Announcing: THE PEOPLE’S BID BOOK Call for Projects/Proposals

July 2, 2009

TPBBMockUpSM

The People’s Bid Book
Final Submissions Due: October 2
Proposals being accepted now!
Submit via email: artshowheckyeah@gmail.com

The People’s Bid Book will consist of completed projects and/or proposals that respond in some way to giant sports mega-events or aspects of their impact on urban life. This can include direct alternative proposals to the hosting of such events in certain cities; suggestions for funding alternatives in the social service sector, to the schools system, or involving public works; or sustainable game and sport facilities in keeping with neighborhood needs.

The People’s Bid Book is a creative response to the International Olympic Committee’s host city applicant bid book process, a series of publications that present increasingly detailed plans for urban redevelopment around the two-week sports festival known as the Olympics. Official bid books are created by the not-for-profit organizations often partially on the payroll of the IOC itself (via their PR firm) and working under the mission to bring the games to the cities they represent. Rarely, however, do host city organizations consist primarily of city residents, and thus their land-use visions often run counter to local needs, concerns, and interests. The People’s Bid Book returns the act of envisioning their town’s future to city residents.

Each project must be submitted in the form of a proposal. The proposal should be broken into relevant sections. These sections may, but do not need to include: a budget, architectural plans, celebrity endorsements, environmental impact statements, a community feedback section, accurate marketing budget, true-cost analysis, or legacy upkeep plans. Each proposal should include as many images or diagrammatic schema as would be required to be comprehensible to readers of all age levels. If the project describes an event that has already taken place, photographs from the event should be included, but a written description of the project broken into relevant sections must accompany the images. Please refer to the Olympic bid book of your favorite town for further information.

You are welcome to use your proposal to respond to or suggest alternatives uses or commemorations for individual specific and quantifiable aspects of an Olympic or other mega sports event bid, including but not limited to: The proposed $398 million Chicago Park District Washington Park Olympic Stadium; the tens of thousands of trees cut down and mountainsides blasted for Olympic venues in the Callaghan Valley (near Whistler) and the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion, both in preparation for the Vancouver 2010 Games; the $50 to $100 million it is estimated that the Chicago bid process will cost the city during a citywide budget crises; the ten women suing the Ski-Jumping Team in advance of the 2010 Games for gender-based discrimination; the 2 million individuals who have lost homes in the past 20 years due to displacement caused by the Olympic Games; the 300 student protestors killed prior to the opening of the Olympic Games in Mexico City, 1968; uses for the 90,000-seat Beijing Olympic stadium that has remained empty since the 2008 games ended 10 months ago.

The People’s Bid Book may take on aspects of other mega sports events, such as the FIFA World Cup or the SEA Games in Asia. It may also respond, generally, to all mega sports events. There is no word-count limit to submissions. Individuals with questions about submissions or proposals are advised to get in touch well in advance of the October 2 submission date (also the IOC’s final host-city announcement date for the 2016 Games). The People’s Bid Book will be released in advance of the Opening Day Ceremonies of the Vancouver Games on February 12, 2010. There is at this time no guaranteed payment for submissions.

Please email artshowheckyeah@gmail.com with further questions.


You’ve Got Pride

June 29, 2009

Fwd_ Say It Loud and Wear It Proud!

For sure the original Stonewall rioters had equal access to rainbow-colored consumer options in mind when they started fighting back against New York police brutality 40 years ago, so in honor of yesterday’s Pride Parade I post this image Liz Mason sent along, via the hipstore everyone loves to hate, Hot Topic. Everyone knows that pride and merch go hand in hand! Plus they are the same as demanding civil rights, so extra awesome.


Liz Mason’s “Ballot for The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness”

June 27, 2009

From Liz Mason’s Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements photoset, where it is also possible to find pictures of me from later in the evening, although in a slightly more inebriated state.


Thriller

June 26, 2009

In homage to, as Emily called him, “the misunderstook freak geniuos who inspired us all”:


Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements

June 25, 2009

Sixteen years in the works—most of it in the last few weeks—my exhibition at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts, Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements, has finally opened. Really great support for the show came in from pals at The Groundswell Blog, Time Out ChicagoGapers Block, and the Women’s Media Group.

Here are a few pix:

IMG_4917IMG_4924IMG_4879IMG_4889


Monday Night Peace Party

June 6, 2009

Sports Fans,

The Summer Unlympic Games are almost upon us—and the 2016 Games October 2 host city decision right behind. So Monday night at Danny’s we’re hosting a Peace Party, so we’d like for you to come out and play some drinking games of your own, while we start to plan our summer program. (Not a bad time to send along interested sponsors for the early August games either, so if you know any southside sopcial justice orgs who have a stake in the host city decision and want to work with us to highlight them, do send along!)

Summer 2009 Unlympiad Peace Party
Monday June 8, 2009
9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Danny’s Tavern 1951 W. Dickens

Danny’s is the official sponsor of the Summer 2009 Drinking Games.


[chirp, chirp]

June 3, 2009

Fans of Democracy Guest List may be wondering about now why none of our editorial staff has been responding to the constant queries, endless paypal donations, and cheerful missives from misspellin’ fans, and I can tell you the answer to that question that you so politely asked. Which is: We are studying, currently, at the Anhoek School in Marfa Texas, where we are learning, I kid you not: about Elizabeth Taylor being a bitch during the filming of Giant; whatup with the racism in the city cemetery, Marfa?; Donald Judd has a lot of foundations; Liz had to give her cat up but she thinks she did the right thing; hole digging; Kozy Coach era 1951; permaculture; this kitten on my lap right now; Pronghorn antelope cuteness; Jean-Luc Nancy; pirate radio; homeland security; border patrol; the history of standardized time; death with and without grief; hat importance.

Today I took extra credit in taking an outside bath in a Texas hailstorm, tonight I study salad.

The crickets, by the way, aren’t the silence of this blog so much as deafening noise I am hearing right now, because I am typing this out in the middle of a massive field.


Please promise not to ask why

May 27, 2009

HBSS

My Providence friend Susan Sakash’s birthday party last weekend was celebrated by a plethora of individuals coming together with instruments and forming temporary bands and also not bands in celebration of Susan Sakashness. Of course, I wanted to participate, but do not have even a temporary not band. Nor was I in Providence. So in collaboration with some neighborhood pals and others down at the Backstory Cafe one day, my cat created this ridiculous (and, don’t tell her I said this, stupid) karaoke video, and here you can watch people in Providence singing along to it. If for whatever reason you want to. (Also available, the several other one-night-only bands that came together that night, commemorated exclusively in this video and on the poster shown above.)

Interested parties can purchase posters, made by Jay Zehngebot and Susan Sakash and Andrew Oesch here. Funds go to support the SusANNE Marfa Fund, which covers our tuition and Airstream Trailer rental for two weeks while we attend the Anhoek School in Marfa Texas, an experimental women’s graduate program.


Love advice from Cambodia

May 22, 2009

Rather than argue with a logic that’s been around for centuries, I thought I’d better repost this excellent chain letter from my Cambodian friends. Close readers of this blog and Camb(l)o(g)dia will note strains of the Chbap Srei, and the most excellent threats that pepper this otherwise romantic missive:

 

When a GIRL is quiet . . . millions of things are running in her mind.

عندما تكون البنت هادئه..فأن ملايين من الأفكار تدور في مخيلتها

 

When a GIRL is not arguing . . . she is thinking deeply.

البنت اذا لم تعارض فهي تفكر بعمق

 

When a GIRL looks at u with eyes full of questions … she is wondering how long you will be around.

عندما تنظر اليك الفتاة بعيون مليئه بالأسئله فهي تتساءل..كم من الوقت ستظل الى جانبها

Read the rest of this entry »


Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness call for nominations

May 22, 2009

The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness, which I usually just give myself, but not always, and not this year, now has an official online nomination site.

Please nominate someone today! Online nominations will close on August 20, 2009, but write-in ballots will be accepted throughout the run of the exhibition, Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements.

Unfortunately, you may not vote online. Mostly because voting technology may mean I have less chance of winning, but also because voting online is less funny. You may electioneer online, but you must keep your emails at least 15 feet from our voting area. Which by the way is generously sponsored by the official Cook County Board of Elections. No, that’s not a joke.