Call for biology zines, comics, etc!

ATTENTION makers of biologically-related, distributable projects!
Artist/Zinestress Christa Donner and Biologist Andrew Yang are curating an art exhibition called "Biological Agents" at Chicago's Gallery 400 for Fall 2008.

Personal and social agency is as much a matter of access to information and resources as it is about decision-making. For this reason, one important component to the Biological Agents exhibition is the Knowledge Virus Research Station, an area in the gallery designed to seed a positive epidemic of information through artist-made resources made available for public dissemination. This will include comfortable seating around shelves for zines, minicomics, and brochures, DVDs, and an internet kiosk linked to sites focusing on various biological and educational initiatives as well as information on biological topics from a variety of perspectives.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:
Our call for entries includes Small-press zines, Brochures, Minicomics, Audio CDs, DVDs, Podcasts, View Master Reels, Maps, Interactive Web Projects, Guides, and any other medium that is small, reproducible, and easily distributable. We seek projects that do any (or all) of the following:

• share biological knowledge with non-specialist audiences (i.e. the general public) in interesting, accessible ways.

• engage directly with public communities, environments, and/or other species, giving them a way to exercise their agency as active biological participants.

• creatively disseminate information about biological issues from a range of perspectives, both factual and fictionalized.

We welcome single or multiple copies of publications and other physical media relating to this theme. Multiples will be distributed FREE of charge to visitors. No publications or information will be for sale during the exhibition, though you may include information about how visitors can purchase work elsewhere.

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: is August 1st, 2008

Physical submissions may be mailed to:
C. Donner Attn: Knowledge Virus PO Box 6571 Chicago, IL 60680-6571
Please include contact information and self-addressed, stamped packaging for any materials you wish to have returned to you.

Digital or web-based materials may be e-mailed to ayang (at) saic.edu and/or cdonne1 (at) uic.edu.

ALSO: zines in single-page foldable formats or PDF form may also be considered for ongoing publication/dissemination through the Small Science Collective. (If you're interested, please mention this in your e-mail or in a note attached to your zine). Please describe your project in the body of your e-mail.

"Lawn Nation" at the Nature Museum (5/22 on)

Lawn Nation art exhibition and events series at the Notebaert Nature Museum

For the summer of 2008, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum brings photographs, art installations, films, furniture made from turf grass, reimagined croquet games, altered garden gnomes, pink flamingos, and audio narratives together in an exhibition that explores American's most ubiquitous landscape. Outdoors on Museum grounds, futuristic lawns are brought to life by Foresight Design Initiative and the landscape design firms of Christy Webber, JFNew, and Tallgrass Restoration.

When ::::::

Opening Reception: Thursday, Nay 22, 5:30 - 8:30pm

runs through September 7th with a summer worth of programming

Where::::::

Notebaert Nature Museum
2430 N Cannon Dr, Chicago, IL 60614
773.755.5100

"Small Science" at MCA's Hip Lit (5/17)

The zine project the Small Science Collective will be at this year's Hip Lit Fair at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art and co-sponsored by Quimby's.

SSC was featured last week in the media and culture blog Is Greater Than.

Come by and pick up some free zines, talk science and browse all the other comics and going on now in the city, including Christa Donner's latest zine "Re: Productive"

When:::::

Saturday May 17th, noon - 4pm.

Where:::::

Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
312.397.4010

eMotion Pictues: Orthopeadics in Art (till 7/20)

'eMotion Pictures: An Exhibition of Orthopeadics in Art'


artwork of Elaine Silets and Susan Etcoff

from the Cultural Center website:

Sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, eMotion Pictures is a juried exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography by artists who have experienced an orthopaedic condition, and by orthopaedic surgeons who treat them. Both adult artists and children were asked to share artwork that illustrated some aspect of their relationship to this orthopaedic condition: fear, healing, anger, self-image, mobility, frustration, strength, pain, weakness, hope, independence.

When:::::::

through July 20
FREE!

Where:::::::

the Chicago Cultural Center
77 E. Randolph St.
Chicago
(312) 744-6630

Darwin + Design Exhibition and Symposium

Design in the Age of Darwin: From William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright

May 9–August 24, 2008
Frances and Leigh Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
phone: 847-491-4000

This from the Block Museum Website:
With the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, Charles Darwin challenged the foundations of both science and culture. His ideas about the transmutation of species and the mutability of nature provoked strong reactions among naturalists and theologians and continue to stir debate today. It is less well known that the influence of Darwinian and other modes of evolutionary thought extended into the realms of architecture, the decorative arts, and design, as well, where biological terms like “adaptation,” “fitness,” “functionalism,” and “type” were used by theorists and practitioners alike. During the fifty or so years following the publication of The Origin of Species, biologists and designers wrestled with the question of whether the evolution of plants and animals, and the decorative forms derived from them, was the result of an internal dynamic presided over by a divine creator or external factors governed by mere contingency. The dispute, which may be called the "formalism/functionalism debate," was engaged by the English designers William Morris, Christopher Dresser, C. F. A. Voysey, and C. R. Ashbee, as well as the American architects Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose works are included in the exhibition.

This exhibition is guest curated by Northwestern University art history professor Stephen F. Eisenman. A full color illustrated catalogue ($36.95) published by the Block Museum and Northwestern University Press accompanies the exhibition.

In Conjunction with this exhibition:
“Darwin and Design” Symposium
9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday, May 17
Frances and Leigh Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, IL

An international panel of scholars will gather to discuss the impact of the theory of evolution on British and American architecture, design and decorative arts. Caroline Arscott, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; David Brett, University of Ulster, Belfast; Stuart Durant, independent author and scholar; Jonathan Smith, University of Michigan-Dearborn; and Northwestern’s Sarah Teasley, assistant professor of art history, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will participate. Admission is free.

Schedule, Panelists, and more information can be found HERE (scroll to event).