Blog

Ok, so the real post is coming soon…

…in, like, a few hours. After I take a quick disco nap, or have some rather truncated sleep. In the meantime, the Kickstarter campaign was a success!!! Bright and early tomorrow I plan to post a shiny new post for you complete with updates, tips, a downloadable festival map/schedule of events, and more. In the meantime, tell all your friends about Saturday and remind yourself to check back in tomorrow for more.

Event Sneak Peak: New Wave Ladies Night

Hey folks, just to whet your appetite for what’s to come, here’s one of the proposals that’s been accepted for 2nd Floor Rear. Curated by Robin Kang of Carousel Space Projects:

 

What: New Wave Ladies Night
Where: Carousel Space Project, 1310 N. Hoyne Ave. Chicago, IL

2nd Wave, 3rd Wave, New Wave, No Wave…Although the current timeline for the
feminist movement may be blurry or undefined, the quality of the artwork created by
emerging female artists is clearly strong. Amid powerful movements of globalization,
eco-feminism, cyber-feminism, a return to craft movement, and even progress in female
candidates for political positions, the soil is rich for gender issue conversation and
headway.

Adding the term “new wave” to the exhibition, is both a verbal pun and a comparison to
punk music’s electronic daughter. The sub-genre of rock music that emerged in the mid
to late 1970s saw revivals in the 1990s and early 2000s. Common characteristics of
New Wave music, aside its punk influences, include the usage of synthesizers and
electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as a great amount
of diversity.

Juxtaposing an exhibition of a new wave of female artists to a background of synthpop,
draws comparisons to the similar timelines of the two movements and highlights their
repetitive persistence and evolution over the years.

Confirmed artists include:

LeeYoo Heeran
Christalena Hughmanick
Angela Marie Hoener
Michaela Murphy
Rose Sexton

Show will feature new wave music, painting, collage and performance & video art.

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

2nd 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), 2nd Floor Rear adapts the spirit of APT to a condensed, 24-hour timeline. From noon on February 4th to noon on February 5th, 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.


[1] See Stewart Home’s The Assault on Culture. http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/neoism/neoass.htm