Courtesy of Nana Camille Yarbrough
“To me, Chicago was music.”
Remember to Praise the Praise Singer
A conversation with Nana Camille Yarbrough
Author: Bea Malsky
If It Bleeds It Leads
Chicago has seen 146 murders so far this year. What would it mean to cover them responsibly?
Zelda Galewsky & Ellie Mejia
Impoverished neighborhoods receive impoverished coverage, cultivating an awareness not of suffering but of danger. To cover only a neighborhood’s crime is to say, subtly but repeatedly, that bad things happen to bad people.
QTIPOC to the Front
The Black and Brown Punk Show Collective builds sound solidarity for queer, trans, and intersex punks of color
Jean Cochrane
“We’re trying to redefine punk as being about survivalism and DIY culture, which are imperative if you’re a marginalized person in this country.”
How to See the City’s Hidden
Having spent her youth homeless, Anne Holcomb is working to help Chicago’s neediest kids
ALLISON TOREM
Anne Holcomb was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1961, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in varying states of homelessness. Continue reading
A Print Gallery
A foldable exhibit of South Side artists
As newsprint devotees, the Weekly staff loves an opportunity to put practice out onto the page. Continue reading
Our Horizontal Memory
A few words with Art Spiegelman
ENNO KAPITZA
Art Spiegelman, author of the comics “Maus” and “In the Shadow of No Towers,” is a master of translating the library of small human behaviors into image and symbol. He freezes moments small and large: a subject caught in the frame before she steps on a banana peel; the cursive practice of a child devolving into idle doodles; a crumbling tower. Last week he came to Chicago for two performances of “Wordless!” at the Logan Center for the Arts. Continue reading
Temporary Living
A rising number of homeless students at CPS reveals a continuing lack of institutional support
In grander days, Tilden Career Community Academy housed an aviation program alongside its academics. When it was built in 1905, the building was intended for 2,400 students; it had three gymnasiums, and its massive footprint took up an entire block in Back of the Yards. Today the building remains the same, but Tilden has an enrollment of only about 340 students, 192 of whom were classified last year as homeless by the city’s Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS) program. Last year saw a total of 18,669 homeless students identified in Chicago Public Schools. This year, that number is on track to rise by over twenty-five percent. Continue reading
Drawing a Line
A comic response to urban violence
COURTESY OF CARLOS MATALLANA
Earlier this year—on May 7, a Tuesday, at 11:04pm—nineteen-year-old Kevin Ambrose was gunned down in a drive-by shooting on his way to meet a friend at the 47th Street Green Line station. That friend, Michael Dye, who had told Kevin he didn’t need an escort from the station through the neighborhood, heard the shots as he stepped off the train. Continue reading
We Show Up with Big Machines
A Q&A with Redmoon Theater
Swings at the concluding summer celebration. BEA MALSKY.
At Redmoon Theater there is little separation between construction and performance; it’s an animal that willingly rolls over and offers up its mechanical underbelly, equal parts absurd and endearing. After a summer of workshops and parades in Chicago parks, Redmoon is preparing for a winter season in its new 57,000-square-foot warehouse in East Pilsen. This is a turning point for the company—Redmoon’s business has been in immense ephemeral events, art interventions that trespass into public spaces and create scenes on a massive scale. This summer’s centerpiece was the Sonic Boom, a giant rolling podium of speakers with a fifteen-foot flamethrower in the back. Past projects have included a lantern procession along the Chicago River and a five-story tall shadow puppet show on the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The new headquarters, nestled by the river in the Cermak Creative Industries District, offers Redmoon, for the first time, a home to stage indoor shows that match the scale of its outdoor work. Continue reading