charter High School at 64th Street and Woodlawn Avenue, onto the sleepy faces of a group of high school seniors, their heads resting on their hands. On the walls of the classroom are two posters of Muhammed Ali (“I am the greatest”) and one of Che Guevara (“The people liberate themselves”). The two University of Chicago freshmen standing in the circle of tables, themselves barely out of senior year, are trying to bring the students a different kind of inspiration.

“What do you guys think made Barack Obama president?” Dustin Popiel asks the class. No response. It’s the Monday after spring break, and his audience is unenthusiastic. “Obama’s a great communicator. Communication is important for success.” Today’s class is a break from the usual curriculum; the students are participating in Moneythink, a nonprofit mentorship organization that works to bring college students into high school classrooms to promote financial literacy and entrepreneurship in some of the poorest neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. Read the rest of this entry »

Cindy Agustin is trying to get a bus-load of tired Chicago-area students, friends, and parents to share what made them decide to march. “Come on, guys,” says the University of Chicago fourth-year trip organizer, upbeat and timid as a substitute teacher enforcing a mandatory show-and-tell, “everyone will have to go at some point.” Before long, Monica steps up to the front of the bus and takes mic. After Monica comes Veronica, and about twenty people later comes Jesús, who says simply, “Hello, my name is Jesús, and God knows we need immigration reform.” Read the rest of this entry »

First impressions, they say, stay with you permanently. A small audience was reminded of this when they gathered on March 11 in the Film Studies Center of the University of Chicago’s Cobb Hall to attend Fire Escape Films’ Winter Screening of new student films. The evening featured six short premieres by both first-time filmmakers and old hands. One film was not shown due to technical difficulties—a reality of student filmmaking that makes it difficult for the club to cultivate a more professional reputation. Those on display ranged greatly in style and subject matter. Read the rest of this entry »