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Stages, Sights & Sounds 2012
We all know that Chicago is an international city. From its diverse neighborhoods to the wealth of world-class cultural programming, I can’t think of a better home for Stages, Sights & Sounds, an international performing arts festival for families and theatregoers of any age. The work we showcase pushes the boundaries of traditional theatre and performance. Work for young audiences should push boundaries; after all, isn’t that what childhood is about?  This year’s festival is our thirteenth... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, February 06 by Mary Kate Barley-Jenkins
The Extra-Dimensional Being: Marina Abramovic
Introducing Marina Abramovic    Marina Abramovic In the Central Australian desert, Marina sat for very long periods of time in extreme heat, doing nothing  Marina … Lived in a car for five years Designed menus for a French restaurant Painted walls at technical fairs Wore wooden shoes Knitted all her pullovers herself Milked goats in the mountains in exchange for food Once a year, for five years, she let 5... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, January 13 by Marko Zivkovic
Happy Birthday to Marina Abramović and Ulay
Thirty-two years ago today, the performance artists Marina Abramović and Ulay celebrated their shared birthday by creating a beautiful and little-known performance work, Communist Body / Fascist Body. This work is one of the centerpieces of Feast, so today is the perfect moment to introduce it to you.(It's also a great moment to mention that we're partnering with the Chicago Humanities Festival to bring Marina in to give a lecture on February 16, 2012. She's one of the most brilliant -- and... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, December 19 by Stephanie Smith
And the winners are . . .
We had a ball during the fall Festival with A Secret Poem. It was wonderful to see many of you seeking out clues and stickers at various Festival events. One of the many high points was hearing Charles Bernstein read “This Poem is in Finish,” the poem he wrote especially for this game, at his CHF program (at approx. minute 30). While we saw many of you playing, only a handful of people submitted completed poems. Thanks to all that participated, at every level. Winners... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, December 12 by Julia Mayer
A Secret Poem Revealed!
Big thanks to everyone that played "A Secret Poem." It was wonderful to see so many of you with your game cards seeking out clues and sharing answers during the Festival. Herewith the secret is revealed:   This Poem Is in Finishtoggle here for translationWhile I remain in English, either stranded orAs one drunken and wheeled to a paddyWagon. There was a time I drank blueberryWine but that was long ago and my powersOf recollection are still too strong to... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, November 22 by Julia Mayer
Game Clues Revealed: It's Not Too Late to Play!!
We know a lot of you love to do crossword puzzles. And we know that many of you were aware that during the Festival there was a CHF game afoot. Well, that game, "A Secret Poem," is very much like a crossword puzzle. During the course of the Festival, there were a lot of clues to hunt down and from the feedback you've given us, we think we might have made it a little too hard to find them all. So, we want to help. It was never our intent to make the game too hard to play. (Next... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, November 15 by Julia Mayer
First Week in November Wrap-Up
As I was sitting in the Chicago History Museum's on Saturday, waiting for Michael Taussig's talk, Beauty and the Beast: The Monstrous Side of Plastic Surgery to begin, I realized that one small thing I'm really loving about the festival is the opportunity to see all the different theater spaces I never knew about.  From University of Chicago's Victorian Mandel Hall to the Francis W. Parker school's ultramodern auditorium, each space has a character of its own. I've been reminded over and over of... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, November 07 by Kate Harding
Spudnik Press: Chicago's Community Print Shop
When I listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music on my iPod, I can hear the vinyl crackle underneath Chubby Parker’s frolicking King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O —one era’s technology audible in this one. Harry Smith, an eccentric and bohemian, was the man behind this unprecedented compilation of early American music. Smith, who was primarily bi-coastal with stints in New York’s Lower East Side and the West coast, also found himself for a time in Boulder, Colorado. A friend of the poet... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, November 07 by Corrina Lesser
The Long Tale of Israel's Wars
Rachel S. Harris is assistant professor of comparative literature and Jewish studies at the University of Illinois. She will interview  David Grossman on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 10 am at Thorne Auditorium. David Grossman A message arrives only when someone receives it. Ora, terrified of the message that might come, flees her home setting out on a long hike across Israel. This is the premise behind David Grossman’s new novel To the End of the Land. The... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, November 01 by Rachel S. Harris
Deliciousness Abounds: A Brief Guide to Festival Dining near the UIC Forum
Kelsey You probably know by now that the Chicago Humanities Festival is pretty darn great at delivering engaging, thought-provoking programs. But you might not know that we’re also extremely talented in another area – I’m talking about eating. Yes, we tend to demolish in short order any delicious food that makes its way into our office. Leftovers from a lunch meeting at La Madia won’t last more than a minute, and there are at least three people on staff whose baked goods rival any... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, October 28 by Kelsey Rotwein
Kate Harding's Hyde Park Adventure
The fourth annual Hyde Park day was an abject failure in terms of my overachiever's schedule (act surprised), but nevertheless one of the best days I've had in a long time. Since my husband had to take the puppy to obedience class in the car, I made my way to the University of Chicago via public transportation, which took about 90 minutes from my home in Rogers Park. Unfortunately, I had only budgeted slightly more than an hour for the trip, so I missed the presentation on... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 25 by Kate Harding
What Have We Achieved?
Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt. She publishes a weekly column tackling local political and social issues.This column first appeared in the online edition of Daily News Egypt on September 23, 2011 and appears here courtesy of Rania Al Malky. It’s been nine months to the day since a group of virtual activists made the final tweaks to a planned January 25 protest, a date that will be forever be etched in the memory of this nation. We all know what... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, October 21 by Rania Al Malky
Rap is an Art and I’m like Picasso
Dana Horst works for nonprofits, writes things, and turns the bass up. “Even if it’s not laid out in perfect sentences – is any rap? – you’d have to be an idiot to not at least grasp a few things from these songs, or have had no interest in pulling anything from them in the first place.” -Aesop Rock Common “One Day It’ll All Make Sense”, Common says, in his new autobiography,  and between that, the forthcoming album The Dreamer, The Believer, his afterword on The Anthology of Rap (edited, in... Continue Reading >>
Posted Thursday, October 20 by Dana Horst
Puppies, Lies, and Digital Footprints: Day One
Two weeks ago, my husband, Al, and I brought home a puppy. Important background information: three weeks ago, Al and I did not want anything to do with a puppy. After putting our sweet, old, one-eyed pug/corgi cross, Solomon, to sleep, we planned to adopt another adult mutt. But someone didn't filter his Petfinder.com search to exclude younger dogs, so we soon learned that there were 11-week-old pug/corgi puppies available at a suburban shelter—including one who looked like, as Al put it when he... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, October 17 by Kate Harding
Big 10 Pep Rally!
You might be surprised to know that football and the humanities go together like coffee and cream.  The Big 10 Conference, formed more than 115 years ago, (now actually comprised of twelve teams) is known as much for its academic prowess as it is for its athletic accomplishments. It was with this in mind that Festival Artistic Director, Matti Bunzl, created the Big 10 initiative for techlknowledgē. We’ve combed the Big 10 universities for the people you’ve never heard of who... Continue Reading >>
Posted Wednesday, October 12 by Mary Kate Barley-Jenkins
Digital Certainties
Taylor Hokanson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago. Computers are dumb.  Though they have the ability to store, process and export massive amounts of data, they are fundamentally incapable of distilling meaning from this material.  A computer can pretend to offer insight, but one must never forget that this synthesis is illusory, an echo of the human who taught the device how to operate. Here’s the secret to understanding computing: ... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 11 by Taylor Hokanson
Understanding Origins
Based at the University of Michigan, Gordon Kane is a professor of physics and in the School of Art & Design and is Director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics. He collaborated with Liz Lerman on "The Matter of Origins."  In addition to our co-presentation of "The Matter of Origins" with the MCA, CHF presents Kane and Lerman in conversation discussing the intersection of art and science. In recent decades age-old questions such as the origin of our universe, and of... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 11 by Gordon Kane
Kate Harding's Fall Festival Preview
"I like your ambition, Kate!" That was a Chicago Humanities Festival employee's response after seeing a homemade calendar of events I plan to attend: 29 of them, in all, bookended (ha!) by William Gibson in Evanston on October 16 and Umberto Eco downtown on November 13. The fantastic perk of being a guest blogger is an all-access pass to the festival, and I intend to make the most of it—even if I did clearly hear a quiet "Good luck with that, sport" underlying the comment... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 04 by Kate Harding
David Carr and the Future of Journalism
Clara Jeffery is the coeditor of Mother Jones magazine. Flashback, mid ’90s, perhaps a week after I first met David Carr. The occasion was David giving reporters and editors at Washington City Paper, the alt weekly where I worked and where he’d just become the boss, a little speech. My memory of it is vague: part introduction, part pep talk, part acknowledgement that he had a steep learning curve to grok a city where most of us had grown up and all of us had put in some serious time... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, September 30 by Clara Jeffrey
On the Poetics of Claudia Rankine
A note from Corrina Lesser, CHF Senior Program Manager:Naturally, I’m biased when it comes to believing how important and influential CHF’s presenters are in the worlds – be it academic or artistic – that they inhabit. I’ll say that very few things bring me such professional satisfaction, in this particular case, as being able to present a writer who truly inspires awe and reverence in the creative lives of the greater artistic community. Time and again when I’ve mentioned that poet and essayist... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, September 27 by Elizabeth Metzger Sampson
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