Wednesday 8.15
How We Grow Self-Education and Urban Farming Gathering (6-8pm)
w/ Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester and Nicholas Wisniewski (Visiting Artists from Baltimore)

From the artists: “We will prepare a powerpoint slide show of the urban farming project we are working on in Baltimore which can serve as a point of departure for a conversation on many issues, from self-education and urban farming to land reclamation and community-based urban planning.”�
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Saturday 8.18
How We Sound Audio Workshop (11am-1pm)
w/ Jesse Seay

Favorite Chicago Sounds (2006-2007) is a collaborative web-based project designed to showcase unique audio portraits of Chicago and mirror what Chicagoans think about their city's soundscape. Favorite Chicago Sounds (FCS) will explore the Hyde Park community as a site for audio research and will identify sites for recording and expanding the scope of this ongoing project. The FCS web site invites visitors to answer a short questionnaire about their favorite sounds of the city. Once they've submitted a response, visitors gain access to the general catalog of submissions. Recordists then record selected sounds from the catalog, which are posted online in MP3 format and downloadable for free. FCS is a project of Experimental Sound Studio and operates in partnership with Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ), who auditions FCS-collected sounds for broadcast as part of their ongoing Sonic Soundscapes project.
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Saturday 8.18
How We Listen (1-3pm)
w/ Lou Mallozzi and Christina Kubisch (Visiting Artist from Germany)

How We Listen will pair two important and very active audio artists, Lou Mallozzi and Christina Kubisch. Both will discuss their works—from projects performed throughout the world—and provide insights to sound ideas, the nature of their work and to their vast audio networks.

Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 for the production and promotion of innovative approaches to the sonic arts. The mission of ESS is to make audio technology accessible and affordable as well as to encourage the creative process. Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as magnetic induction to realize her installations. Since 1986 she has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound. Her work displays an artistic development which is often described as the “synthesis of arts”—the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other. Lou Mallozzi is Director of Experimental Sound Studio, responsible for general administration, fundraising, and programming. Lou co-founded ESS in 1986 with several artists and administrators, and was Associate Director until 1999. During that time, he established the public access recording facility at ESS. In addition, he was responsible for coordinating organizational collaborations and artists' projects, including co-produced performances and exhibitions with local galleries and cultural institutions, visiting artist projects with artists from the US and Europe, and the city wide Chicago Soundscape Project in 1996. Lou is an educator and an active audio artist.
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Wednesday 8.22
How We Use Vacant Spaces (6-8pm)
Screening of Daniel Kunle and Holger Lauinger's Film
Not Anymore / Not Yet

Not Anymore / Not Yet reflects on the possibilities of abandoned city spaces. The film presents a new generation of cultural interventions in abandoned spaces: unconventional players, projects, and visions dealing with the reactivation of “urbanness” in very different sites. What could abandoned spaces communicate to the city dweller? Daniel Kunle studied experimental film at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he lives and works as a film director, cinematographer, and editor. Holger Lauinger works as an independent journalist in the field of urban and regional planning.
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Saturday 8.25
How We Make Educational Posters (11am-1pm)
w/ Watie White

Through the eyes of portraiture (which finds part of its educational background in the work of Northwestern psychologist Dan McAdams' work that graphs personal life narratives), Watie White represents a more reasonable plan for exploring narratives as strategies for confronting realities. White's work exhibits a larger vision than indexing learned spaces and has enabled a pedagogical pursuit through his work that attracts some needed attention to the city. Attention that should be drawn by teachers, youth, and artists to see how work can direct activity for change and illuminate better questions of where we are going, what determines a city and what kind of space do we occupy.
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Saturday 8.25
How We Teach (1-3pm)
w/ Various Artists, Activists and Educators

An experimental forum about the act of teaching. Get in touch with factory07 (at) gmail.com to get involved. (More details TBA.)
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Wednesday 8.29
How We Felt (6-8pm)
w/ Feel Tank Chicago

In the Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed, Feel Tank Chicago and collaborators felt the feel and walked the walk—and seethed the seethe, and balked the balk. Now we sigh the sigh. Members of Feel Tank Chicago discuss how Other People's Baggage Made Us Feel (and vice versa) in a report back from this summer's Pathogeographies exhibition. We'll raise issues of collaboration, funding, intensity, opacity, and publics. What does it mean to take and make the temperature of the Body Politic? What do we know and feel that we didn't before we started? Join in and share your feelings, experiences, critiques, and new directions. (http://www.feeltankchicago.net/)
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Saturday 9.1
How We Think Walking Tour (Meet outside HPAC at 11am)

The philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) fought for “civil and academic freedom, founded the Progressive School movement.” A resident of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, Dewey published one of his most important works of educational theory, How We Think, in 1910. The study deals primarily with the concept of thought training, and its place in school environments. Today we will have a walking presentation and discussion about Dewey's impact on the field of education and visit some important sites in the neighborhood where he lived and worked. Contact factory07 (at) gmail.com if you know a lot about Dewey and would like to help lead the tour.
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Saturday 9.1
How We Brew/Bake/Mead Etc Cottage Expo (1pm)
at Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone, near the corner of 61st and Dorchester in Woodlawn/Hyde Park).

Today we will explore the world of do-it-yourself food production with Material Exchange and Monk Parakeet Group at Experimental Station. There will be a several hour-long workshops on making your own beer and on baking bread. Space is limited (24 spaces total, 8 in each workshop) so PLEASE (you must) reserve a place by contacting info (at) material-exchange.org
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Saturday 9.5
How We Celebrate People's History (6-8pm)
w/ Josh MacPhee of JustSeeds

The Celebrate People's History poster series is an on-going project producing posters that focus around important moments in “people's history.” These are events, groups, and individuals that we should celebrate because of their importance in the struggle for social justice and freedom, but are instead buried or erased by dominant history. Posters celebrate important acts of resistance, those who fought tirelessly for justice and truth, and the days on which we can claim victories for the forces of freedom. These posters are posted publicly (i.e. wheatpasted on the street, put up in peoples' homes and storefront windows, and used in classrooms) in an attempt to help generate a discussion about our radical past, a discussion that is vital in preparing us to create a radical future. The project has also built a loose network of artists interested in creating radical public art as well as showcased the work of lesser known artists that want to create culture that is functional, carries a social message, and doesn't get buried at the bottom of the heap of the mainstream art world.

Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator and activist currently living in Troy, NY. His work often revolves around themes of radical politics, privatization and public space. His second book Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (AK Press, co-edited with Erik Reuland) was just published. He also organizes the Celebrate People's History poster series and is part of the political art collective (Justseeds.org).
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Saturday 9.5
How We Make a Pedagogical Sketchbook (6-8pm)
w/ Stockyard Institute

The Pedagogical Sketchbook began as an obsessive compilation of ideas and lessons, that stood in stark contrast to the typical offerings most adolescents were exposed to in their school art space. The project which now includes an audio curriculum is growing as artists, thinkers, map makers, socialites, ex students, construction workers, priests, addicts and ideologues (to name only few) have joined in making contributions to what will be presented as a new high school art textbook. The project will be published on demand and developed as an online resource. One copy of the project will be sent to every high school art department in Illinois. factory07 (at) gmail.com

Jim Duignan is an artist, educator and activist and drives the collaborative artist project Stockyard Institute (http://www.stockyardinstitute.org). Duignan directs Visual Arts Education at DePaul University in Chicago and works as an advisor to AREA Chicago: Art, Research, Education & Activism.
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Saturday 9.8
How We Build: Education and the Built Environment (1-3pm)

Come discuss the state of architecture/design education. Where has it been and where is it going? We often discuss the ways in which the built physical environment affects us, but how does it get built in the first place? What is the relationship between architecture education and the built environment? How does what gets taught to children, adults and professionals impact the designed world? And how can we rethink it? To get involved in the discussion contact Charles Vinz charles.vinz (at) gmail.com or just show up!
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Wednesday 9.12
How We Listen (6-8pm)
w/ Vocalo.org Producers

How We Listen will be a discussion with producers from the new Vocalo radio project, which aims make “community-created media” a major part of the mix on what will be a 50,000-watt broadcast. The project, by Chicago Public Radio, is starting out broadcasting this summer online at www.vocalo.org and in Northwest Indiana ( 89.5 FM). By late fall Vocalo will be on the air in Chicagoland and we thought that we should hold an event to hear what their plans are and get local media makers and concerned citizens together to discuss ideas and proposals for content on the radio project. Vocalo is unique in the world of radio because it offers greater potential for users to guide and produce content that will be aired on the radio. The station will be free form like the best college and experimental radio, but will have potentially greater reach and no ties to a university. We are excited to welcome Vocalo into the local media landscape and believe their presence is a promising addition. Come check them out for yourself.
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Saturday 9.15
How We Engage (11am-1pm)
w/ Anne Elizabeth Moore

How do we voice dissent in an age when we know few listen? On what topics do we feel comfortable or expert enough to raise our voices? Are there ways to work collectively without sacrificing autonomy? In what media do we speak, and to what audience do we reach out? For 22 years, Anne Elizabeth Moore has been exploring these questions through the combination of printing, writing, and radical modes of distribution. These have included zine-making, flyering, newspaper appropriation, questionnaires, and participatory street comics, to name just a few. Come explore the different ways you might actively engage in dissent, even if you are kind of shy, don't think you know how to spell, or don't have anything to say right now: it's always good to practice for later! Anne Elizabeth Moore lives in Chicago, where her work has been collected by art museums, gotten her permanently banned from a retail shopping establishment, and been called “Fun” by the business magazine FASTCOMPANY. She is unsure how she feels about any of this.
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Saturday 9.15
How We Make a “Disorientation Guide” to Our University (1-3pm)
w/ Local University Activists

In recent years many students and professors have turned their research interests towards the university itself. They have considered how to translate the activism and critique that is generally encouraged and supported when projected outward on the world, into a more inward practice that identifies the particular political economy of today's university system. What role and responsibilities do universities have in the urban spaces they inhabit, in the knowledge economies they facilitate, in the concepts about which they produce research, and the contracts they receive and provide? Today we will work with students from several local universities, including Northwestern and the University of Chicago, to talk about one of the works in the Pedagogical Factory exhibit which displays such self-critical research about the US academic system in the form of a “Disorientation Guide” to UNC-Chapel Hill. We will use this work as a starting point to discuss the possibilities of creating similar initiatives in Chicago academic contexts. Get in touch with factory07 (at) gmail.com if you are interested in participating.
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Wednesday 9.19
How We Fund (6-8pm)
w/ Kristen Cox of Fire This Time Fund and guests

In recent years there has been increased scrutiny and critique of the funding structures within which cultural and political work in this country are produced. This gathering will look at some alternatives to foundation funding and the conventional non-profit organization model and highlight some of the work that is going on locally to get money and resources into the hands of groups and initiatives that are doing vital and important work in the city. The event will be organized by Kristen Cox of the Fire This Time Fund (a two-year-old giving circle that strives to give money to radical cultural initiatives in Chicago). Other invited presenters will share their own experiences with experimental funding efforts with the hope that the conversation will help identify new directions, strategy and possible alliances to make our work more meaningful, grounded and sustainable. Email kristengcox (at) gmail.com to get involved.
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Saturday 9.22
How We use AREA Chicago as a pedagogical experiment and also move towards an independent political and cultural education network in Chicago (1-3pm)

In this final event of the series we will reflect on the work and conversations of the Pedagogical Factory Exhibit and the programs of the How We Learn Series. We will look towards the upcoming “How We Learn” Issue (#5) of AREA Chicago and make plans for using the project in new and different ways as a freely distributed curriculum about critical culture in Chicago. Come and participate in the discussion and perhaps we will all build a school together. Topics to be discussed might include: Militant research, public curricula, the limits of popular education, the drawbacks of critical pedagogy; and the school versus the street, the street versus the art gallery, the page versus the screen, and why binary relationships have gotten us down. A short presentation about the past/present/future of AREA Chicago will be followed by group discussion and brainstorming. Please come with the best old ideas or the new fresh ideas.
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