How to Make a Scene is a conversation series about artist-run cultural ecosystems of the 1980s and 1990s in Chicago. The series launched June 20th on Lumpen Radio, and continues through October with more radio broadcasts with the live conversations started at Co-Prosperity on July 13th, 2024. This series is a collaborative effort between the Public Media Institute and MdW, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art as part of the city-wide initiative, Art Design Chicago.
The project aims to connect veteran artist organizers with those working today through a combination of intimate events at Co-Prosperity, broadcasts on Lumpen Radio, and live streams on LumpenTV. The series offers audiences trailheads for further exploration of Chicago's storied history of alternative gallery spaces, independent publications, and socially engaged collectives.
The series continues through fall to include sessions moderated by Ben Foch, Nicole Marroquin, Mary Patten, and Greg Ruffing, with more names to come!
All of the panels will be archived on Mixcloud, Vimeo, and the 2024 MdW Atlas, which will be printed as a book in 2026.
August 31st, 2024, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
The August 31st conversation will spotlight four individuals who both create art/music and generate opportunities for others, with a focus on performance art. The discussion is moderated by Salem Collo-Julin with panelists travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, & Rosé Hernandez. Following the panel, ONO will perform a special set featuring travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, and Benjamin Karas.
Moderator:
Salem Collo-Julin: is editor in chief of the Chicago Reader. Collo-Julin has served on the editorial staff of the Reader since 2019. From 1999-2014, Collo-Julin was a member of the midwestern art group Temporary Services, and co-edited the book Prisoners’ Inventions (Whitewalls, 2003). She also co-founded Temporary Services’ publishing imprint, Half Letter Press. In addition to her work with the Reader, their writing has been found in Windy City Times, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Lumpen, AREA Chicago, the book Organize Your Own (ed. Anthony Romero, Soberscove Press, 2016), and other publications. They are a native Chicagoan and their favorite Chicago alt-biweekly besides the Reader is the (defunct) Chicago Seed (1967-1974). Photo: Sarah Joyce
Panelists:
Rosé Hernandez is a multifaceted artist and healer based in Chicago, originally from Dallas, Texas. Since moving to Chicago in 2006 to study at the School of the Art Institute, she has become a prominent figure in the local arts scene. Hernandez co-leads the arts collective Burning Orchid and founded The Energetic Body, focusing on wellness through energy healing, herbalism, and performance art. Her work explores themes of body, desire, and spirituality, often integrating practices like butoh and Reiki to foster human connection and healing. Photo: Morgan Ciocca
travis is the frontman of ONO, a legendary experimental band from Chicago that has been pushing the boundaries of music and performance art since 1980. Known for his powerful vocal performances and unique stage presence, travis channels deep themes of trauma, spirituality, and conflict into the band's immersive shows. His collaboration with ONO's co-founder, P.Michael, has made the group a staple of Chicago's underground music scene, offering audiences a profound and transformative experience.
P. Michael, a founding member of the noise gospel band ONO since 1980, was born in Hyde Park, Chicago, into a music-loving family—his father was a jazz saxophonist, and he is related to Pete Cosey, who played with Miles Davis. Raised in the West Chesterfield neighborhood, known for its influential black musical artists, P. Michael is a multi-instrumentalist trained in music theory by soul arranger James Mack. He attended the School of the Art Institute for film and printmaking, St. Xavier University for pre-med Biology, and graduated from Roosevelt University with a Bachelor of Arts in arts and science in 1984.
Da Wei Wang is a prominent figure in the Chicago avant-rock scene, known for his work with the industrial-gospel-punk band ONO and as an improviser in Street Tentacle. His fractured, atonal guitar style blends elements of dada funk, existential doom, and ambient raga, using extended techniques to create dense, textured soundscapes. His solo album, *Liquid Metal Core*, released by Asian Improv Records in 2021, showcases his distinctive, rough guitar work and features drummer Ben Karas from ONO.
Performers:
ONO bandleader P. Michael Grego and frontperson travis had met before 1980, sharing a love for written and spoken word, the transcendent, and the genuine. Through continual poking and prodding, P Michael convinced travis to join him in ONO, the name coming from shortening “onomatopoeia,” and underscoring a desire to create “noise not music.” P Michael would handle the audio. travis the words. Since January 5, 1980, ONO’s roster has changed drastically, but always fiercely defended a singular construct: “The ONO STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: Experimental Performance, NOISE, and Industrial Poetry Performance Band; Exploring Gospel's Darkest Conflicts, Tragedies and Premises.” ONO band photo: Trip Warner.
Upcoming Events:
The series will continue with future sessions moderated by Ben Foch, Nicole Marroquin, Mary Patten, and Greg Ruffing, with additional names to be announced. All panels will be archived on Mixcloud, Vimeo, and the 2024 MdW Atlas, which will be published as a book in 2026.
Saturday, July 27, 2024, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
with a panel discussion from 3:30 PM - 4:30PM
Moderator Jen delos Reyes will speak with panelists Joanne Aono (Director of the alternative art project, Cultivator - Chicago Art Exhibitions & Farm Art Projects), along with Brian Holmes & Claire Pentecost (Watershed Art and Ecology, Chicago)
This conversation between four artist organizers focused on ecologies will take place, fittingly, in the “Ecologies” section of the exhibition “In Concert with” showcasing the work of De Los Reyes and her collaborators for the past 20+ years.
How to Make a Scene is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
Moderator Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, Canada, is an artist, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–2019. She worked within Portland State University from 2008–2014 to create the Art and Social Practice MFA program with a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. She is the author of several publications, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire. Reyes was the Associate Director of the School of Art & Art History of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she taught in the departments of Art and Museum and Exhibition Studies. She is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity and Equity at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. She splits her time between Chicago, where she founded Garbage Hill Farm, and Ithaca, NY. She describes herself as “defiantly optimistic, a friend to all birds, and proponent that our institutions can become tender and vulnerable.”
Joanne Aono is a visual artist, curator/administrator, and holistic farmer. Her research- based drawings, paintings, and installations address identity, immigration, and the environment. She directs the alternative art project, Cultivator - Chicago Art Exhibitions & Farm Art Projects and serves on the exhibition committee of the Riverside Arts Center. Aono has received several Chicago DCASE grants, an Illinois Arts Council grant, and an Artist Run Chicago HPAC grant.
Cultivator was founded in 2015 with the first exhibitions in Aono’s Ravenswood studio and on Bray Grove Farm in north central Illinois where the artist moved to in 2014. Since then, thirty-two artists have exhibited their art with the alternative arts venue. Cultivator with Aono have been featured in Lumpen Magazine, Bad At Sports, Hyperallergic, and in an Arts Midwest film.
Brian Holmes is a polyglot essayist, artist and researcher, focusing on political ecology. He lived in Paris from 1990 to 2009, where he worked with artist-activist groups, served as translator and English editor of Documenta X publications and was on the editorial board of the journal Multitudes, while publishing across Europe and the world, in edited books, museum catalogues, radical journals, tracts, websites, etc. Upon returning to the United States he took up online cartography as a visual research practice and began working closely with the environmental art group Casa Río in Argentina. In Chicago he has been a member of the Compass group and more recently of Deep Time Chicago. With the latter group he has engaged in extensive collaborations with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (now Geoanthropology) and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Anthropocene Curriculum program (now Anthropocene Commons). Brian’s cartographic work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and at Gallery 400, both in Chicago; at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois; at Artists’ Alliance in New York; at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon; at Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario, Argentina; and at Antenna in New Orleans. He is co-founder of the space (with Claire Pentecost) Watershed Art and Ecology in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer whose poetic and inductive drawings, sculpture and installations test and celebrate the conditions that bound and define life itself. Her projects often address the contested line between the natural and the artificial, focusing for many years on food, agriculture, bio-engineering, and anthropogenic changes in the indivisible living entity that animates our planet. Since 2006 she has worked with Brian Holmes, 16Beaver and many others organizing Continental Drift, a series of seminars to articulate the interlocking scales of our existence in the logic of globalization. She is also a founding member of Deep Time Chicago, dedicated to cultural change in the Anthropocene. She is co-founder of the space Watershed Art and Ecology in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
A sample of Pentecost’s exhibition venues include dOCUMENTA(13); Whitechapel Gallery; the 13th Istanbul Biennial; Nottingham Contemporary; the DePaul Art Museum; the Third Mongolian Land Art Biennial; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Times Museum, Guangzhou. Institutions inviting her to lecture include MIT; CalArts; RISD; Northwestern University; Rice University; The University of Virginia; Creative Time Summit and many others. She is represented by Higher Pictures, New York, and is Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
July 13th, 2024 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Click here to listen to this panel discussion!
Moderator Anthony D. Stepter is an organizer, educator, and curator from Grand Rapids, MI, now based in Chicago. He is the Programs Director at ACRE (Artist's Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions). Previously, Anthony was the assistant director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies program at UIC. He has an MA from SAIC and undergraduate degrees from Grand Valley State University. Anthony has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, and Grand Rapids Art Museum.
As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and projects for venues like ACRE, University of Chicago's Arts Incubator, and Open Engagement. Anthony aims to foster connections between arts institutions and communities. Guided by antiracist and feminist perspectives, his work invites publics to meaningfully engage with art and ideas while building supportive networks.
Carlos Arango, former executive director of Casa Aztlan and president of Frente Nacional De Inmigrante, is a prominent artist based in Chicago, associated with Casa Atzlan, a cultural and community center in the Pilsen neighborhood. Carlos Arango joined Casa Aztlan in 1986 after moving to Chicago from Los Angeles, where he had previously relocated from Mexico. He became the executive director of Casa Aztlan in 1994. Before his official involvement, he was already familiar with Casa Aztlan due to its notable advocacy work for immigrants and residents.
Under Arango's leadership, Casa Aztlan continued to provide crucial services to the community, including education, immigration assistance, and cultural programs. He was significantly involved in community activism, notably organizing a major march for immigration reform in 2006 that drew over 500,000 participants, including Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley. Arango remains committed to helping immigrants become informed about social issues and participate in matters of social justice.
Ed Marszewski is the Director of Public Media Institute (PMI), publisher of Lumpen Magazine and other titles. PMI launched the low power community radio station, Lumpen Radio (WLPN-LP) on 105.5 FM. PMI also programs the long-running cultural center, Co-Prosperity Chicago and the Buddy store located in the Chicago Cultural Center. Ed is also the co-founder of Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, Kimski, Marz Community Brewing Co., and other projects.
Felicia Grant Preston is a visual artist and retired art instructor. She was raised in Chicago where she attended Chicago Public Schools. Her talent was recognized as a child and she received nurturing and encouragement from her parents and teachers. Preston received a BA in art from Southern Illinois University in 1976, an MS ED from Northern Illinois University in 1979, and an MA from Chicago State University in 2003. In addition, she has studied at the University of Illinois, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Governor State University and The Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been included in the Paul R. Jones collection at the University of Delaware, which is considered the largest collection of African American art. Recent publications include the University of Delaware’s 2005 date book, Abstract and All That, University of Delaware exhibition catalogue, and African art: the Diaspora and beyond by Daniel T. Parker.
Preston’s work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry’s Black Creativity exhibition, A.R.C. Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, R.H. Love Contemporary Gallery, Artemisia Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, South Side Community Art Center, Susan Woodson Gallery, Beacon Street Gallery, Nicole Gallery, The South Shore Cultural Center, Neleh Artistic Expressions and Guichard Gallery to name a few. She has also exhibited at The Arsenal Gallery in New York, Fort Wayne Museum of Art Alliance, in Fort Wayne Indiana, Vaughn Cultural Center in St. Louis Missouri, The Art Exchange Gallery in Detroit Michigan, The Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah Georgia, Florida Community College in Jacksonville Florida, Art Jaz Gallery in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, in addition to numerous private collections.
Thursday, June 20th at 11:00 am on Lumpen Radio
Click here to listen to this panel discussion!
The first conversation launches with moderator Anthony Stepter joined by panelists Patricia Nguyen (Axis Lab), Nell Taylor (Read/Write Library), and Andrea Yarbrough (in c/o Black Women) live on Lumpen Radio (105.5 fm) on Thursday, June 20th at 11:00 am.
Moderator Anthony D. Stepter is an organizer, educator, and curator from Grand Rapids, MI, now based in Chicago. He is the Programs Director at ACRE (Artist's Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions). Previously, Anthony was the assistant director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies program at UIC. He has an MA from SAIC and undergraduate degrees from Grand Valley State University. Anthony has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, and Grand Rapids Art Museum. As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and projects for venues like ACRE, University of Chicago's Arts Incubator, and Open Engagement. Anthony aims to foster connections between arts institutions and communities. Guided by antiracist and feminist perspectives, his work invites publics to meaningfully engage with art and ideas while building supportive networks.
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. With a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and currently an assistant professor in American Studies at the University of Virginia, she has over 20 years of experience in arts education, community development, and human rights. Co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community-centered art, food, and design studio in Uptown, Chicago, Patricia focuses on inclusive and equitable development for the Southeast Asian community. Axis Lab critically engages socio-economic concerns through creative programming that draws on cultural and historical knowledge of the immigrant and refugee population to incite equitable development. The organization reflects an intersectional approach, centering marginalized voices to address structural injustices and exploring creative possibilities to envision a just world.
Nell Taylor is the founder and executive director of Read/Write Library and a user experience, data, and discovery consultant. Clients range from global NGOs, government, and Fortune 500 brands to arts education data. Previously, she led planning, research, and communications at an artist's studio that produced interactive video installations for Esquire, Qualcomm, Sundance Film Festival, and the National Portrait Gallery. Nell has spoken at SXSW Interactive, TEDActive, MIT, DPLAFest, Code4Lib, and ORD Camp, among others. She was a 2015/16 National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellow. Read/Write Library has been featured in the New York Times, on NPR’s All Things Considered, and as the cover story in the Chicago Reader.
Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and educator based on the South Side of Chicago. Leading the initiative "in c/o: Black women," she focuses on creating sites of care through collaborative placekeeping efforts, transforming vacant spaces into community resources. This project unites writers, curators, farmers, and artists to reclaim and regenerate neglected spaces, emphasizing care work and solidarity for Black women. Yarbrough's practice integrates urban agriculture, civic engagement, and art, using everyday materials to create functional objects and installations that address issues like redlining and divestment. She holds a Master’s degree in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is committed to ecological and community restoration through art.