Below is a list of our upcoming and most recent events. Please note that prior events have been archived, often including video or audio documentation, available for viewing in our new Member’s Section.
An Evening with Michael Workman: An Oral History of My Characters, Readings from “Biography of a Villain” + Short Animations
An Evening with Michael Workman: An Oral History of My Characters, Readings from Biography of a Villain + Short Animations - Saturday, November 29 at 7pm @ Howling Pages, Chicago
We’re excited to welcome artist, writer, and publisher Michael Workman for a special evening of oral history, readings, screenings, and conversation at Howling Pages. The event will focus on an oral historiography of Workman’s characters such as Our Hero, Allen the Chalk-Line Ghost, Zed Molinger, Sophie and The Darkness who show up repeatedly throughout their recently published graphic novel, Biography of a Villain, at times with different names some of them stretching back through Workman’s artistic practice to his teenage years, when he first began drawing them for himself, and eventually as a cartoon strip for his high school newspaper. As well, Workman will read selections accompanied by a slideshow and screening of short animations. Guests may also have the chance to view original page art and paintings from the project. Additional guest readers may be announced soon.
Biography of a Villain, released in August 2025 by Bridge Books imprint Hurm Edition’s artist’s folio series, is a new graphic novel that interrogates the aesthetics of power, complicity, and cultural memory. Combining drawing, painting, and experimental narrative structures, the work expands on Workman’s longstanding artistic investigations into identity, resilience, and impermanence. The book reflects their interdisciplinary practice, which crosses between visual art, performance, and critical writing.
Michael Workman is the Executive Director of Bridge. Their work has been presented in museums, performance venues, and literary journals nationally and internationally. In addition to their artistic practice, they are a publisher, curator, and cultural organizer, dedicated to advancing experimental voices in literature and the arts.
This event is free and open to the public. Beverages will be provided.
Bridge Presents: Choreographic Place at the Evanston Art Center
Choreographic Place at the Evanston Art Center
Choreographic Place is an exhibition program presented by Bridge premiering at the Evanston Art Center February 20–March 14, 2026 that explores the evolving relationships between dance, sculpture, movement, written choreography, and civic space through the framework of choreographic objects. Long a subject of inquiry in the dance community—most notably articulated by choreographer William Forsythe—in his notion of "choreographic objects," Bridge collective members Michelle Kranicke, David Sundry and Michael Workman seek to expand the definition to architectural or sculptural forms designed not simply to occupy space, but to shape how bodies move and behaviors may be regulated within it, how choreography is written and read, and how movement is negotiated collectively in shared environments.
Developed in collaboration with sculptor David Sundry and Zephyr Dance, Choreographic Place positions the large-scale sculptural forms of Sundry's sculptural dance set pieces as both standalone artworks and active performance environments that prompt, constrain, and inspire new ways of moving. Over the past two decades, Sundry, working closely with Zephyr founder Michelle Kranicke, has produced a series of architectural-scale constructions that restrict, restrain, and otherwise challenge the body’s navigation through space. These objects, often mistaken for stage sets, are in fact sculptural installations whose full meaning emerges only through interaction with performers, choreographers, and audiences alike.
The exhibition will showcase the breadth of Sundry’s practice—presenting these works as visually compelling art objects while tracing their development as collaborators in choreographic creation. It will include 2D architectural drawings, process materials, documentation, and written choreography authored by Michael Workman, presented as instructional text that guides and challenges visitors in how to negotiate the environments themselves. It will also feature restaged and newly developed dance works by Zephyr, associated artists, and partner companies. Conceived as both a choreographic and civic research platform, Choreographic Place will serve as a site for structured experiments in which dancers, musicians, writers, and the public explore how spatial constraints, sculptural interventions, and textual prompts can generate new improvisational vocabularies and shared embodied experiences.
It also launches Instructions for Living, a folio of performancescores by Workman with this section created in dialogue with Kranicke and Sundry, serving as both archive and public tool for movement-based exploration.
This exhibition and publication is supported in part by a grant from the Evanston Arts Council, the Hyde Park Art Center Artists Run Fund, grants from the Illinois Arts Council, including the 2025 Creative Projects awards, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
A Book Release Party for Nat Baldwin’s Experimental Memoir, “Antithesis”
A Book Release Party for Nat Baldwin’s Experimental Memoir, “Antithesis”
Sunday, October 12, 7:00 PM @ The Whistler -Event Page →
Join us at The Whistler to celebrate the release of Antithesis, the newest title from Bridge Books by writer and musician Nat Baldwin. Antithesis presents a polyphonic self-portrait of a creative life across disciplines, blurring the boundaries between language and sound.
In keeping with the book’s cross-disciplinary spirit, the evening will feature both literary readings and sound performances, highlighting the intersections of text, music, and improvisation.
Lineup:
A reading and performance by Nat Baldwin
A performance by Akjai (Jack Langdon, Ishmael Ali, Brianna Tong, Andrew Scott Young)
A reading by fellow Bridge author Robert Kloss
A reading by fellow Bridge author/editor Meghan Lamb
Doors open at 6:30pm, with performances beginning promptly at 7:00pm. Books will be available for purchase on site.
The Making of a Book: A Conversation with Johanna Drucker
The University of Iowa Libraries is hosting author, artist, and scholar Johanna Drucker to discuss her new book, Affluvia: The toxic off-gassing of affluent culture, its development, and the ins and outs of book publishing.
Surviving the Long Wars Book Event with Faheem Majeed in discussion with co-editor Aaron Hughes and contributing artists Dorothy Burge, Brittney Chantele, and Eric Perez
Surviving the Long Wars Book Event with Faheem Majeed
Thursday October 2 2025 | 7:00 PM 9:00 PM
Faheem Majeed will moderate a discussion on the Surviving the Long Wars book with co-editor Aaron Hughes and contributing artists Dorothy Burge, Brittney Chantele, and Eric Perez. Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024) offers a groundbreaking exploration into the complex histories of US warfare and militarism, illuminating the pivotal role of art in cultivating justice, healing, and abolition. Inspired by Indigenous responses to the “American Indian Wars” and artists from the Greater Middle East and South Asia challenging the “Global War on Terror,” this volume examines the intersections between these legacies of creative rebellion and the experiences of contemporary Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) veterans. Informed by the emerging Veteran Art Movement and its ties to global struggles for demilitarization and abolition, the book advocates for solidarity and imaginative resistance against war and empire.
Order your copy of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the End of Empire
Printers Row Lit Fest Offsite Reading Marathon
Thanks to the organizing efforts of Ben Niespodziany (Pizama Press / neonpajamas), we’ll be gathering at The Whistler on Friday, September 5 for a special Printers Row Lit Fest Offsite Reading Marathon, celebrating the incredible diversity of indie presses across Chicago. Like an AWP Offsite, this event will bring together a dozen presses with one “representative” reader each, featuring rapid-fire sets of about five minutes apiece.
As part of the lineup, BRIDGE will be showcasing Robert Kloss, author of The Genocide House, alongside readers from Meekling, Black Ocean, Maudlin House, Malarkey, Rose Metal, Verge, and many others. Doors open at 6:00pm and readings kick off promptly at 6:30pm. There will be space for book sales and plenty of energy before the band takes the stage later that evening.
Big thanks again to Ben for spearheading this and to all the presses and authors for being part of this celebration. Bring your friends, bring your books, and join us for a whirlwind of words, voices, and community.
Printers Row Lit Fest Offsite Reading Marathon
Celebrating Indie Presses in Chicago
Hosted by Pizama Press & neonpajamas
Olivia Cronk (Meekling Press)
Nathan Hoks (Black Ocean)
Mallory Smart (Maudlin House)
Adrian Sobol (Malarkey Books)
Jesie Gaston (The Year)
Robert Kloss (BRIDGE)
Dmitry Samarov (Maudlin House)
Lemmy Ya’akova (General Things Press)
Chris Bower (Rose Metal Press)
Jessamyn Violet (Maudlin House)
Jessica Anne (Long Day Press)
Nick Rossi (Ursus Americanus)
Patrick Morrissey (Verge Books)
& More to be announced!
Friday, September 5
@ The Whistler
2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Doors: 6:00pm
Readings: 6:30pm–8:30pm
Bridge Books Release Celebration for Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire
SAVE THE DATE! Surviving the Long Wars: Virtual Book Launch and Celebration
Saturday, May 10, 2025, 1PM
Join the editors and project directors of Surviving the Long Wars for a virtual book launch celebrating their multi-year curatorial public humanities collaboration. Marking the release of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024), this conversation explores the radical possibilities and challenges of crafting creative interventions grounded in solidarity and liberation.
Register to attend through Zoom.
MC: Anthony Torres, NEH Veteran Fellow and theater artist
Speakers:
Aaron Hughes, Surviving the Long Wars co-curator and independent artist
Ronak K. Kapadia, Associate Professor and Director of Interdepartmental Graduate Concentration, Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois Chicago
Therese Quinn, Professor and Director, Museum and Exhibition Studies, University of Illinois Chicago
Meranda Roberts, Visiting Professor in Art History, Pomona College
Amber Zora, DEMIL Art Fund Program Manager
Partners:
- Pomona College Benton Art Museum
- Pomona College Art History
- Gender and Women’s Studies Program, University of Illinois Chicago
- DEMIL Art Fund
- Bridge Books
- emerging Veteran Art Movement
Bridge Participates in Chicago Poetry Month at the Harold Washington Library
Join Bridge and the Chicago Public Library in a daylong celebration of poetry. Bridge will be tabling with the other poetry publishers.
Join Bridge and the Chicago Public Library in a daylong celebration of poetry. Bridge will be tabling with the other poetry publishers. Bridge Editor-in-Chief Michael Workman will attend the event to answer questions, hand out free postcards, show foof our backlist titles and hock other Bridge wares, while telling inexplicably bad jokes that are actually koan meditations and helping support the poetry community in Chicago.
A Festival of Holes 2025
The 2025 Bridge Festival of Holes
“Join an unruly ensemble of archaeologists to excavate and celebrate the hole as a gathering point; that into which everything falls: black holes, boreholes, manholes, potholes, airholes, sinkholes, stink holes, wormholes, tone holes, keyholes, cunt holes, a-holes, mouth holes, hideyholes, holy holes, wholly holes, breath holes, holes in the head and in the body and in the earth, holes in humanity, holes as escape routes and connection points … a gap, a gape, a gasp, agape …” -Stacy Hardy
CHECK OUT THE FULL LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT on our events page here. Tickets available here.
This second iteration of A Festival of Holes will take place for one night only, March 22, 2025.
PART ONE: “QUALIA MIRAGE”
5:00 - 6:00 PM – First film block (~1 hour)
6:00 - 6:05 PM – 5-minute intermission
6:05 - 6:40 PM – Four Readers (8 minutes each, 32ish minutes total)
PART TWO: “INVISIBLE HISTORIES”
6:40 - 7:25 PM – Second film block (~45 min)
7:25 - 7:50 PM – Three readers (8 minutes each, 24ish min total)
7:50 - 7:55 PM – 5-minute intermission
7:55 PM - 8:30 PM – Half-hour Allen Moore DJ set & premiere of Coterminus, a limited edition Bridge flexi-disc sound art album project
With few exceptions, selected film and video works that also appear on the Bridge Video micro-streaming service will not be premiered until after the festival closes.
Bridge Books Release Celebration for Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire
Celebrate the release of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire and closing of Transformative Threads.
Bridge Books and the STLW organizing committee is excited to announce the release of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire. We will be hosting a book release in conjunction with the closing of the Transformative Threads exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. Masks required.
Please register through Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/4erxWPf
SAVE THE DATE
Surviving the Long Wars Book Release & Exhibition Closing
3:00PM-4:30PM December 8, 2024
Grand Army of the Republic Hall, Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602
Bridge @ The 65th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association
The 65th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association
Join Bridge and the Midwest Modern Language Association for this year’s MLA Conference! Bridge will be participating as a Book Exhibitor at this year’s event.
Exhibitors: Bridge Art NFP, Broadview Press, Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, Punctum Books, Sigma Tau Delta
Location: Third Floor, Waldorf
Dates/Hours: Thursday, November 14, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Friday and Saturday, November 15–16, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
Bridge Books Release Celebration for The Genocide House by Robert Kloss
In The Genocide House—the American—maelstrom—The world—delirium—
Villages—slaughtered and burned—Cities eradicated—in atomic flame—
The Genocide House by Robert Kloss is a compendium of American atrocities, as violently blurred and self-obliterating as history itself. From King Philip’s War to the Industrial Revolution, from the trials of Leopold and Loeb to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, from the living room of an Oppenheimer-esque scientist to exploded fields across time, Kloss takes us through the interconnected floors, corridors, and secret chambers of the American Genocide House. In the words of Babak Lakghomi, The Genocide House is “poetic and hallucinatory, a visceral novel of visionary power.”
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen Special Event - Panel Discussion: “Working With Small Presses”
The October 2024 edition of the Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, October 6 from 3-5pm. This edition will convene a panel on the subject of Working With Small Presses.
Author panelists discuss and respond to questions about publishing books with small presses. With the consolidation of traditional publishing in the Big Five presses (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster), both established and emerging writers have turned to independent presses for freedom of expression, exploration, risk taking, experiment, and reaching diverse readers. The indies range from university presses like MIT to high literary ones like Graywolf to small presses. The small presses, like BRIDGE, sprout everywhere, sometimes devoted to genre like horror and fantasy or grit lit. Small presses, publishing roughly ten books a year, pay great attention to each book, and their authors devote themselves to readings, communities, and public appearances that go beyond the conventional.
As always, the conversation will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org. No open mic this edtion.
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen Bridge Authors Edition: Farkas, Foroohar & Kloss
The August 2024 edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, August 31st from 3-5pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org.
Cinepoetry Cinema: Hardy, Borzutsky, Smits, Workman, Falkenberg & Cochran
Our first-ever installment of Cinepoetry Cinema, a new microcinema screenings series produced in conjunction with Bridge Video, will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, July 6 starting at 3pm. The lineup of screenings will include: “The Breathers” by Stacy Hardy and Daniel Borzutsky, “Accidental Neighbor” by Michael Workman, “The Life & Death of a Mosquito” by Walter Smits, and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran.
Bridge Participates in Chicago Poetry Month at Harold Washington Library
Bridge Participates in Chicago Poetry Month at Harold Washington Library
Join Bridge and the Chicago Public Library in a daylong celebration of poetry. Bridge will be tabling with the other poetry publishers.1 Poetry Section Editor Spencer Hutchinson and Editor-in-Chief Michael Workman will attend the event to answer question, hock Bridge wares, tell inexplicably bad jokes that are actually koan meditations, and help support the poetry community in Chicago.
Touristic Intents at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Mark your calendars and get your tickets now before they sell out! Bridge Editor-in-Chief Michael Workman will be moderating a panel at the Gene Siskel Film Center next Thursday the 30th at 7pm with artist, filmmaker and Bridge artistic collective member Mat Rappaport at the Chicago premiere of his new film TOURISTIC INTENTS (info below). Joining them is Jonathan Mekinda, Architecture and Design Historian at the University of Chicago, and Sara Hall, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies and chair of the Minor in Moving Image Arts at the University of Illinois.
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen: Parker Young, Cecily Chen & Jessie McCarty
The November 2023 edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, Nov 18th from 3-5pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org.
Bridge Film & Video Festival 2023
The Inaugural Bridge Film & Video Festival
CHECK OUT THE FULL LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT on our events page here. Tickets will be available shortly.
The inaugural Bridge Film & Video Fest will take place over two days:
FRI, OCT 27, 2023
EVENING PROGRAM (7-9PM): “ENTRANCES, INTERIORS & LOST PLACES"
SAT, OCT 28, 2023
DAYTIME PROGRAM (2-5PM): “NATURAL EXPANSES”
EVENING PROGRAM (7-9PM): “THE NEXT & NECESSARY REVOLUTIONS”
With few exceptions, selected film and video works that also appear on the Bridge Video micro-streaming service will not be premiered on Bridge Video until after the festival closes.
A Festival of Holes
BRIDGE ANNOUNCES A FESTIVAL OF HOLES, with events at:
Art in Odd Places: DRESS, New York FRI-SUN, OCT 13-15
The Bridge Film & Video Festival at SITE/less Chicago THU, OCT 27
The Neubauer Collegium for Society & Culture at the University of Chicago FRI, NOV 3
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen
The August 2023 edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, August 26th from 3-5pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org.
Bridge Presents Ryan Tynan: “Inner Child,” at Northeastern Illinois University Library Gallery July 1- Sept. 1, 2023
July 1- Sept. 1
NEIU / Ronald Williams Library
5500 N. St Louis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, July 2, 2 - 4pm
RYAN TYNAN: INNER CHILD / Exhibition Statement
The first Chicago exhibition for Bridge artistic collective member Ryan Tynan, this survey of the artist’s early work will delve into his work in video art, set design and model-making, and breakthrough work in cinepoetics.
Tynan, the first cinema section editor for the Bridge Journal, identifies as a practitioner in the emerging genre of cinepoetry, a form that has emerged out of the adjacent and related areas of intersectional work such as poetronica, the videopoetry of Tom Konyves and other pioneers such as Gianni Toti and interdisciplinary artists including Eduardo Kac. As a distinct precursor category, Video Poetry developed as an expanded field encompassing installation, performance, new media art and poetics in the works of Gary Hill, Philippe Boisnard, Billy Collins and many others. Today, cinepoetry remains an emerging field, with practitioners including Tynan working to define its contemporary forms.
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen
Bridge & the Readings Archive Announces Next Installment in the Open Readings Series Produced in Partnership with Open Books
Mark your calendars! The next edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen @openbookspilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, May 27th from 2-4pm.
We are grateful to welcome an incredible lineup of readers including novelist, poet and University of Chicago Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts Rachel DeWoskin @racheldewoskin; SAIC Visual and Critical Studies Emeritus, novelist, and Guggenheim fellow Maud Lavin @lavinmaud, and artist, writer, curator, and educator Natasha Mijares @natmija. Hosted by Bridge Editor-in-Chief Michael Workman @michaelworkman1.Readings from 2-3pm; walk-in readers welcome from 3-4pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org.
Rachel J. Webster & Josh Honn Readings at the Closing Reception for Treatments, 2019/2023
Bridge Books Announces Closing Reception & Readings on Tuesday, May 16, from 6-8PM by Rachel J. Webster & Josh Honn in support of Mat Rappaport’s Photography Anthology “Treatments 2019-2023,” Published to Accompany the Exhibition at Material, Chicago
TREATMENTS: CLOSING RECEPTION & READINGS
On Tuesday, May 16th from 6-8pm Material, Chicago will host a closing reception for Treatments 2019 / 2023 and readings by Rachel J. Webster and Josh Honn of poetry included in the book of the same name. Published to accompany the exhibition, Webster's The Well: Grief Poems and Honn’s A Slow Archive, each included in the Bridge Books release of Treatments, offer poetic responses to the early loss of their spouses to illness. Both readings will be video recorded live and entered into the Readings Archive after the event.
Bridge Participates in Chicago Poetry Month at Harold Washington Library
Bridge Participates in Chicago Poetry Month at Harold Washington Library
Join Bridge and the Chicago Public Library in a daylong celebration of poetry. Bridge will be tabling with the other poetry publishers. The schedule of events is as follows:
Poetry Fest Events
Saturday, April 29th - Harold Washington Library
9:30am - Poetry Vendors Area Opens:
James Gordan - Independent Publisher
Bridge Art NFP
After Hours Press
Free Spirit Media
Columbia College
Poetry Center
10am - Poems While You Wait (Lobby Activity)
10am - Haiku Fest with Regina Harris
10am - Song of Myself Poetry Display
11am - Business of Poetry Panel with Mariah Scott, Eros The Prince of Poetry & Jennifer Brown-Banks
11am - Writing the Everyday with Mina Kahn
11:30 - Poetry Book Tasting with Jeff
12pm - Gwendolyn Brooks' "Blacks" Workshop with Tara Betts
12pm - After Hours Press Reading
1pm - Poetry and Social Justice Panel with David Masciotra, avery r. young, H. Melt & Janine Harrison
1pm - 40 Love Poems Workshop
1pm - Rengay Poetry Workshop with Poets and Patrons
2pm - Chicago Poet Laureate Keynote Address
3pm - 24th Annual Poetry Fest Open Mic with Caroline Watson
Mat Rappaport: Treatments, 2019/2023
Mat Rappaport: Treatments, 2019/2023
Photographs and assemblage
at Material
April 9-May 7
Opening Reception: April 9, 11am-2pm
ARTIST STATEMENT
In 2019, my partner was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As I accompanied her to consultations, tests, and treatments I found myself considering the spaces in which the clinical met the individual. The hallways, waiting areas, and examination rooms were a pastiche of industrial wall coatings, clinical equipment, and artworks. In particular I was struck by the artworks that had been selected for display, often copies of well-known master works and pastoral scenes, placed into nearly identical serial cubicles. These visual spaces were meant to distract and calm and yet, I could only reflect on the fact that that was their purpose. All this while contemplating the unimaginable.
The process of dealing with a cancer diagnosis and the resulting responses led to early consultations, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in Chicago, Evanston, and Milwaukee. As the treatments continued, we navigated COVID within the medical establishment, which brought an enhanced sense of isolation and distance. At their most strict, the COVID protocols forced my partner to go to day-long treatments alone. However, in most cases, I was able to accompany her to consultations with her doctors as critical treatment decisions and test results were discussed.
A year later, after a recurrence of disease, the family relocated to Los Angeles, CA so my partner could join a clinical trial. New classes of institutions were mapped into our lives and are reflected in the project. In the summer of 2021, after nine months, and what seemed like significant health gains, the family returned to Chicago and soon thereafter my partner entered hospice care.
I returned to these images last year with a renewed interest in what they meant to me not only throughout the lengthy illness, but also what they had come to mean to me now. Predominantly depicting images of natural landscapes, often depicting humankind’s place within it, I have darkened the images themselves as a means to create tension between the built environment and the art on display. It is hard to escape that these clinical spaces are designed for an unending series of medical rituals; tests, treatments, and hard conversations.
Recreating the space of encounter with these artworks in a gallery exhibition, mounted on and integrated into assemblages, the walls shift and are contorted, simultaneously representing the distortionate emotional weight of the experience, while also signaling the impossibility of reliving it through the promise these artworks seem to hold out hope of delivering. In this way, Treatments draw back the curtain on the process of the more realistic depiction of the experience, becoming art; while the depicted artworks emphasize the return to nature, promising palliative moments of a brighter place, a happier time, they are now eclipsed by a reality they can no longer address. meme01.com
ARTIST BIO
Mat Rappaport is an artist and filmmaker known for works that utilize mobile video, performance, and photography to explore habitation, mass-tourism, perception, and power as related to built environments. Recent projects include the Range Mobile Lab (RML) performances employing a 1995 GMC step van, augmented with external cameras that capture video from the surrounding environment and then projects the video onto the windows as the RML navigates the city. The Range Mobile Lab supports media performances, architectural collaborations, and direct community engagement. The RML continues Mat Rappaport’s effort to shape the experience of urban environments through media-based interventions. In 2021 Rappaport completed his first feature documentary, touristic intents, which asks, “can a building be guilty?” by exploring the redevelopment of the Nazi resort in Prora, Germany.
Rappaport’s work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally in museums, galleries, film festivals, and public spaces. Recent projects have been featured during EXPO Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2019 and 2017, Anniversary of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, Italy, and 2018 Ann Arbor Film Festival and performances with the Range Mobile Lab at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Block Museum at Northwestern University.
Rappaport is an Associate Professor in Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College in Chicago.
CURATOR BIO
Michael Workman is an artist, writer and reporter. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity, and WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Workman is also Director of Bridge, a Chicago-based 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization. His writing has been included in several anthologies, a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing, and a 3-volume series of past writing, Perfect Worlds, at StepSister Press. His work has been presented at the MCA Chicago, Driehaus Museum, and the Evanston Art Center. Upcoming screenings of his cinepoems and experimental films include “Bad,Midwest Action” at the Figge Art Museum’s Alternating Currents Film Festival in August, and “Inside Streets” at the Evanston Experimental Video Showcase in September. michael-workman.com
Bridge Soiree
Join us for a super casual Bridge Social Soiree
Sunday, March 19, 2023, 4-6pm
- Meet current collective artists and committee members
- We are currently accepting applications for new collective members, and members for the following committees: Events & Exhibitions, Movement Matters, and Communications
- Hang out
Open Readings @ Open Books Pilsen
The first edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, February 18th from 2-4pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived at bridge-chicago.org.
Bridge co-presenting partner of Illinois Humanities Council “From Healing to Action” on January 26th at the Chicago Torture Justice Center
Bridge is a "co-presenting partner" of Illinois Humanities Council @ilhumanities of “From Healing to Action” on January 26th at the Chicago Torture Justice Center and we’d love to see our community come out to learn, heal, and move together toward action in honor of survivors. RSVP at the link in our 🌳 or visit ILHumanities.org/HealingtoAction.
Featuring a screening, healing exercise, screen printing by @POBoxCollective, quilt making with artist and activist Dorothy Burge, and food by Celebrations by Us.
This event is presented in partnership with the Illinois Humanities Council, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, the Chicago Torture Justice Center @chitorture, PO Box Collective, the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture @csrpc, and the Human Rights Lab @uchihumanrights.
#ILHumanities #OralHistory #Reparations
Bridge V22N1 Release Party
RELEASE PARTY FOR BRIDGE V22N1 OCTOBER 18!!
GUILD ROW SOCIAL CLUB
Tue, October 18, 2022
4:00 PM CDT Early Admission
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM General Admission
SAVE THE DATE! and PLEASE RSVP TO join us at the release of the Bridge Journal's new Volume 22, Number 1 on Tuesday, October 18 from 4-7pm at Guild Row Social Club, 3130 N. Rockwell. Copies of the Bridge Journal V22N1 will be available for purchase and for subscription at the event. A cash bar will be available for attendees.
Cover Image: Animation Frame from Virtual Exhibition by Selina Trepp
At 7pm, Release Party will Host Premiere of New Movement Matters Dance & Performance Series & Live Filming of work by Joanna Meccia, Amanda Saucedo & Juliann Wang
The long-running Bridge Movement Matters series, which investigates work at the intersection of dance, art, performance, politics, policy and issues related to the body, is launching a new periodic performance series this October 18. Bridge has hosted a variety of Movement Matters programming now for seven years, including artist's roundtables, symposia and panels, but this will be our first outing as a performance series. Curated by Michael Workman and Juliann Wang, we hope you will come show your support for the series launch, which seeks to define new intersecting spaces between dance, movement and performance art.
Following on recent collaborations such as 2021’s Source Recursions, this new showcase will host new and revised work by:
JOANNA MECCIA will present an excerpt from her choreography, Imaginary Futures. Image: courtesy Alex Rathbone.
Performers
Colleen Bass
Kimberly Galloway
Joanna Meccia
Heather Zimny
Choreographer Bio
Joanna Meccia is a dance artist, choreographer, and director, with an interest in exploring the human experience through multi-disciplinary dance experiences. Her choreography has been supported by grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (2018), and Activate! Chicago (2018), and performed in theaters such as the Athenaeum Main Stage, Stage773, Links Hall, as well as Chicago Public Schools and public spaces. In addition to producing her own work, she has been commissioned for companies including the Trifecta Dance Collective, Project606 Dance, and Esoteric Dance Project, and most recently for New Dances (2020) by Thodos Dance Chicago and Dance Works Chicago. Currently she is developing a new work blending film and live dance through Dovetail Studio’s 3for3 Artist Residency When she isn’t choreographing, Joanna can be found performing with the Dance Avondale Collective and teaching dance in Chicago-land.
AMANDA SAUCEDO will present a solo, Untitled, with music: Si Tu Supieras Companero - Rosalia
Artistic Statement
This piece explores the multitude of emotions that can arise during a challenging experience. Saucedo began this work during the first Covid quarantine. Initially it was a depiction of the struggle between wanting to dance and being restricted (at home). However, it began to morph into a piece of work that played on an internal struggle of the artist- battling between two different worlds. Two dance styles are fused together: Modern and Flamenco.
Choreographer Bio
Amanda Saucedo, of Mexican-Ukrainian descent, is a native of Chicago. She began her dance training with a Mexican Folkloric company while later studying Ballet, Modern and other styles. She continued on with Spanish dance, serving as a Company Dancer and Teaching Artist with Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater for nearly 15 years performing nationwide as well as internationally in Spain. Amanda has performed alongside local Chicago artists, dance companies, and arts organizations at renowned venues such as The Auditorium Theater, Harris Theater, and participated in festivals such as Jacob's Pillow, Dance St. Louis and Chicago's Dance for Life. She continues to dance and teach in the community while partaking in collaborative work in hopes to inspire and share her art with others.
JULIANN WANG will present a solo, Untitled.
Choreographer Bio
Juliann Wang is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, designer and performer whose work employs a multidimensional creative practice. Juliann received an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and BFA from The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Her work reflects current shifts in culture, functioning as a narrative background for discussions of the personal versus society in the complex place of shared experience. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Susquehanna Art Museum, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Sullivan Galleries at Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at Art Institute of Chicago, Giertz Gallery at Parkland College, Cetys University in Baja California (México), 808 Gallery at Boston University, Hyde Park Art Center, 33 Space in China, etc. Juliann also has created and collaborated in numerous performances throughout Chicago such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Anderson Japanese Garden, Mana Contemporary, 6018 north Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, and others. She is a DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2021, 2022. Currently, she is an artist in residence at High Concept Labs.
LECTURE: On Making; Methods and Techniques for the Production of Artist’s Publications in Historical Context
LECTURE: On Making; Methods and Techniques for the Production of Artist’s Publications in Historical Context
“FROM PAN TO BRIDGE”
THE RICHARD H. DRIEHAUS MUSEUM
WED, Nov. 10, 2021 6PM
Save the date for the second lecture in a series at The Richard H. Driehaus Museum: Bridge Journal Editor-in-Chief Michael Workman will be joined by Deborah Maris Lader, Founder and Director of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, to discuss the print techniques of this more than a century-long history of artist’s publications. Using the Driehaus Museum exhibition, PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe 1895-1900 and William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, as a starting point, Workman and Lader will take us through decades of techniological innovations in printmaking and how artists in the avant-garde tradition of artist’s publications used them to help invent and expand modern and contemporary art, and beyond.
This lecture will serve to provide a practicum to accompany Workman’s Sept. 2021 lecture Avant-Garde Publications in Perspective on the history of avant-garde magazines, manifestos and other publications, and delve into both the how and why artists who produced them employed the variety of ancient and modern techniques that they did. Picking up where our previous lecture in this series leaves off, we will discuss how the Bridge Journal, formed from a collective of contemporary artists in Chicago, has its roots in the printing techniques and artistic lineages of previous avant-garde publications that sought to resist the encroaching demands of commerce, which has often historically sought to subordinate artwork to utilitarian interests.
We will further identify the Bridge Journals as emerging specifically out of a number of artistic foundations, notably the Die Brücke (The Bridge) artists movement that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to questions of artistic autonomy, central to these movements was consistently an intention to bridge the gap between ancient and modern, to demonstrate the ways in which the work of artists in history selected media best suited to their artistic intentions. One widely cited accomplishment of the Die Brücke movement, of course, was the revival of the woodcut, a technique that the collective not only revived but famously used in the printing of their own manifesto by Ernst Ludwig Kirhner. Later, using the relatively newly-developed material linoleum, which was much easier to carve into with blades than wood, they invented the printmaking process of the linocut.
At the lecture, Maris Lader will present a demonstration on one of these historic techniques (either of woodcut, etching, lithography, etc.) that were employed by these artists in the production of their periodicals, and further illuminate the historical context, developments and provide an in-depth discussion about how these techniques have branched off or been displaced by other processes over time.
After the demonstration, we will take more recently developed techniques into art historical account, and consider the invention and cultural consequences of screen printing (in 1911), dot matrix printing (1925), Xerography (1938), inkjet and laser printing (1950 and 1968, respectively), and how artists embraced them to great social effect. This will include a discussion of John Barth’s linotype and handset Janson cloth-cover 1967 “manifesto of postmodernism,” The Literature of Exhaustion, the variety of print techniques employed by publications in the No-ISBN movement, and how Ulises Carrion, for example, published Ephemera magazine by Xeroxing mail art. We will also discuss how Carrion was also famously quoted as saying “Amsterdam has not yet discovered the mimeograph” (1885) prior to opening his bookstore / bookworks project space in the city, citing the necessity of the printing technique to his ideals of avant-garde publishing as community-formation, and how the artist often published using only a typewriter and office-supply style spine-binders. In conclusion, we will also consider the relatively recent evolution of artist’s printing processes, without taking into account the entirety of the digital revolution.
Following the lecture, on Saturday, Nov. 13 from 2-4pm, a second demonstration of one or more additional printing processes will also be presented off-site at the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative as a third event in this series.
Terrain Biennial 2021 Exhibition: Andrew Schachman at Landing Projects
For this year’s Terrain Biennial, Andrew Schachman: Cloudless Sky No. 1 will premiere at Landing Projects. Hosted on the back landing of my private residence, the space provides a low-fi environment for artists to play and test-balloon new ideas.
Project Statement
Cloudless Sky, No.1 explores the dual emotions of cheerfulness and horror.
A clear blue sky is conventionally associated with optimism. When something occurs 'out of the blue' it is an unexpected disruption of an otherwise dependable state of affairs. Meanwhile, computer simulations of climate change suggest that as the Earth's troposphere warms, the clouds may begin to thin, triggering a feedback loop of accelerated warming and destabilization until a new equilibrium forms.
Cloudless Sky, No.1 consists of a concave intense blue canvas, suspended horizontally at the top landing of a stair. Baltic birch structure, flexible plywood, epoxy resin, fluorescent and blue pigment powder, suspension system.