La Basurita
Mariposa Divina
June 27th - August 1st, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27th, 7-10pm

A fable / crónicá:

My only childhood memory is my mother whispering in my ear, “Little basurita, one day you will die.” It turned me on. For the first time, I realized my godlike power.The secret name was revealed, and after wailing and a loud gasp, I could feel massive butterfly wings sprouting through my shoulder blades. I flew past my own desert grave, then reincarnated as MARIPOSA DIVINA, a transexual in a windy city far from home. My new life was no paradise, but I made friends with the serpent women, and we made a protective pact to watch each others’ backs and crochet our broken hearts together. 

[Mariposa’s poem of El Espejo:The Mirror, from when I was nine] Dec, 30, 2005

Con el espejo veo mi rostro

Y el espejo me cuida, no otro

Con el yo voy a estar

Y alli me voy a quedar

Con el veo cosas maravillosas

Fantasía, logros , y mariposas

Preparare mi veliz 

Para ir con él y ser feliz

Mi espejo se llama miguel

Y no me separare de el 

In the mirror I see my face

Only the mirror takes care of me, no one else

I will be with him 

And that's where I’ll stay 

With him I see wonderful things

Fantasies, realisations, and butterflies

I’ve prepared my suitcase 

To go with him and be happy 

My mirror’s name is Miguel 

And I will never separate from him 

La Basurita  is a tender, hopeful tragedy in three nonlinear acts, populated by glazed ceramic stransculptures and fabricated metal shapes wrapping around the landscapes of Co-Prosperity’s window exhibition spaces. The acts, in no particular order, and without giving away which window maqueta maps onto our many secret names, are as follows:  

ACT !  [ Pleasuregarden / Sueño con Serpientes ] 

Genderfluid fashion and giddy get-ups! Butterflies frolicking in the light of golden hour! When I close my eyes and the sun swirls on my lids, this is the dissociative parable of paradise I see. Here in the pleasuregarden I can play and flirt with the earth to my ass’s content. Writhing in pleasure, I multiply and bloom a thousand little deaths. 

Act ? [Darkness / Rot / Transformation ] 

I face my death over and over, then cross to the other side. Memento mori is ancient medicine.

 I lean into the mirror and take a selfie with my dark shadow selves. 

ACT </3 [ Exceptional Friendships / Creating stars ] 

Resting in my friends’ arms: is this where home is?. Even if it’s ephemeral I can trust we will find each other again in our memories, dreams, and promises. 

Visual reference points / inspiration: 

Niki de Saint Phalle’s Queen Califia’s Magic Circle in California, Ana Teresa Fernandez’s border performance art in heels, Javier Tellez’s human cannonball, Helio Oiticica’s Parangolés,  Asco’s walking murals, Ana Mendieta’s facial hair transplant performances, Adrian Piper’s Mything Being, Sofia Moreno’s trash gender art with needles, heels and snakes, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Sueño Con Serpientes chapter in Borderlands. 

Keywords:

Archetypes, matrilineal, faerie, frolicking, paradisepleasuregardens, trash/asco, turning windows into mirrors, inner child, world-making, fables, snake women, healing, rest, composure, holding self, dissociation, imagining, nonbinary faggotry and friends, sensual play, maquetas, disposability, fashion. 

Photo Credits: Sandra Oviedo

Numbers Game
Britt Ransom
June 27th - August 1st, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27th, 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Numbers Game is an exhibition by Britt Ransom, the great-great-granddaughter of Reverdy C. Ransom and Emma Ransom, that traces the inheritance of spiritual leadership, social service, and civil resistance. Through sculpture, digital fabrication, archival media, and interactive optics, this exhibition excavates the layered history of Reverdy C. Ransom’s civil rights work in Chicago during the Progressive Era and connects it to present-day movements for racial and economic justice.

At the center of this exhibition is the story of Ransom’s founding of the Institutional Church and Social Settlement in 1896, located at 3825 Dearborn Street on Chicago’s South Side, a building that no longer exists. More than a place of worship, the church was a pioneering social experiment: one of the first Black-led religious institutions to integrate faith, education, physical health, community organizing, and social services under one roof. It included a kindergarten, nursery, gymnasium, library, and clubs for boys and girls, all aimed at serving the growing Black population migrating to Chicago during the early waves of the Great Migration. The Institutional Church stood as a vital response to the influx of Black Southerners seeking safety and opportunity in a city that was often just as segregated and economically punishing as the Jim Crow South they had fled.

Ransom was not alone in this endeavor. He forged strategic and lasting alliances with some of Chicago’s most prominent Progressive reformers, including Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, and Bishop Samuel Fallows. These figures recognized in Ransom a peer—a leader whose theology was grounded in action, whose sermons catalyzed reform, and whose gathering space offered tangible services to the city’s most vulnerable. Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, played a particularly significant role. She understood the risk Ransom was taking and the urgency of his mission. Shortly after the purchase of the old "Railroad Chapel" building that would become the Institutional Church, Addams helped secure its first external donation. Through her network, a check was sent from a philanthropist in California—marking the beginning of what would become a network of white and Black supporters committed to the settlement’s mission.

Addams’s support was not symbolic—it was strategic. She publicly endorsed the work of Ransom's settlement, visited regularly, and included it in broader coalitions of Progressive reform across the city. Alongside her were Rev. Graham Taylor of Chicago Commons, Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement, and Clarence Darrow, the famous criminal defense attorney. Darrow notably worked with Ransom during the 1902 Chicago Stockyards strike, helping to mediate racial tensions between Black strikebreakers and white union laborers. Ransom, risking personal harm, walked into the yards himself to convince the strikers that Black laborers were not their enemy, but fellow workers caught in an exploitative system. He then invited both Black and white laborers to his church for an unprecedented public forum, where dialogue—not violence—prevailed.

Despite these successes, Ransom’s greatest challenge—and his most dangerous act of resistance—came in the form of his public campaign against policy gambling, an underground lottery system that was thriving in the community during this time. Once he realized that his sermons were being used by congregation members to choose numbers for the game, Ransom spoke out in opposition. His campaign to expose those who were profiting from the game which ultimately led to a personal encounter with Policy Sam. In 1903, his church was bombed with the intent to kill him. Ransom survived, as did the settlement, though badly damaged. 

In this exhibition, Ransom’s work is represented through a symbolic vocabulary drawn from the Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book. In the dream-language of policy gambling—objects like the bell, book, key, train, ladder, lamp, and brick house, had coded meanings and specific numbers assigned to them within the game- players would then use these numbers to place their bets. Recontextualized here, they become metaphors of Ransom’s resistance: the bell sounding a warning, the book and lamp reflecting his intellectual and spiritual light, the key signifying access and transformation, the train representing migration and mobility, the ladder echoing his vision of racial uplift, and the brick house as both church and fortress. 

The 3D printed reimagined policy game objects—symbols of exploitation and coded hope—face black obsidian mirrors creates a space for reflection, divination, and reorientation. Traditionally used in spiritual practices for scrying and ancestral communication, obsidian mirrors serve as portals to the unseen, allowing one to look both backward into history and forward into possibility. Their dark, reflective surfaces suggest that knowledge is not always found in clarity, but in shadow, memory, and multiplicity. Here, the viewer is invited to confront the past not as something gone, but as a continuing presence—one that can still inform vision, intuition, and resistance. Recreated casts of policy gambling tickets appear throughout the exhibition, referencing original tickets that are now extremely rare; most were casually produced, used daily, and quickly discarded, making surviving examples—especially those with meaningful number sets—difficult to recover. 

Interactive teleidoscopes—optical devices that in this case, refract historical and present day images of significant sites in the Ransom story, create layered patterns. Inspired by the Ransoms’ visit to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where they encountered the Yerkes Telescope, these devices invite viewers to consider how history is distorted, repeated, and reframed through personal and collective lenses. Looking through them, audiences encounter archival images from the Ransom family alongside present-day scenes from South Side Chicago and Wilberforce, Ohio.

Lenses—both scientific and spiritual—serve as tools for examining how the past remains embedded in the present. The teleidoscope, allows us to see backwards in time, while the black obsidian mirror, rooted in ancestral and divinatory practices, invites inward reflection and intuitive knowledge. Together, these optical instruments challenge the viewer to consider history not as distant or static, but as something actively refracted through personal vision and collective memory. 

Other elements in the exhibition continue threads of time-space dialogue. 3D-printed roses recall the anonymous banker who donated fresh flowers to the Institutional Church every week—roses that were then handed out in saloons, pool halls, and street corners on the Southside of Chicago, offering beauty in the midst of despair as a way to call together community. These small gestures, like Ransom’s sermons, were both radical and restorative at the time calling people to come together.

Reverdy C. Ransom’s influence extended far beyond Chicago; he was a founding member of the Niagara Movement, the early civil rights organization led by W.E.B. Du Bois. At the movement’s 1906 meeting at Harpers Ferry, Ransom delivered his now-famous speech, The Spirit of John Brown, invoking the legacy of the abolitionist to call for moral courage, direct action, and racial justice. This powerful address positioned Ransom as a leading voice of prophetic resistance, linking the Black freedom struggle to broader histories of radical abolition. His work with Du Bois and the Niagara Movement helped lay the intellectual and organizational groundwork for the NAACP, cementing his national significance as both a preacher and civil rights pioneer.

Numbers Game also includes digitally fabricated architectural elements 3D Scanned and recreated from the Tawawa Chimney Corner House—Ransom’s family home in Wilberforce, Ohio, now being restored by the Bishop Reverdy C. and Emma S. Ransom Foundation. This structure grounds the exhibition in a spatial legacy of sanctuary, history, and forward vision, connecting the South Side of Chicago to one of the earliest centers of Black education in the United States.

Numbers Game also includes a selection of historical books that deepen the archival and narrative context of the work. These include an original Aunt Sally’s Policy Player’s Dream Book, published on Dearborn Street and used to interpret dreams into lottery numbers; The Pilgrimage of Harriet Ransom’s Son, an autobiographical text written by Reverdy C. Ransom himself; foundational histories of the AME Church; and an original souvenir book from the 1893 World’s Fair, where the Ransoms first encountered the Yerkes Telescope. Together, these texts anchor the sculptural and symbolic elements of the exhibition in lived, documented experience.

Through these varied components—sculpture, interactive media, archival documents, and metaphor—the exhibition frames Reverdy C. Ransom not only as a prominent bishop, but as a builder of moral infrastructure, someone who understood that justice required more than belief—it required buildings, coalitions, and the willingness to stand in the fire. Numbers Game insists that the past is not behind us. It is beneath our feet and reflected in our eyes—refracted, living, and unfinished.

Artist Bio:

Britt Ransom is an artist whose practice probes the lines between human, animal, and environmental relationships through sculpture and installations that are made using digital fabrication processes. Ransom’s work is systematic both in construction and in concept, often a direct reflection of observed microcosms found at the surface of our feet, developed in the web of a digital mesh, and made to explore the braided entanglements between ourselves and the other species of plants and animals with whom we share space.

Ransom is the recipient of the Heinz Endowment Creative Development award, Joan Mitchell Center Residency, Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator (LACI) Residency, and the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator. Her work has been shown most recently at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans) Ohr-O’Keefe Museum (Biloxi), Honor Fraser (Los Angeles), Royale Projects (Los Angeles), and Schering Stiftung (Transmediale, Berlin).

Her writing has been published in Antennae (2024), In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship (2021), Leonardo Journal published by MIT Press (2019), The 3D Additivist Cookbook (2016), and The Routledge Handbook on Biology in Art, Architecture, and Design, Routledge Press Essay (2016).

Ransom was the SIGGRAPH Studio and Art Gallery Chairs in 2017 and 2019. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Emma S. and Reverdy C. Ransom Foundation and Freedom to Grow Legacy Center in New Orleans. She received her BFA from The Ohio State University in Art and Technology (2008) and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Electronic Visualization / New Media (2011).

Photo Credits: Melissa Tran

subVersion Summer Camp is a Do-It-Together series of gatherings and calls to action!  MOST PROGRAMS EVENTS and MEALS are FREE TO THE PUBLIC. To help fund the camp you can donate and become a Camper and pin for $25, or become a Parent of a Camper for $100. ( or make yer donation at Co-Prosperity)

We have invited artists, educators, musicians, filmmakers, activists, designers, and workers of all stripes to converge in Chicago this summer to help us make posters, music, t-shirts and merit badges while we make friends, comrades, and plans. Let’s make camp.

Join us in Bridgeport, the Community of the Future (and beyond), for ten days of camaraderie, fun and resistance to the spread of fascist culture. subVersion Summer Camp will foster collective re-education through public conversations, workshops, classes and happenings. We’ll present a broad range of creative forms of protest, and participants will be able to choose their own solidarity adventure… kickball or tag, puppets or banners, ballots or stink bombs? Schedule is below.

THURSDAY, JULY 17TH

Printervention:Exhibition - 6:00PM - 10:00 pm

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

subVersion Summer Camp will open with a selection of prints and posters exhibited in the gallery where most of our Art Building will take place. Most of the works on display ones printed by Public Media Institute and Lumpen Magazine over the past few decades. Some are ones we have collected over the years and many are ones created for Summer Camp. Come make or share your own.

We will be freely distributing stickers, zines and prints we have made for Summer Camp. You can stop by and pick some up to display in your neighborhood or street corner.

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Meet the Lost Boys - 6:00 - 7:00 PM

Hosted by: Lizzy May

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

A performance & a spell: come meet the lost boys and devise a ritual for community, resistance, magic, and mischief. Neverland is an unpoliced world: a space where chosen family and the spirit of the dance floor are guides. We invite you to witness a scene from our queer rewrite of Peter Pan. After the scene, we will guide you to join in spell‑casting, moving with us to weave a ritual of connection and queer magic. 

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Hand Coloring LED LIGHTS: A Workshop for a New Muralism - 6:00 - 7:15 PM

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

This workshop experiments with hand coloring / hand tinting ubiquitous LED storefront lights in service of a new CoProsperity initiative--a community wheatpaste wall (10x30') on the south wall of the building.  Workshop attendees will experiment handpainting LED lights to be permanently installed as a new 'diy frame' around this community wall.  
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Easy Peasy Papier - Mache 101 for Adults - 6:00 - 9:00 PM

Hosted by: Jen Grant

@ 1048 w 37th st. Unit 102 ( Trash Castle Studio, in the Bubbly Dynamics building )

Think outside the piñata! Let's start at the very beginning to learn, collaborate, and experiment with the cheap and cheerful art of papier-mâché. Meet us at Trash Castle for an introduction to the basic tools and techniques pretty much anyone can use to take an idea and turn it into an object.

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The Box - Social Exploration through Community Devising - 7:00 - 10:00PM

Hosted by: Kevin Aoussou

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

This is a workshop to explore our responses to the current moment, inviting artists of all mediums to be in creative exploration.  If you are a physical or visual performer, please join us for a community conversation, followed by a community creative jam session!

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Squiggle Build - 8:00 - 10:00 PM

Hosted by: ¡Anímate! Studio

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Play, dream, and collaborate to transform familiar materials into imaginative landscapes. Throughout the event, help create (and re-create!) a one-of-a-kind experimental creation—out of pool noodles! Together we can build new spaces and imagine new possibilities.

FRIDAY JULY 18TH—

Hand Coloring LED LIGHTS: A Workshop for a new Muralism continued - 12:00 - 5:00 PM

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Workshop attendees will continue handpainting LED lights to be permanently installed as a new 'diy frame' around this community wall.

Mending is Power - 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Hosted by: Parvathi Krishnan

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

What if the skill to repair the things we wear to death was quite literally at your finger tips? Mending our clothing is empowering. It gives the wearer the choice to extend the life of something they want to keep in their closet and out of the landfills. Learners will gain basic sewing skills like threading a needle and mending techniques like patching or parachute stitching to carry home. Instead of adding a well loved garment to a "to-mend" pile, we can tackle it together one thread at a time! RSVP HERE!

Please bring a garment you would like to mend (small holes, rips, and tears work best!)

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Failure as a Doorway - 6:15 - 7:00 PM

Hosted by: Madison Mae Parker

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Failure as a Doorway: A performance lecture on failure inspired by Jose Esteban Munoz, Hanif Abduraqqib, Caroline Polachek, and The Labyrinth.

Part performance lecture, part movement/somatic exploration of failure, and undoing our relationship to perfectionism and production, with a relocation of where our relationship to making might begin. 

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The Covenant of The Dead: The Resident Evils of Race,Space, and Decay - 7:15 - 8:15 PM 

Hosted by: L Ditaway

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

A workshop that explores how an apocalypse doesn't have to look like a zombie film or an aggressive war zone but it can also look a lot like the  south side of Chicago. So how do we thrive in a disaster that isn't as recognizable? In this workshop we'll break up into three groups, XXX amount of days till, When the Asteroid Hit, and the walking dead. Where we will strategize harm prevention plans while cross examining previous natural disasters, epidemics and human conflicts. We will create a memory map of loss whether of time, inclusion, opportunities,  life, and etc  specific to our communities. In order to connect  the causes of harm so the last group can focus on world building off of our collective memory. What small, medium, and  large actions can we take to make our communities more accessible and easier to navigate? While also forming a cycle of habits that can prevent future harm from realizing.

Decentralized Knowledge and Contemporary De-Schooling - 8:30 - 9:30 PM

Hosted by: Earl Power Murphy

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

An introductory discussion into alternative ways of Learning; nurturing a collective Narrative; and shifting from Knowledge ownership towards stewardship. Thinking of ourselves as caretakers and active contributors to our shared Story.

SATURDAY JULY 19TH

Printervention: Wheatpasting - 1:00 - 3:00 PM MOving to 2-4pm due to rain

Hosted by: Marszewski

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St
Assemble at the Research house by 3 pm • instillation moves to Co-Prosperity at 3:15pm

Learn how to wheatpaste printed posters and more onto the exterior wall of Co-Prosperity. We will be using prints from the PMI archive as well as those made during the subVersion Summer Camp.

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Printervention: Neighbors United RISO Poster Build Workshop - 1:45 - 3:15 PM

Hosted by: Javier Viñuela

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Neighbors United for Migrant Support is a mutual aid organization based in Hyde Park which provides free legal services for asylum seekers in their applications. This workshop will host an orientation/teach in on our services directed towards Spanish speakers to be able to conduct interview translations, and to get a network of people to accompany our community members to court, as well as a RISO poster session emphasized on ways of resistance, protest, and informative actions. Overall, this will be an opportunity to connect and build community around a paramount cause in the country nowadays.

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Tie Dye Power - 3:00 - 6:00 PM

Hosted by: Jim Dye

@ Parking Lot across the street from Co-Prosperity

Show your colors while you are on the street. Learn how to tie dye your own shirt. There will be an short introduction on different ways to tie dye at 3:00PM. Come by during the program hours and you will be able to tie dye your own shirt. Bring a cotton shirt to the workshop or buy one of our blanks.

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Protest Music: Song Writing Lab - 3:30 - 5:00 PM

Hosted by: Stacy Erenberg and members of The Nest, directed by Bridgeport Music Collective

@ Bridgeport Music Collective • 3201 S Morgan St,

Participants will use voice, percussion, pen and paper to write songs that:

* Can be used as a way to communicate tactics, strategy and important messages of hope and resistance to people in liberation struggles.

* Use lyrics and melodies of both known and newly created chants/songs to educate, inspire, and influence change in society.

Led by Stacy Erenberg and members of The Nest, an incubator for voice training, performance, and improvisation.

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Disarming Police: Protest and Direct Action Tactics - 4:00 - 5:00 PM

@Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Disarming Police:  Practical, tactical methods for doing what you want to, with minimal interference from police.  

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Summer Camp BBQ - 5:00- 6:00 PM

Parking Lot across the street from Co-Prosperity  • 3219 S Morgan St

Enjoy a subVersion Summer Camp BBQ with us.

Printervention: Silk Screen Printing - 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Hosted by: Hoofprint

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Join members of Hoofprint as they pull screens on paper and apparel. Stop by during the Bar B Q and grab some fresh prints to take home with you.

Why we need American Marxism 6:00 - 7:30 PM

Hosted by: Carlos Garrido

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

For the U.S. left to succeed, it must re-centralize itself in the working masses and dispel its purity fetish outlook, replacing it with the dialectical materialist worldview - the best working tool and sharpest weapon that Marxism offers the proletariat.

SUNDAY JULY 20TH

Histories of Counterinsurgency from Latin America - 12:00 - 2:00 PM

Hosted by: Katie Zien

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

A discussion of histories of counterinsurgency, with a special focus on the Cold War in Latin America

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Printervention: Protest Posters - 12:30pm - 3:30 pm

Hosted by: CHema Skandal!

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

A basic workshop for people interested in making posters to communicate loud ideas. Attend “PROTEST POSTERS” so you can print yours and take them home.

Registration for this event is required, sign up here!

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Printervention: Wheatpasting - 12:30PM - 3:30 pm

Hosted by: Marszewski

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

We continue to wheat paste our Co-Prosperity Wall. We will also set up button making, money stamping and continue to silk screen paper and apparel.

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Zines of Revolution: Displaced Voices and Reclaiming Home - 3:30pm - 5:00 pm

Hosted by: Maco Soto, Melanie Diaz, & Spencer Harrigan

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

This workshop is an immersive workshop designed to empower participants to reclaim and amplify their narratives through the radical medium of zine-making. It begins by delving into a brief subversive history of zines, highlighting their role as a DIY, anti-establishment platform for marginalized voices and counter-narratives. We will then explore examples of zines and center around addressing the theme of one’s sense of “home.” We will discuss migration, immigration, and diaspora, demonstrating how personal stories become acts of resistance and community-building against dominant, often dehumanizing, portrayals. Finally, participants will be guided through a hands-on zine creation session, encouraged to translate their own unique journeys of home, displacement, and belonging into tangible, self-published acts of revolutionary truth-telling.

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Sobre las olas - 4:00PM - 6:00 PM

Hosted by: Contratiempo: Juanjose Rivas

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

El sonido es un fantasma: viaja, se filtra, transforma y se disuelve. Lo que heredamos no siempre hace ruido, pero nos atraviesa. A veces canta como una melodía olvidada en una feria. Este taller invita a les estudiantes a sumergirse en la arqueología íntima de sus propias herencias sonoras. A través de la escucha expandida, la apropiación, la escritura y la composición espontánea, construiremos un paisaje sonoro compartido compuesto de migraciones, ruidos, genealogías fracturadas y armonías inconclusas.

(SPANISH PROGRAMMING)

Register for this program by emailing talleres@contratiempo.org

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Summer Camp BBQ - 6:00PM - 7:00 PM

Co-Prosperity  • 3219 S Morgan St

Enjoy a subVersion Summer Camp BBQ with us.

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Take It Down, Build It Up: Short VIDEO WorkS - 7:00PM - 9:00 PM

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

This screening of experimental videos highlights work interpretively documenting collective action surrounding the War on Terror, George Floyd protests, Anti-Vietnam War actions, Standing Rock protests, efforts to critique and dismantle Confederate monuments, and an intervention by drag queens at a Donald Trump casino. 

MONDAY JULY 21ST

"The Artist as Leader" - 6:00PM - 8:00 PM

Hosted by: Tom Tresser

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

The Artist As Leader - Say What? It's time to take your creative chops into public life, buster. The Far Right kicked the shit out of the arts during Culture Wars 1990 - and we took it. The result: MAGA America. So, we need you to either run for local office or help someone you respect run. And to do so as a champion of the public sector, science, the rule of law, peace, equity, and creativity. Are you up for the challenge? It's just democracy and the planet on the table. No biggie.

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[Power] Of the People - 6:00PM - 7:15 PM

Hosted by: Silvia González

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

“Ain’t no power like the power of the people…”

 What is power? What can an empowered collective build together? What can the act of play teach us about structures of power? 

During this teach-in about power and its many implications, we will be playing movement based Theater of the Oppressed games, shaping ideas, and co-creating gestures of possibility. There will be zine templates and collage materials to support visual interpretation from our collective experiences of the hour. Visual and historical models of collective autonomy will be brought in for discussion and include worker and BIPOC led journalism, artists and organizers of the past and present such as Augusto Boal, bell hooks, The Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Emory Douglas, Rebecca Solnit, Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mariame Kaba and more. 

“…‘cause the power of the people don’t stop!”

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Workplace Protocol Toolkit Workshop by Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights - 7:15pm - 8:15 PM

Hosted by: CCWR (Chicago Community Workers Rights)

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Join CCWR for a workshop on their new 'Workplace Protocol Toolkit'—a resource to help workers and employers create clear procedures if federal, state, or local agents come to the workplace. Learn how to protect your rights, request a workplace protocol, and keep all workers safe, regardless of immigration status.

TUESDAY JULY 22ND

Building Maroon Infrastructures: Counter-territories, Counter-logistics, Survival Programs - 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Hosted by: Muindi Fanuel Muindi 

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St 

This workshop explores maroon infrastructures as living, adaptive systems that resist the coercive order of Empire while creating conditions for planetary abolition. Drawing from AbdouMaliq Simone’s concept of “the surround,” we will examine how fugitivity gives rise not only to escape but to world-making—to infrastructures that hold refusal and endurance in dynamic tension.

Using the analogy of a communal meal, the workshop will unpack four interwoven dimensions of maroon life: (1) Administrative Statements as recipes for collective care; (2) Technical Implements as tools for survival, concealment, and mobility; (3) Built Environments as fugitive architectures and escape routes; and (4) Dramatic Elements as the actors and forces shaping maroon dynamics.

Participants will engage historical and contemporary examples—from the Underground Railroad and quilombos to Black Panther survival programs and diasporic counter-logistics—to explore how these infrastructures unsettle dominant systems while prefiguring alternative futures.

This is not a workshop about nostalgia or heritage, but about practice—how we prototype autonomous forms of life under conditions of constraint, through relational tactics of care, evasion, and insurgency. Together, we will trace the rhythms, tools, and spatial strategies through which maroon communities have survived, adapted, and rehearsed the impossible.

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Plant life is abundant and so are you! An invitation to water your relationship with plants - 6:00 - 8:00 PM

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Seed collection, plant cuttings, food, medicine, nature-based arts! Scarcity mindset is out; creating abundance through relationships with plant life is in! Before you go to the store to buy veggies, flowers, or a new houseplant, learn how you can grow your own with what you already have in your home (or in your friend/neighbor’s home). 

Take small moments to become familiar with plant relatives that surround us. When you’re ready, you can take steps to tend to and share the bounty. 

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Screening of 'La montaña', 2023 - 8:00PM - 10:00 PM

Hosted by: Contratiempo

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

A film log of the maritime journey of a delegation of seven indigenous rebels from Chiapas to Europe in the midst of the pandemic. During the Atlantic crossing, the story and generational change of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) is narrated, based on the idea that in order to change the world we must first change the way we look at it. Squadron 4-2-1. The documentary will have English subtitles.

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Queer Everyday: Collage & Talk - 8:00PM - 10:00 PM

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Queer Everyday is a hands-on workshop where we share stories about queer identity, everyday life, and feeling at home (or not). We start with a talk and short freewriting, then turn words into colorful collage pages for a zine we make together. Come, chat, cut, collage!

WEDNESDAY JULY 23RD

VOZU Workshop - 5:45PM - 8:00 PM

Hosted by: Lumpen Radio: Juanjose Rivas

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

This is a collective-building workshop of hybrid technological instruments. It is based on the idea of planned obsolescence and tech recycling as a means of resistance. Through the assembly of an auto amplified wind instrument, we will work with recycled materials–electronical residues and obsolete components– to transform them into autonomous sonic devices.

THERE IS LIMITED AVAILABILITY TO THIS WORKSHOP. YOU MUST RSVP @ lumpenradio@publicmediainstitute.com

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Zine Club at Life on Marz - 7:00 - 9:00 PM

Hosted by: Cynthia Hanifin

@ Life on Marz Community Club • 1950 N Wetern Ave

For our Zine Club Chicago on Marz event at Life on Marz in July, we'll invite attendees to create pages for a collaborative zine with the theme Subversion. The zine will be distributed in print and digitally to the community.

Raise Your Voice with Intangible Choir - 7:30- 9:30 PM

Hosted by: Julie Pomerleau

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Intangible Choir is a community choir that meets twice monthly at Tangible Books. Join us to learn how to raise your voice with energizing vocal warm ups. We'll perform some protest songs and you can sing along with us!

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Perfect Pancakes - Subversive Digital Media - 7:30 - 9:00 PM

Hosted by: Holland Willcox

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

A crash-course in creating subversive digital media! After introductions and a brief survey in subversive video history & appreciation, we will demo a writer's room style workshopping session, discuss production design on a small budget, and produce a small simple piece prepared for minimal acting skills. Finally, there will be a screening of "Perfect Pancakes", a subversive daytime talkshow. Participants will build skills and confidence in creating their own subversive media.

THURSDAY, JULY 24TH

Climate Wayfinding - 6:00PM -9:00 PM

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Many people are looking at the climate crisis with distress and grappling with the question: “what can I do?” Climate Wayfinding is a proven program created by The All We Can Save Project for holding questions and gaining clarity, courage, and community for our climate journeys. In this mini-workshop, participants will look inward, outward, and forward to identify and activate their unique contributions and explore key capacities for climate engagement.

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Theatre of the Oppressed Workshop - 8:00 - 9:00 PM

Hosted by: Daphne Agosin

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

The goal of this workshop is to get to know each other better to develop trust and discover shared goals among colleagues and participants. To build courage together. Courage can come in following up, in patience, in dedication, in healing, in creating... This workshop is meant to reflect on how we confront fears, conflicts and contradictions in a way that can bring us closer instead of apart. 

One exciting and special thing about Theater of the Oppressed and devised theater is that everyone is invited fully, not only to follow along, but rather to investigate collective decision-making. We facilitate and not direct; we acknowledge that everyone is a leader in their own endeavors and that is celebrated. 

In the equation of oppressed and oppressor, which TO bases its structure in, there is no side we want to be in. No progressive feels content in either spot; we are trying to build systems rid of both entities. But in these workshops people may fall on both ends of those categories, and that is the nature of our organizing times. How much that will affect our work together is another open question to investigate in this workshop. 

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Clowntown Presents: Year 2045 - 9:00 - 9:30 PM

Hosted by: ClownTown

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Join ClownTown in the year 2045 to celebrate the death of the billionaire class. In shadow puppet glory, ClownTown will recount the tale of the fated revolution... 

ClownTown is a collective based in Humboldt Park that hosts monthly(ish) parties, installations, and performances with absurd themes, freaky plotlines, and anti-capitalist directions. This performance comes from a recent party titled: Year 2045, the Future is Calling. 

FRIDAY, JULY 25TH

Mock Congress - 5:30 - 7:00 pm

Hosted by: David Nasca

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Imagine we all just pulled the emergency stop lever on our train wreck of a "democratic" government and had a chance to rewrite the constitution? Many countries eventually realize that their constitutions actually suck and do just that, and our most exhausted founding fathers who got everything right provided us with that emergency exit. Join us in a mock constitutional congress (and in mocking Congress) as we think about ways to restructure the US constitution to promote progressive politics and bring democracy back to the people.

The Battle of Halsted: Labor & Justice - 7:00 - 8:30 PM

Hosted by: Under the Tree Podcast & Pilsen Community Books

@ Cermak & Halsted

Join us in recreating a pivotal moment in Chicago and labor history! The great labor uprising of 1877 arrived to Chicago and nearly brought the city and it's business titans to its knees -- mass strikes, walkouts, running battles and fiery speeches from labor leaders incited violent reprisals from police and national guard troops resulting in the deaths of over 30 civilians. With striking parallels to our current political moment, our re-enactment of this uprising hopes to ensure that this history and the lives lost are memorialized and the lessons carried forward.

More info here https://www.chicagolaborhistory.org/home

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Bass Camp PARTY - 8:30 - 11:30 PM

Hosted by: Teddy Sandler (tdy)

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Riding the wave of dance. Feel each campy beat with a fab DJ lineup (TBA) of underground selectors and music makers, propelling the next gen of Chicago rave. Sthesia collabs with subVersion to present Bass Camp at Co-Prosperity.

SATURDAY, JULY 26TH

Printervention: Migrant Solidarity Zine Print-Run - 11am - 2pm

Hosted by: CHema Skandal!

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

Zines are an awesome and fun communication tool! This workshop is an introduction to everything a Zinester should know. Join us, learn and share, make a migration-related zine and create community.

Registration for this event is required, sign up here!

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Impulse & Intention: A Mindfulness Collage - 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Hosted by: Lily Cox

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

This society raises us to lean heavily into impulses that aid the empire and to repress all else. Collage is a beautiful way to lean into impulse through the chosen images, and intentionality through what is fixed to the page. Let’s practice mindfulness through art! 

Dear Renad, To Gaza With Love - 2:00 - 3:00 PM

Hosted by: Rachel Hoffman and Leah Grynheim, Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

Join us for an art-based workshop for young people to reflect and honor the experiences of Gazan Children and share their own thoughts and feelings through video and letter writing/art-making!

*This workshop curriculum is primarily for ages 8 years old and above.

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ScreenING OF Alfonso Arau's Mojado Power - 8:00 - 10:00 pm

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

The story centers on an undocumented worker, who after various escapades, constructs a plan to unify indocumentados(undocumented persons) and Chicanos. His emblem is a decal advocating “mojado power”, that is, the unity of all persons of Mexican origin in the United States.

SUNDAY, JULY 27TH

Working 2050: A Sci Fi Journaling Workshop for Hopeful Futures - 12:00 - 2:00 PM

Hosted by: H. Kappe-Klote

@ Tangible Books

In this immersive speculative fiction journaling workshop, participants will take on the role of a future worker: maybe you’re a gig nurse for algae farms, a digital janitor scrubbing legacy media, or a community defense baker in a flooded zone. We’ll use writing prompts, somatic cues, and short movement exercises to generate first-person speculative “journal entries” from these future selves. Then, we’ll talk: What does it take to keep working — and caring — in a future built on the wreckage of this one?

We’ll borrow from trauma-informed fitness, somatic narrative, speculative oral history, and very low-tech roleplay. 

What you’ll leave with: A written journal entry from your 2050 self, a character sketch for your future working body, some nervous system tools for surviving the present.

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project for a street corner - 2:00- 4:30 PM

Hosted by: L Napier

@ Co-Prosperity • 3219 S Morgan St

“project for a street corner” is a framework for artists/activists to devise creative protest within crowded public space. In this workshop and performance, you will collaborate with a group to create an experimental covert performance to change the behavior of an existing crowd, through your own performative intervention. During the workshop, you will observe a site, discuss how crowds behave within that site, and devise strategies to covertly change  crowd behavior through collectively using your own embodied behaviors. Then we will test out our strategies on-site. To map out what patterns emerge, our performative interventions will be video documented from above.

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Chicago Radicalism 101 Bus Tour - 3:00 - 6:00 pm- SOLD OUT

Hosted by: Paul Durica

@ Marz Community Brewing • 3636 Iron St.

Explore over a century of civil disobedience in Chicago on this bus tour, from the Lager Beer Riot to the DNC. Learn how the past has made our present and can help us to imagine a just, equitable future. This bus tour starts and ends at Marz Community Brewing Co. It includes beers and Non - alcoholic beverages.

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Travesuras Colectivas: DIY Art for Resistance - 4:30 - 6:00 PM

Hosted by: Alondra Jara

@ Research House for Asian Art • 3217 S. Morgan St

This two-part workshop explores poster-making as a powerful form of creative expression and collective resistance. Using a range of accessible, DIY approaches- such as printmaking, textiles, collage, and hand-drawn design, we'll create bold posters that reflect defiance, liberation, and imagining new futures in these times. 

Open to all skill levels and grounded in values of accessibility, care, and creative autonomy, this workshop centers art as a practice of community-building and liberation. Come to experiment, reflect, and connect!