(This event has been POSTPONED. Click here for rescheduling details.)
The Guild Literary Complex introduces its newest production, Applied Words, on Tuesday, July 9, with the first of three performances planned between now and October; this one, called “Broken Windows,” kicks off the “urban design”-themed reading series. The special event invites writers to muse on stories of specific Chicago social and communal sensibilities that have originated and evolved from their relationship with their surrounding material environment.
Designed to translate urban design into a defining language of our city, “Broken Windows” brings wordsmiths to a free public stage for audience members to consider, learn and digest the social history behind the mortar, metal, conflict and politics of where a community lives and works. According to Guild’s website, the “Broken Windows” engagement aims to narrate the human factor that’s at stake behind “community ailments such as trash, graffiti and loitering” through the literary arts.
In the Polish Triangle, the concrete island at the intersection of Division, Milwaukee and Ashland, the Guild crew will temporarily borrow the space from Wicker Park’s pigeons and activate it as a public space for the storytelling of how human meets urban architecture and vice versa. When asked about the location, Paul Durica, founder of Chicago’s “Pocket Guide to Hell” tour series and one of Tuesday’s readers, explains that it’s a “dead space in such a vibrant neighborhood that we plan to activate.”
Tuesday evening will include open-mic performances by local artists Maribel Mares, author and founding member of the Division Collective, and Sarah Ross, co-organizer of the Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project, a new art and humanities initiative at Stateville Prison. Katherine Darnstadt, 2013 American Institute of Architects Young Architects Honor Award winner and founder of Latent Design, will also hold a free workshop on “place making” prior to the first reading. (Charlie Puckett)
Applied Works: “Broken Windows” 6pm, Tuesday, July 9 at the Polish Triangle, the intersection of Division, Milwaukee and Ashland. Katherine Darnstadt’s workshop opens on location at 3pm. The free event is co-sponsored by SOILED Magazine and The Polish Triangle Coalition and underwritten by The Studio Gang Architects. For more information, visit www.guildcomplex.org
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