Bicycles and the Arts -- a Chicago Calling Arts Festival event

You are invited to attend Bicycles and the Arts, a multidisciplinary event that happens during the Fifth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival and Chicago Artists Month. Bicycles and the Arts creatively explores connections between these two vital elements of culture and society --

• Wheels on the Ground and in the Sky, a group exhibition with paintings, sculptures, and videos -- Andrew DelaRosa, Janina Ciezadlo, John Bambino, Alpha Bruton, Regin Ingloria, Matt Weber, and Catie Olson’s Pigeon-toed About Homage (inspired by Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York);

• John Greenfield reads from his new book Bars Across America: Drinking and Biking from Coast to Coast;

• Chicago Underground Library presents a Pop Up Library;

• a musical ensemble performs -- Derek Repsch (electronics), Andrew Royal (violin), Robin Boudreaux (tenor saxophone), Dan Godston (trumpet), Alex Wing (guitar), and Jimmy Bennington (drums) -- including a telematic performance with an ensemble in Detroit and an homage to Frank Zappa’s 1963 appearance on The Steve Allen Show (when Zappa taught Allen how to play a bicycle and the Steve Allen Orchestra performed with the musical bicycles);

• conversations with bicycle groups in other communities across the U.S. via skype, including Spearfish Bike Cooperative (Spearfish, SD) and the New Orleans Community Bike Project;

• images and sounds of projects by U.S. and international artists and organizations will be shown, including those by Ultra Grøn (Copenhagen), Emeka Ogboh (Lagos, Nigeria), and Cay Brøndum (Copenhagen).

“Bicycles and the Arts” involves partnerships with the Active Transportation Alliance, Copenhagen Cyclery, Working Bikes Cooperative, and the League of Illinois Bicyclists. We would also like to thank the Copenhagen Center for Traffic for their help. $7 suggested donation, all ages and open to the public.

Chicago Calling is organized by the Borderbend Arts Collective, a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to promote the arts, to create opportunities for artists to explore new directions in and between art forms, and to engage the community. Annual Borderbend projects include Chicago Calling and the Mingus Awareness Project. Other organizations partner with Borderbend to enrich and extend the reach of its project, such as the Experimental Piano Series, which is co-produced by the Chicago Composers Forum and Borderbend, in partnership with the PianoForte Foundation.

During the Fifth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival, Chicago-based artists collaborate with artists in other locations -- both here in the U.S. and abroad. These collaborations involve a range of art forms -- including music, dance, film, literature, and intermedia -- and they are prepared or improvised. Some Chicago Calling events involve live feeds between Chicago and other locations. 2010 Chicago Calling events include “Bicycles and the Arts” at Happy Dog Gallery, “Translations 2010” at the Reconstruction Room, “Seda Röder / Burton Greene - Harrison Bankhead Duo Concert” at Curtiss Hall, “Temperatures and Shapes / Arctic Live” at Elastic Sound & Vision Gallery, “I Remember Fred” at the Velvet Lounge, “Chicago Calling, Waiting for the Bus” at Café Ballou, “Two Way Tarot Mirrors” at Myopic Books, “My Favorite Banned Books Abecedarian Read-Out” at the Logan Square Library, “Aural Architecture” at WNUR, and other events.