2nd Floor Rear 2014 might be over, but the DIY art events live on! Napkin Poetry is a regular thing now, happening at Uncharted Books once a month. Jenelle Cheyne, Cassie Ahiers, and 2014 Assistant Director Karly Bergman are teaming up to bring you Table Manners, an “amuse-bouche of sketch, song, and weird sh*t, all unified on the female-food-culture menu,” every Wednesday night in May. Finally, check out the photos from Haptic: From One to Another, an afternoon of participatory performances by Aram Han and John Paul Morabito, capping off the Haptic exhibition at Adult Contemporary.  Continue reading 2nd Floor Rear 2014: Second Lives

Continue reading Welcome to 2nd Floor Rear 2014!

Just when you thought 2nd Floor Rear 2014 couldn’t get any better–what with 30+ unique events including exhibitions, performances, parades, and general tomfoolery–it did. Oh Yeahyuh. In addition to all the great stuff we’ve got going on, we thought we’d throw in a little bonus for our most devoted (and charitable) audience members.

Continue reading Just a Little Fundrai$er

Like Chicago artists and DIY curators, we are scrappy and resourceful. To us, “no” just means “try harder,” or, at the very least, “try it another way.” So while our Kickstarter wasn’t successful this year, we haven’t given up on raising some extra dough for our hardworking event producers.

 You can still donate to 2FR 2014, AND you can still get those sweet rewards for donating.

Check out our donation page for complete details.

So, the good news is, we’ve managed to raise $850 via Kickstarter thus far (Hooray! Thanks, everyone!) The bad news is, according to the ironclad rules of Kickstarter, if we don’t raise our goal amount by the deadline, we lose all of the donations. This means that we have little more than 1 day to raise the remaining $1,150. Tricky, but not impossible. We did the math (Please be impressed. Math is not our best subject.) and determined that we can totally make $1,150 if ~77 of you donate $15, or if 50 of you donate $30. That’s ~77 sit-down lunches or 50 Urban Outfitters T-shirts that, let’s be real, you don’t really need. So why not throw that money away on something we can all enjoy?

You didn’t want that black bean burger anyway.

Done here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/445506472/2nd-floor-rear-2014

The dreaded Winter Vortex is upon us, and with that comes cancelled meetings, emergency grocery shopping, and panic naps. But not to worry! We’re working hard to put 2FR 2014’s schedule of events together. If you sent us a proposal and still haven’t heard back, expect an email within the next 24 hours. We promise!

Donate by clicking here.

In case that blogpost title is a little cryptic for you, let us ‘splain our funding structure for this year:

Thanks to the generous support of the Propeller Fund, our general costs are 100% covered! (Everyone cheer a little cheer! Do a happy dance!) But that doesn’t mean that everyone gets a financial break. Festival participants–the curators, artists, and cultural producers orchestrating each event–still foot the bill for their respective projects. (Example: Jane hosts an exhibition opening at her space for 2nd Floor Rear 2014. Jane pays for installation, refreshments, damages, and any other event-specific costs.)

We’re launching a Kickstarter campaign for 2nd Floor 2014, but this time, all the money we raise goes back to the people producing the events. In addition to waiving the standard participation fee and hosting a special community-building event for our artists and producers, we’ll be able to offer special stipends to offset production and hospitality costs for participants. 2nd Floor believes that what is good for the artist-goose is good for the audience-gander; the more financially accessible a festival is for its producers, the more 100% free it can be for the audience. Everyone wins. *Toss hats in air Mary Tyler Moore-style.*

If we don’t raise the entire amount ($2000) by Saturday, Jan. 18, 12:01 CST, we won’t get any Kickstarter monies, and neither will our event producers and artists. Tough, but that’s how Kickstarter rolls. So pledge now! We will be your friend forever!

P.S. Did we mention that the Kickstarter rewards are actually good this year?

It’s ok, google-eyed confused kitten. We all get a little mixed up sometimes. But don’t worry! We’re adding an FAQ page to answer any of those pesky questions you might have about the proposal process, finding spaces to host events, resources for artists, attending the festival, and more. While we’ve already been getting plenty of questions, we want to make sure everyone gets the chance to ask. So if you have a question about 2nd Floor Rear, email it to itsaponyprojects@gmail.com before December 23rd. If we don’t post it on the FAQ page, we’ll email you back with an answer as soon as we can.

2nd Floor Rear is a 24-hour festival of experimental spaces, apartment galleries, and ephemeral and migrant projects, celebrating Chicago’s vibrant community of alternative and DIY art spaces. Each February, 2nd Floor Rear connects artists with new audiences, helps underfunded and underappreciated alternative spaces get some exposure, and enlivens a dreary winter weekend at the peak of Chicago’s bleakest season. Past artworks, events, and happenings ranged from late-night studio square dancing to a guerilla sculpture garden, a site-specific installation in an underpass, and a nomadic gallery in a handbag. This year, we’re digging deep into Chicago’s long history of underground and under-the-radar cultural spaces and artistic movements—from the motley public discourses of Hobohemia, to the proliferation of alternative spaces in the 1970s and the spread of Social Practice in more recent decades. We want to pay homage to Chicago’s ongoing cultural legacy by featuring events that recall these histories together with the spaces, projects, groups, and artists defining Windy City artistic practice today.

We want you!

• We are currently seeking spaces, artists, curators, and other cultural producers to host events that will take place between noon on February 1st and noon on February 2nd.
• The festival will last a full 24 hours, meaning that there will be an event happening at any given time from noon on Saturday, February 1, to Sunday, February 2.
• Events may include, but are not limited to: pop-up galleries and exhibition openings, performances, happenings, concerts, film screenings, sing-alongs, dance parties, group yoga, feasts, storytelling, interactive performance games, Pecha Kucha, open studios, sewing circles, recovery brunch, and/or conceptual puppet shows. The imaginative, the unusual, and the radically hospitable are encouraged.
• Events may take place in official 501c3 alternative gallery spaces, or they may take place in apartments, bars, storefronts, hallways, bathrooms, etc.
• Event locations will be restricted to the northwest neighborhoods of Chicago (Logan Square, Humbolt Park, Wicker Park, Ukranian Village, Bucktown, etc.), OR locations a 15 minute walk or less from any blue line train station. This eases the strain of travel for the audience and prevents audience dispersal.
• Please send:
  • a proposal (250-500 words) describing your event and location
  • a brief (250 words max) artist statement, curatorial statement, or bio
  • a Resume/CV

to itsaponyprojects@gmail.com no later than December 16. Relevant images and video are recommended, but are not required.

Got a space but no programming in mind? Let us know! We’d love to connect you with potential collaborators.

Questions? Comments? Email at itsaponyprojects@gmail.com.