Tag Archive
Exploring Version Territory: The Co-Prosperity Sphere hosts Bridgeport’s annual art festival
“Every year we have the same intention. We want to widen the networks and nodes of various groups so we can grow a multiplicity of milieus in the art world,” explains Ed “Edmar” Marszewski. He’s talking about the Version Festival, an annual eleven-day arts festival that he founded and co-curates, which celebrates social and... »
In Dialogue: Artists from Denver and Iran collaborate across borders
In the United States, the prevailing notion of Iran is one of religious fundamentalism and political oppression. “Iran” conjures up images of veiled women, state-sponsored terrorism, and nuclear weapons; rarely is it connected with contemporary art. “Dialogue,” a new exhibition of collaborative U.S.-Iranian art, opens January 29 at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport. The... »
Where art meets life
Lines are being blurred in the Chicago art scene. As demonstrated by last Saturday’s Artist Run Spaces Tour, organized by the Hyde Park Art Center, the divisions between artist and curator, studio and gallery, office and home really aren’t so defined after all. The Artist Run Spaces Tour represents HPAC’s contribution to the year-long... »
Pranking the Powerful: Culture jammers the Yes Men appear at the Co-Prosperity Sphere
June 19, 2007. The scene is a large, fluorescently-lit conference room, walls draped in threatening black curtains, the air chiming with the scattered tinkling of metal, glass, and thick, cream-colored hotel-grade dinnerware. Slight murmurs drift upwards from a series of round tables filled with the occupants’ self-satisfied smiles. If it weren’t for the overabundance... »
Best of the South Side 2009: Bridgeport
Originally called Hardscrabble, Bridgeport began as a community of Irish-American canal workers paid for their labor with land deeds. While its segregation from the South Side’s black neighborhoods made it a hotbed of torrid racial relations up through the ’90s, today it is considered one of the city’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods and is... »
Green, Godly, and Grunting: “Salad, Church, and Exercise” at the Co-Prosperity Sphere
Curating a show isn’t something new for Chicago artist Bert Stabler. His show “$(heart),” which was featured in the NFO/XPO at Lumpen’s Version Festival 2009 this past spring, dealt with our psychological relationship to currency. A year previous, “Vulva O’Keefe Versus Angry Goldsworthy” prompted artists to “interact” with his premised division of the sexes:... »
Blood Ties: Estranged fans of extreme music assemble for Bridgeport festival
“It does surprise me,” says Mark Solotroff, “how within genres of music that are underground, confrontational, and aggressive, people can still be closed-minded to other underground, aggressive, dark music.” The Chicago musician and scene veteran hits upon an all-too-common contradiction in musical subcultures, which preach nonconformity while erecting their own rigid aesthetic expectations. Matchitehew... »
Third Fridays in Bridgeport
I know that art is supposed to transcend earthly realities and all, but when Bridgeport’s January Third Friday gallery walk also landed on the coldest winter spell so far this year, reality inevitably intruded. Gallery openings were hard to spot, with nearly no one on the streets passing from one to another. The only... »
