Events

9:00 PM, $5 suggested

101 featuring Anne Elizabeth Moore

101 is a monthly lecture series organized by Homeroom in partnership with youmethemeverybody (a Chicago arts and music podcast). Each event features a different speaker who, in open dialogue with the audience, will give a short talk about not just what they do, but how and why they do it. Occasionally, 101 speakers also discuss other arts and culture makers that inspire and influence them. 101 takes place the second Monday of each month at the Hungry Brain (2319 W. Belmont) from February through May.

Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Co-editor and publisher of now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when she’s not traveling the globe lecturing on freedom of speech issues. Recently, Moore mounted two single-person exhibitions of her conceptual art, has been the subject of two documentary films, and her work has appeared on the radio program Snap Judgment and in the Progressive, truthout.org, and the Boston Phoenix.

Anne will be presenting LADYDRAWERS: The Thrilling World of Female Cartoonists and the Underthings They are Expected to Draw.

9:00 PM, $7 suggested

Songwriter Showcase featuring Scott Masson and Kent Lambert

Scott Masson of Office and The Juliets has been working to perfect and subvert the pop for more than a decade. While Masson strictly writes in the pop rock idiom, he can rarely resist the impulse to insert uncomfortable dissonance and lyrics. Even as his elegant melodies breeze through, Masson can be confrontational towards his subject and his audience. At times, his voice seems seduced and seducing, and at others, he seems tortured and cynical towards all things beautiful. While he is occasionally self searching, Masson is more apt to focus on others’ shortcomings and redemptions. Only his love songs are straight forward and reveal his untainted tenderness.

Kent Lambert of Roommate writes dark, apocalyptic songs with stark atmospheres, both lyrically and musically. His songs rarely stray from a pop realm, but they stretch the form by bringing in unlikely sounds, frightening lyrics or almost disfiguring melodies. At times, he repeats an unsettling sound or disconcerting vocal line against a brighter or more mellifluous counterpoint building the tension to a nearly unbearable level before releasing into beautiful refrain. Much of his sound is accomplished by combining acoustic and electronic sources. Lambert primarily plays the keytar, but he also writes for woodwinds, strings, Theremins, saws, vibraphones and various analog machines along with traditional rock instruments. And yet, the arrangements never seem contrived or flamboyant. Lambert focuses every sound and every word into a singular, linear composition.

At Elastic Arts, 2830 N Milwaukee (2nd floor)

8:00 PM, $7 suggested

The YouTube Assembly featuring Mike Wolf

The YouTube Assembly consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each event features a guest host presenting a collection of YouTube clips that elaborate on a project or theme in which they have some expertise or interest. In the spirit of the popular YouTube interface, audience members are encouraged to comment on the videos they watch, except out loud and in real time with no anonymity. After the presentation the host then invites audience members to share their own clips. Like karaoke or an open mic, the YouTube Assembly creates a situation in which people take turns entertaining each other, thus bypassing the arguably isolating aspect of online networks like YouTube and encourage real, face-to-face interaction.

The YTA is sponsored by Homeroom Chicago and is hosted by the Nightingale. 1084 N Milwaukee.

Mike Wolf presents: YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE LANDSCAPE! (LANDSCAPE IS ALWAYS PEOPLE!)

To ask the question “what is my relationship to the landscape?” is to do better already. To know that the landscape is inextricable from people and that nothing is pristine is to do better still. The outlandish dreams of imperial capitalism only obscure the connections between people and land. When we each work for our own outlandish dream and find the wisdom to reconcile it with our neighbors the nightmares of imperialism will finally wither away. There is a lot of good collage material for these dreams on YouTube.

Mike Wolf is a Midwestern itinerant cultural worker trapped in modern bohemian fantasies. At the moment he is in the early, agonizing stages of grasping the wisdom of de-colonization.