Version Festival and the Co-Prosperity School.
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.
We will be collecting maps from Chicago creatives for possible display in our booth April 23 and 24, 2011 during the The MDW Fair: visual arts landing in Chicago. The booth will be located in the publications section of the fair since we will also be hosting an online gallery that displays all entries and some select submissions will be published in an issue of Proximity Magazine.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION:
- Physical submissions must be dropped off or received in the mail no later than Wed, April 20th 2011. Please check our website (www.fillintheblankgallery.com) for gallery hours if dropping off. These will be considered for inclusion in the festival and all submissions will be included in the online gallery for the MAPS project.
Fill in the Blank Gallery
5038 N Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60625 - If you are unable to get us physical artwork we are also accepting digital submissions. These will be displayed in the online gallery for the MAPS project along with artists name and a link to their website (please provide with your submission). Digital submissions must be mailed to submissions@fillintheblankgallery no later than Fri, April 22nd 2011 with the title MAP in the subject line. Please send 2 high res .jpgs (hint: scanning or taking photos in natural light is best).
- Name, title (not required), medium you usually work in (i.e. visual artist. musician, writer etc.).
- Website (if you want us to link it on our site).
- These works can be conceptual, but should still read as a “map” Acceptable formats include:
• 2D (drawings, paintings etc)
• audio (mp3’s or CD)
• writings
• sculptural works - Size requirements:
• Minimum of 8.5 x 11” when laid flat (some sculptural works may be smaller)
• Maximum 2ft x 3ft when laid flat (cannot exceed this size)
At the bottom of this post you will find an example of some of the art maps made by students in the Co-Prosperity School. The Co-Prosperity School is an Artist-Run School for and about the advancement and understanding of contemporary Chicago Art. Through guest speakers and class member presentations it shines a light on the contemporary art scene of Chicago.
The idea for the art maps comes as an adaptation from James Elkins, an art historian who also teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and will be one of the speakers at the next session of the Co-Prosperity School. In his book, Stories of Art he explains the exercise originally intended for art historian students to help them visualize their personal relationship to Art History. We have included some of the text from the book as well as some visual examples.
These are meant to be fun quick projects and can be as elaborate or as simple as you’d like. We are looking for how you see your current chicago art community. What places, groups, studios etc. you frequent and find important, your influences and inspirations and any other information you find relevant for your own personal art map (such as where you work and/or your career goals etc.).
EXAMPLES:
“Sometimes the most difficult subjects need to start with the simplest exercises. Einstein invented thought experiments to help him clear the thickets of equations in his new physics. His frequent antagonist Niels Bohr spent a great deal of time inventing and drawing thought experiments designed to overturn Einstein’s thought experiments. Even today’s physicists talk about “toy systems” when they can’t work with the full mathematics.....Many complex enterprises begin with things so simple they seem laughable.
Let me start, then, with a simple exercise to help think about the shape of art history. It is also a thought experiment: the idea is to draw or imagine a very free and informal map of art history as it appears to you. Your to find the mental shape, the imaginative form of history, and do it by avoiding the usual straight timelines. In other words, the drawing must be a product of your own imagination, suited to your personal preferences, your knowledge and your sense of the past. The map will be your working model, your “toy system”.... You’ll see, I hope, that your version of art history has a great deal to say about you: who you are, when you were born and even where you live.
“For me one of the easiest pictures to draw is a constellation, where favorite artists and artworks are loosely arranged around some center. This is a drawing I made of the images I was thinking about in the summer of 1998; at the time I was writing about several of them.
Naturally a drawing is very personal and isn’t likely to correspond to anyone else’s. One of the stars is a Tai plaque, a little prehistoric piece of bone inscribed with tiny lines; another is Duchamp, who always seems to be floating somewhere around; a third is the “Wrangel-Schrank” a German Renaissance cabinet with bizarre pictures done in wood inlay. A star at the right of the moon stands for the paintings my wife made: they aren’t as well known as some of the other stars on the chart but for me they are just as important.
At the center is the moon, which I labeled “natural images: twigs, grass, stars, sand, moths’ wings.” I put those at the center because at the time I was studying natural history as much as I was studying art. Down near the horizon, shining faintly, are the Dutch artist Philips de Koninck and Czech artist Jan Zrzavy: the one invented landscapes with low horizons, like this one, and the other showed me just how eccentric a 20th c. artist can be. To most people this constellation would be fairly meaningless, or just quirky; but for me, it conjures up a pattern of art history that preoccupied me at the time, and it does so surprisingly strongly: as I look at it, I find myself being pulled back into that mindset.”
- James Elkins, excerpt from Stories of Art
Origami Art Map by Mary Ayling, October 2010
Mind Map by Stephanie Burke, October 2010
Mind Maps by Jeriah Hildwine, October 2010
