Version 13: An Urban Operating System
June 14 through June 22, 2013
For the past twelve years, Version Festival has introduced innovative projects that tackle local, social, and urban issues. Every year, the festival highlights socially engaged projects and people, and promotes the cultural use of public space.
This year, Version will focus on beta testing a collectively-produced open source operating system for our urban environment. We call it Urban OS. It’s not just technology based, It’s a human network. We will present works and projects that serve the common good, and connect us to services that everyone can use in our neighborhoods and cities. This collection of real world software can help us manage the hardware of our urban environment, and create even more opportunities for renewing our public space.
Version Festival 13 will present projects by cultural workers, community developers, social entrepreneurs, artists, designers, boutique manufacturers, food interventionists, public space hackers, service mediaticians, urban planners, cultural geographers, and adventure capitalists, all sharing ideas towards a collective hack of the current urban operating system.
This June 14 through June 26 2013, we’re inviting you to demonstrate your skills, share your ideas, and build your visions of a better city. Best, we will be utilizing public spaces in Bridgeport to demo a version of an Urban Operating System. Highlights include Above The Pavement: A City Fair, a new outdoor festival/ block party, and other events that promote social engagement in our communities. The Urban OS will continue throughout the year, with a series of projects and platforms.
To Participate:
Deadline for Submissions: May 10, 2013
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
Please look at the platforms for Version below. Send a one-paragraph description, along with any relevant urls and contact addresses and phone numbers, in an email addressed to Versionfest13 (at) Gmail.com. Attach one 500 wide X 375 pixel high JPEG image along with your proposal. We will respond to your submission a few days after receiving it.
PLATFORMS
1. Urban OS Group Show
We are planning an exhibition that will showcase Chicago-based projects representing the best practices of our urban operating system. You make beautiful things happen? Tell us what you or your organization does. The show will be informational in nature, and not necessarily object based.
2. Above the Pavement: A City Fair
Our day-long City Fair is a new outdoor festival which will invigorate and celebrate positive living in the neighborhood of Bridgeport. It takes place June 22, 2013 between noon and 8pm. We are curating some of the best food, drink and boutique manufacturers in the city to join us for the City Fair. Be one of them.
The fair will feature:
Food: Chefs, restaurants, and food vendors of all stripes will be able to sell their food to the public. There will be very limited food vending opportunities.
Drink: Fruit juices, natural sodas, kombucha, water, and craft beer will be served and sold to the public. There will be very limited beverage vending opportunities.
The Flea Market: This artist-run flea market brings together artists, groups, and organizations to exchange art, information, and ideas. Artists, designers and Boutique Manufacturers are invited to apply for pavement space or tables, to present and sell or share their products to the public.
Farmers Market: Urban farmers, country farmers and food co-ops will be able to sample and sell their produce and products to the public.
The NFO XPO: We invite groups and organizations to exchange art, information, and ideas. Community Orgs, clubs, and skill sharing groups are asked to table and/or organize demonstrations, presentations and info/skill sharing.
Live music: Live performances and music.
3. The Art Bowl
Take part in the Art Bowl. Artist Dan Pugh asks Chicago-based ceramic artists to donate hand-crafted soup bowls for The Art Bowl, benefiting the Benton House Food Pantry.
4. Performance/ Interventions/ Mobile Projects
Live art in site-specific locations, picnics, tours, public interventions, asphalt canoeing, anarchist marching bands, and creative disturbances in public space are all important components of the festival. Initiatives by public space hackers and performance artists of all stripes welcome. Artists are especially encouraged to propose projects and performances in Bosley Park during the City Fair on June 22, 2013.
5. APPs
Location-aware apps emphasize different dimensions of the city and enhance the urban experience through psychogeography and augmented realities. Send us yer APP, we will share it!
6. The Other
We are an open-minded festival, so if you feel your project does not fit within one of the platforms we currently offer, then please: explain what you have in mind.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Call for Participation: Over The Influence: The Art of Beer
Mash Tun Journal and Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar are are teaming up with Chef Won Kim of Brew Ha Ha to bring you another visual and brewery arts exhibition and happening. This edition, called Over The Influence: The Art of Beer, takes place May 18, 2013 at the Co-Prosperity Sphere ( 3219 S Morgan Street).
We are seeking work from artists and designers inspired by the aesthetics of craft beer and how it intersects with food, culture, and society. We are looking for work in any media. Please email edmarlumpen(at)gmail.com if you would like to submit to the show. Please send a description of the of the work and enclose 1-3 jpegs of previous work. Deadline is 4/20/13 for proposals.
Words and photos about the previous show:
Under The Influence: The Art of Beer
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Call for Work: Proximity Magazine #11 • Food And Art
Join us for a potluck edition of Proximity Magazine Number 11, wherein we investigate the intersections of art, food, politics and social practice. We are following our noses and inhaling the increasing preoccupation of food being used in contemporary art. Our engagement with projects that have inspired us in recent editions of Proximity, Version Festivals and MDW fairs, and romps throughout our city’s art ecology has lead us to this inevitable feast. And of course the increasing collaboration between chefs and brewers with community groups and social causes has given us a pause to further consider this blossoming movement of culinary social art practice.
Please prepare a course, a dish or an aperitif and send us your thoughts in a one paragraph pitch. We are seeking short and long form essays, briefs on historical artworks (we hope someone will create a directory of historical works), visual imagery, and your investigations into how the boundaries of art and food have been blurred, smoothed out and ingested.
Reservations at edmarlumpen at gmail dot com. Our pitch deadline is March 15, 2013. Completed texts and works are due by April 15, 2013. We will release the issue at a new endeavor to be unveiled this Spring at Version Festival 13.
( Photo of Stefan Gross Sculpture < Rotterdam )