By — An earlier version of this essay was written in May 2011 for a “Pedagogic Notebook” edited by Sitesize (Spain), but was revised in March 2012 for publication in areachicago.org. “Healthy social movements need spaces for learning and experimentation, healthy democracies need wise citizens to make wise decisions about resources and politics, and healthy people need [...]
By — AREA Begins In the mid-spring months of 2005, I started meeting regularly with Jim Duignan, an artist and educator who has been initiating a wide range of collaborative projects under the name of the Stockyard Institute for the last ten years. I had been looking for an opportunity to collaborate with Stockyard for some time, [...]
By — In October 2005, the Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC)* published a study mapping the distribution of major player supermarkets in Chicago, against the racial and economic patterns of the city neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, the neighborhoods with a majority of black and poor residents had few if any major player grocery stores. On the other hand, [...]
By — I’d like to begin this text with a little anecdote. Recently, I spent some time in New York City. Having lived outside the US for some fifteen years now, one of the things you wonder about when you come back—one of the little anxieties—is “what exactly am I gonna eat?” The food system in Europe [...]
By — Daniel Block’s recent study is entitled Where are the Tomatoes? Supermarket Access and LINK Card utilization in the Chicago Area. The geographic study explores the distribution of food markets throughout the city in relation to the population density and number of Illinois link card users and link accepting stores. The study creates useful distinctions between [...]
By — The term “parachuting” is probably familiar to anyone who has ever worked on a community-specific public project. It is a word that public artists and activists alike dread, as it is usually remarked in derision: it poses questions of authenticity, legitimacy, and sincerity, and critiques the artist’s role within, or commitment to, the community for [...]
By — The producers are more than ever thrown back on theory … by virtue of insistent self-criticism. … Following the schematic division of physical and mental labour, they split themselves up into workers and intellectuals. This division cripples the practice which is called for. … The growing opacity of capitalist mass society makes an association between [...]