2nd Floor Rear: a 24-hour festival of alternative and itinerate spaces

2^nd Floor Rear is a 24-hour festival of alternative spaces, apartment galleries, and ephemeral and migrant projects celebrating Chicago’s vibrant community of alternative and DIY art spaces.

In 1980, the Neoists, a little-known avant-garde subculture descended from Fluxus, held their first annual “International Neoist Apartment Festival” or APT, a four-day long event complete with concerts, performances, film screenings, and installations, in the apartment of one of the members of the Neoist group. Poorly documented and marginally historicized, it is thought[1] that APT carried on annually, in various iterations, until 1988.

Drawing on the 24-hour block party model (think Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Mainx24 festival), 2^nd Floor Rear adapts the spirit of APT to a condensed, 24-hour timeline. From noon on February 4^th to noon on February 5^th, festival participants such as Pop-up Art Loop, Carousel Space Projects, Milk Gallery, the Happy Collaborationists, and individual artists such as Chiara Galimberti and Karen Faith will host pop-up exhibitions, dream yoga sleepovers, site-specific installations, and New Wave synth-pop art extravaganzas.