At first glance, a casual visitor might not expect Bridgeport to be an emerging hub for Chicago’s art scene: streets are stark, shops are scattered, and the wind chimes that dangle from residential houses break the silence. But lo and behold, on the southeast corner of 32nd and Morgan is the Co-Prosperity Sphere, one of the motors behind Bridgeport’s art renaissance. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on how naïve you are, calling a dance party celebrating gay life in Bridgeport the “Snow Ball” is either seasonally appropriate or disturbingly indecorous. Lumpen, the party hosts, probably intended the title to be both, but it indicated neither, since there was no snow on the ground last Friday night and a decidedly demure scene taking place inside the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Lumpen’s headquarters. What the Snow Ball provided was what any Lumpen event demands: randomness. There were no fewer than four “main” events taking place, all unrelated. For guests, there was dancing, air hockey, a home-style food buffet, and a trip to Party Planet, a simulated Space Shuttle ride leftover from last year’s Select Media Festival. (The “Party Planet” turned out to be Earth, albeit an Earth that looks a lot like Brazil during Carnival.) Read the rest of this entry »

The Dayglo tones, the Spandex, the artists, the affected Williamsburg-party vibe: Lumpen’s “Return Flight” conclusion to this year’s space-themed Select Media Festival was a lot like the blast-off event a week previous. Beneath the cavernous ceiling, Lumpen impresario Ed Marszewski looked down on the crowd from his loft like the doyen of a mystical space council. The partygoers danced on the floor below just like the geeky white kids they were. All the light-colored clothing aglow from the black light, errant leotards hugging silhouettes and shaking to beats from U.S. Girls, the occasional dry-humping: “Return Flight” looked more like a seething neon jazzercise gangbang than a triumphant return from outer space. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not normal to hear the words “don’t take any pictures until I turn on the blacklight” be taken seriously, but, seconds later, I was standing in front of a gigantic space station, lit up entirely by blacklight. Yes, strangely enough, hidden on the corner of 32nd and Morgan inside an old warehouse is a huge interstellar complex yet to be launched, CPS1 (Co-Prosperity Sphere 1) to be exact, art collective/magazine Lumpen’s beta test for its first intergalactic space colony. Read the rest of this entry »