Please join us for an informal presentation and discussion in conjunction with our five-week Summer Seminar, Breaking Glass, by guest presenters Stephanie Smith and Marshal Brown, who are together the directors of the urbanism, art and culture think tank NEW PROJECTS. The talk will be followed by an open discussion with the seminar participants and visitors.

NEW PROJECTS is an urbanism studio, research center, and exhibition space in Chicago. The 3400 square foot storefront is a new center for instigating, nurturing, and realizing advanced thinking in architecture, urban design and aesthetic culture. The storefront office is located in the former home of the Overton Hygienic Company, an African American cosmetics concern from the 1920's. Other local landmarks include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's IIT campus and the former site of Stateway Gardens, one of Chicago's recently demolished public housing projects.

Stephanie Smith is Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the University of Chicago¹s Smart Museum of Art. Since joining the Smart Museum as Associate Curator in 1999, she has played a central role in establishing the museum¹s reputation as a home for challenging thematic exhibitions that address the complex relationships between contemporary art and larger social issues and for projects that combine rigor, generosity, and play. For her work on projects such as Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (2012); Heartland (2008-2009), and Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art (2005), she has been recognized as one of the most visionary curators working in Chicago. Smith also serves as a founding member of the University's Open Practice Committee and as an editor with the international art journal Afterall.

Marshall Brown is a licensed architect and urban designer in Chicago who creates ambitious, entrepreneurial visions for the future. His recent accomplishments include competing as a finalist in the Navy Pier redevelopment competition, a 2010 MacDowell Fellowship, and serving as the first Cranbrook Saarinen Architecture Fellow. In 2003 he founded the Yards Development Workshop, a studio that set out to hi-jack Frank Gehry’s Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. He also recently founded the urbanism, art and culture think tank NEW PROJECTS in collaboration with Stephanie Smith. He has worked with a diversity of organizations including New York City Council, U.S. Department of Energy, Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, Municipal Art Society of New York, and the Smithsonian Institute. Brown is also an Assistant Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. He previously taught at the University of Cincinnati and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education.  Brown has lectured at the Chicago Humanities Festival, University of Michigan, Northeastern University, and Cranbrook. His projects and essays have appeared in several books and journals, including Architectural Record, The New York Daily News, The Believer, and New Directions in Sustainable Design. His practice, Marshall Brown Projects, Inc. is currently working on several projects in Chicago, including the Navy Pier redevelopment with James Corner Field Operations, a master plan for the neighborhood of Washington Park, and scenario planning for the University of Chicago Smart Museum of Art.

James Goggin, Passport Photo Colour Test, Rainbo Club, Chicago, November 30, 2011

Goggin will explore the evolving definition of and possibilities for identity in graphic design, from an ongoing questioning of cultural identity since his peripatetic childhood, to a current interest in institutional identity with his work in progress at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. An argument for identity as a critical and speculative platform will be made with illustrated case studies in contemporary art and architecture from his design practice in the UK and the Netherlands, alongside current design and publishing at MCA Chicago and a recent exhibition project in France involving an identity which questions the very need for identities.

James Goggin founded graphic design studio Practise in 1999 upon graduation from London’s Royal College of Art. After 10 years in London, the studio moved to Arnhem, the Netherlands, where he combined commissioned projects with teaching at postgraduate design school Werkplaats Typografie, alongside monthly lecturing in history and theory at ECAL (University of Art and Design Lausanne), Switzerland. In August 2010, James took up the Director of Design, Publishing, and New Media position at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where he now lives and works.

Previous clients include Camden Arts Centre, David Kohn Architects, Frieze, Phaidon, Tate Modern, Transport for London, and Victoria & Albert Museum. James lectures, runs workshops, and is a visiting critic at various art institutions and design schools in Europe, Australasia, and the United States, and regularly writes for international publications and journals. Typefaces designed by James are distributed by Swiss type foundry Lineto.

For more information on the exhibition, Zak Kyes Working With..., click here.

Los Angeles musician Joseph Hammer returns to Lampo this month in a follow up to his 2007 performance of “Road Less Traveled.” Hammer (b. 1959, Hollywood, CA) has performed widely and contributed to the Los Angeles underground music community since the early 1980s.  Notably, Hammer participated in the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), a loose collective of LA-based experimental musicians active through the 1970s and 1980s, and co-founded groups Points of Friction, Dinosaurs with Horns, and the trio Solid Eye.  His practice draws on the complexities of the process of listening and playing, using music as it influences our notions of time, memory and intimacy as the basis for improvisation and abstraction.

Wearing white cotton gloves, Hammer physically manipulates computerized sources that have been abstracted as tape loops on vintage magnetic audio gear, a high fidelity, full-track mono analog tape recorder serving as his primary instrument. He uses a series of real-time mechanical interventions to transform and layer the source material, physically manipulating the degree of exposure of the tape loops and creating varying strata of old and new information on the loop of magnetic tape.

For this Lampo performance, the artist will premiere “Dynasty III,” the latest installment in his “Dynasty Suite” series, drawing widely-collaged source material from songs that make the artist cry.  Come for the gorgeous plunderphonics; stay for a megadose of the lachrymose.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art and intermedia projects.

Radim Peško, “Dear Sir, Dear Madam,” typeface, 2011.

'Zak Kyes Working With…' will open with a public reception June 14, 2012. Please join us for a talk by Zak Kyes at 5:30PM, followed by an opening reception and the world premiere book launch of the exhibition catalog published by Sternberg Press from 6-8PM.

For more information on the exhibition, Zak Kyes Working With..., click here.

Photo: Giovanni de Angellis

In his Lampo debut, John Wiese will present three new works — a quad diffusion of "Magical Crystal Blah," an all-new iteration of "Battery Instruments," and a concrète improvisation. Expect an immersive sonic experience, shaped by John's distinctive and precise use of stereo panning.

John Wiese (b. 1977, Ft. Leavenworth, KS) works primarily in recorded and performed sound with a focus on installation and multi-channel diffusions, as well as scoring for large ensembles. Wiese is involved in multiple ongoing projects including the concrète grindcore band Sissy Spacek, and collaborations with Evan Parker, C. Spencer Yeh, Aaron Dilloway, Kevin Drumm, Lasse Marhaug, and others. In 2011 he released his 100th 7-inch record, celebrated with a retrospective exhibit and monograph. Many of these recordings were published on his Helicopter label, and on more than 50 independent labels from around the world. Wiese has toured extensively and has appeared at several leading international festivals. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art and intermedia projects.

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