In the summer of 2020, American streets came alive with Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and many other Black Americans at the hands of the police. That same summer, Random House published Isabel Wilkerson’s celebrated book, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, which quickly shot to the top of the bestseller list, made the best-of year-end lists of most major U.S. media outlets, and was chosen by Oprah for her book-club. The summer of 2020 was also notable for the filing of a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, the State of California vs. Cisco Systems, which marshals the legal language of protections against race-based workplace discrimination against a South Asian American engineer whose status as “Dalit,” or lower caste “untouchable,” in India was figuratively transported and translated into a U.S. corporate context. It is in this critical contemporary moment of the nascent recognition of the unavoidable intersections between race and caste in an American past, present, and future that we have created the Race, Caste, and Colorism Project at Northwestern University. Or presentation will explore the interlocking histories and contemporary manifestations of race, caste, and colorism in African American and South Asian American communities, and explain how we can cultivate innovative scholarly approaches to these comparative histories as well as enable new social justice work—academic, artistic, literary, and otherwise—that look to a future that redresses race and caste inequities.
In an era of political polarization, citizens from different leanings live in different regimes of truth. Science itself has become a topic of contestation, and generalized distrust across the board contributes to misinformation and precludes dialogue. Practitioners in post-conflict settings have developed tools to reconcile societies divided by decades of war. In this presentation, I suggest ways the tools of post-conflict reconciliation can be channeled towards building constructive dialogue in the context of the COVID crisis.
Guided tours of the exhibitions throughout the evening with the Chicago History Museum docents.
This discussion will focus on urban planning in Paris and Chicago in order to present the work being done for the new urban plans but mostly it will be an opportunity to present and discuss the main contemporary issues on the urban agenda for any cities after this time of COVID 19: resilience, diversity, inclusion, climate change and our relationship with nature.
Education is UNESCO’s top priority because it is a basic human right and the foundation for peace and sustainable development. The conversation will focus on how education can be rethought in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and fragility. Each one of the panelist bringing his own expertise to analyze education as a public societal endeavour; the role of universities in securing a more robust democracy with a more cosmopolitan approach and biculturalism as an educational project.
Ann Marks, an international reference on the photographer Vivian Maier, will explore her life and her work at 7:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Ann Marks will also sign her Vivian Maier biography, Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny, at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
Poems While you Wait will compose typewriter poetry on demand on subjects of the requestors’ choosing. By Kathleen Rooney, Eric Plattner, Lisa Farver and Rachel Summerfield.
The Mobile Street Art cart Project will guide participants through hand screen printing posters that they will be invited to personalize.
A set of UChicago students will give a series of philosophical talks; the audience will have the chance to ask questions after each talk.
The Global Impact of CQD; In Quantum Science and Technology of Semiconductor Optoelectronics Devices from deep UV to THZ Past, Present and Future trends Manijeh Razeghi Walter P. Murphy Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Director, and founder of Center for Quantum Devices Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
The history of cities has been marked by frequent and often spectacular fires. More than just disasters, these extreme events have shaped the urban imaginary and brought cities into the modern world. They remain a major issue for cities today, as the anthropocene invites us to rethink our relationship with the earth system.
Today, as France is presiding over the European Council, the European Union is embroiled in seemingly unending political controversies. Not a day goes by without a new book denouncing the overreaching power of the Union upon its members, while most political speeches today are calling for the return of a true sovereign France. However, in a multipolar and unstable world, the paradox is that European states may be way more independent within the European Union than outside of it, vide Brexit. Opponents of the European Union and most of their adversaries are pretending that nothing happened on the other side of the Atlantic in 1787-1788, and as a result they are unable to perceive the enlightening answers already provided by the American Founding Fathers. They have forgotten that to know where we are going, we need to know where we come from. To decide where we want to go, we need to rediscover this shared legacy.
DanceWorks Chicago dancers will activate the space with choreography by Princess Grace Award Winner Joshua Manculich at 7:30 and 8:30 pm.
Social Justice Artist Tonika Lewis Johnson invites visitors to map their personal experiences on a large scale map of the Chicagoland area.
Transportation has been recently affected by numerous new trends, including electrification, sharing, connectivity and automation. Those new trends have the ability to change the way people and good move in the near future, In addition, they are inter-connected (e.g., connectivity might accelerate electrification) within the transportation system as well as the overall system (e.g., impact on electric grid, buildings…). Future technologies, along with potential advantages and drawback, will be discussed.
How people and society approaches night time and how light changes our perception and our experience of it?
The Hunting Accident is a graphic novel based on the true story of a blind poet who must tell his son about his secret life as a mobster in 1930’s Chicago.
David Carlon will sign The Hunting Accident at 8 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
Ann Marks will sign her Vivian Maier biography, Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny, at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
Main goal of the presentation is to point out the importance of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystems, their biodiversity and sustainable development, solving problems related to the global production of food and its chain supply, elimination of hunger in developing countries and strengthening of measures aimed at their protection. Presentation intends to inform broader public about the impact of declaration of the World Bee Day (May 20) by the United Nations, and how the small European country of Slovenia and our Consulate General contribute to raising of the awareness of local communities in the USA in addressing, approaching and contributing to this important topic.
The conversation will focus on the role that cultural endeavors can play in the capacity to live together, to build social cohesion or a sense of belonging, while respecting the diversity of identities, habits, beliefs, and expressions. It will also lead to consider the importance of the notion of “cultural rights”, i.e. the ability to access cultural references, as resources necessary for any identification process, in the particular context we are going through, both at a global (the pandemic and the tendency to withdraw into one’s own identity that it may have produced) and local scale, with the Black Lives Matters movement.
The purpose of this talk is to question the part of affect that links us to a place. The systematic destruction of poor neighborhoods in the name of urban planning has dramatic consequences on the subjectivity of those who live there. These gentrification policies are experienced as a violent dispersion of communities that have long been anchored in a space where they have forged rituals and imaginaries. To inhabit a place is an ontological relationship. Destroying without consultation, without taking into account the resistance of the inhabitants can only provoke a feeling of irreversible loss, a disaster.
The DuSable Park Coalition invited the IIT Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Program (MLA+U) to explore design possibilities for DuSable Park-the long awaited public landscape at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. DuSable Park should foster the evocative power of landscape to occur in public space as a framework for memory. It should become a “witness” of the past and a “voice of memory” embedded in everyday life; the voice that also calls for action and engagement with a better future. As a site of commemoration, it should become a public space of exception that can act as a repository of the community’s commitment, now and in future days, to remember these people and this place. Professor Ron Henderson, Director of the MLA+U program, will present design scenarios from the Fall 2021 graduate design studio and Davey Friday (IIT MLA ’22, MArch ’22) will present how his studio project amplifies his ongoing exploration, Black Brutalism.
Dutch-born cellist Katinka Kleijn presents an improvisation, connecting Chicago experiences and influences, including her work with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago free improvisers scene, the International Contemporary Ensemble and her work in performance art. A modified synthesizer cello will sonify the Chicago map, pictured on the floor of the Chicago History Museum lobby, in an interactive installation.
Football practice is an ongoing workshop series by artist Kristin McWharter in which participants discuss the impacts of American football on contemporary culture and speculate on possible futures for the sport. In this talk, McWharter will discuss the work and screen a segment of the software simulation that has been developed though these workshops.
Ann Marks, an international reference on the photographer Vivian Maier, will explore her life and her work at 7:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Ann Marks will also sign her Vivian Maier biography, Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny, at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
The Hunting Accident is a graphic novel based on the true story of a blind poet who must tell his son about his secret life as a mobster in 1930’s Chicago.
David Carlon will sign The Hunting Accident at 8 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
How we think about trees reflects where we come from, who we are, and where we want to go. Trees serve as a breathing, living organ of cities — cleaning the air, absorbing water, and enriching the soil. Trees are shaped and re-built through the humans driving cities, too — representing the nature we come from as well as the structure we aspire towards. Urban tree landscapes show the scars of industry, the built realities of racism, and the promise of sustainable futures. In this talk, I’ll share how my views on trees changed as I sought to quantify them to advance better health and equity as a geographer and data scientist.
The Invest South West Program is inspiring change in Chicago’s disinvested communities. One of the recent projects, the Pioneer Bank Site, shines a light in the West Humboldt Park community. Juan Moreno will share the story behind his team’s winning design, the creation of TEAM PIONEROS, and his firms decision to leave their downtown offices and move to Humboldt Park.
We look to education because we believe it can augur and might help us shape the future. My presentation argues that rather than seeing schools as sites where futures can be controlled, we need instead to embrace uncertainty and learn to live well in conditions of radical emergence.
Ann Marks will sign her Vivian Maier biography, Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny, at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum shop (first floor).
DanceWorks Chicago dancers will activate the space with choreography by Princess Grace Award Winner Joshua Manculich at 7:30 and 8:30 pm.
Immersive journalism in poor neighborhoods in France and in the United States will be discussed as an ethical condition in these times of misinformation / and populist one-upsmanship. With the advent of Fake News – we will ask why it is more crucial than ever to support local initiatives such as the Invisible Institute or the Folding Chair for a better treatment of information, also in the name of a certain critical requirement proper to the press.
Since time began people move and the climate changes, but pressures we are placing on our Earth today are accelerating these fundamental shifts. Climate impacts in Chicago are impacting people, leading to increased asthma and heat related deaths, and costing us lives and dollars in storm damage to our homes, roads, and bridges. Yet, we see Chicago and the Great Lakes region being eyed as a ‘destination’ for climate migrants. How then must we adapt our City today to take care of those who are here and facing the pressures of climate impacts and what should we expect of and do to prepare for our future neighbors? This brief overview will highlight current climate impacts in the Chicago and Midwest Region and what we can and cannot yet predict about who may be moving to this region in the future.
Tonika Lewis Johnson describes her Folded Map project plus its inspiration and origins in a 30min animated film.
Two years after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, what could be the future of office space, office buildings and business districts? With the widespread adoption of teleworking fueled by new digital technologies, and although many office properties and business districts were left deserted at the heights of lockdown periods, questions, reflections and experiences emerged on the true purpose of offices and the attractiveness of business districts. How can business districts continue to be successful places attracting business and people and contributing to city centres? How can we build and design attractive, lively offices and business districts to complement the rise of other places for working, in or closer to our homes? What could be the future scenarios?
Performed with physicist Severine Atis (University of Chicago).
Live sound: Otto Briner (double bass), Kiku Hibino (sound synthesis).
Shapes of Emergence is a performance in which an “immersive microscope” films and projects an invisible reality of self-organizing liquids, soft solids and grains. In these experiments, that take place in front of the audience, the emergence of the artistic and the natural forms are indiscernible: rather than controlling each step in the formation of a piece, events are curated during ongoing natural processes. Experiments are performed with pipettes, syringes, tweezers, motors, codes, microcontrollers, synthesizers and gamepads. Immersive sounds are improvised along by experimental musicians.
A brief history of Chicago will cover the historical buildings, people and events that make the city so prolific.
Chicago Dance Crash will feature two pop up performances including a freestyle breaking session and a new hip hop piece with choreography by Walter Maybell and Monyett Crump.