PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, November 9th
3:30-5pm
Left Turns in Brown Study release + reading
Join us! on Saturday, November 9th from 3:30pm for a book release and poetic jam 🍇 🔡 🫐 session with Sandra Ruiz, Ruth Nicole Brown and Melody Contreras surrounding Ruiz's newest book, Left Turns in Brown Study.
🐚 🎛 The three will be in conversation surrounding and read from/around Ruiz's book, "crucial for all those who theorize minoritarian literary aesthetics and think through utopia, queer possibility, and the entwinement of forms," including an open dialogue throughout.
"In Left Turns in Brown Study Sandra Ruiz offers a poetic-theoretical inquiry into the interlacing forms of study and mourning. Drawing on Black and Brown activism and theory, Ruiz interweaves poetry, memoir, lyrical essay, and vignettes to examine study as an emancipatory practice. Proposing “brown study” as key for understanding how Brownness harbors loss and suffering along with the possibility for more abundant ways of living, Ruiz invites readers to turn left into the sounds, phrases, and principles of anticolonial ways of reading, writing, citing, and listening. In doing so, Ruiz engages with a panoply of hauntings, ghosts, and spectral presences, from deceased teachers, illiterate ancestors, and those lost to unnatural disasters to all those victims of institutional and colonial violence. Study is shared movement and Brownness lives in citation. Conceptual, poetic, and unconventional, this book is crucial for all those who theorize minoritarian literary aesthetics and think through utopia, queer possibility, and the entwinement of forms."
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, November 2nd
5:30-7pm
Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women listening session
Join us on Saturday (November 2nd) at 5:30pm for a talk and listening session surrounding Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women with editor Alejandra Cardenas (also known as Ale Hop). 🔊 🧰 🌎 The book, published by @contingentsounds, presents a collection of perspectives, essays, interviews, archival photos, and work reviews centered on the early electronic music production by Latin American female creators, who were active from the 1960s to the 1980s—destabilizing the "official" history of 20th-century avant-garde electronic music, one predominantly narrated from the point of view of Anglo-American and Western European experiences and largely remained focused on its male protagonists.Alejandra will talk about the background of the composers found in the book and play sound examples to make Latin American music history experienceable. 🎛 🌀 ¡Nos vemos!
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Friday, November 1st
5:30-7pm
everything clogged once: a sharing around East Asian self-publishing
This is an event centered around East Asian self-publishing. It includes a personal glance at the grassroots self-publishing practice and a loose network around it, a reading performance, and a screening. You may find the following topics in the books: self-organization, feminism, early Chinese Anarchism, collective writing, Inter-Asia Alliances, woodcut prints, Tang Ping (躺平主義), media archaeology, human-computer relations...... 🌀
You are welcome to arrive earlier during the open hours, as of 1pm, on Nov. 1st to browse through these publications, have a drink, along with other books at Inga. ☕️ We hope to see you there!
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Friday, October 11th
6-9pm
Dreaming Inside History: Chicago's Alternative Pedagogies on Screen
A film screening, discussion, and shared meal which unpacks and revisits histories of alternative art and design education, in and outside schools, across several decades of Chicago history. Featuring works from Chicago Metro School, an autonomous CPS high school “without walls” founded in the 1970s; the Stockyard Institute, a DIY art school and radio station for grassroots community organizing founded in 1995 in the Back of the Yards neighborhood; Street-Level Youth Media, a collective amplifying youth voice, equitable access to new media, and civic awareness; Video Machete, founded in 1994 as a collective of activists, students, and media-based artists running youth media workshops across the city; and Eleanor Boyer & Karen Peugh’s La Maestra (1984), a look at Pilsen’s Maria Luisa Michel Almonte, a flower shop-based community arts and crafts teacher. Including newly-digitized footage, the featured work shows students and teachers (sometimes indistinguishably) asserting what it looks like to practice art and design education in an alternative context, and why taking such pedagogies to the margins of institutionality is meaningful for some and necessary for others. Join us for a conversation and food after the screening alongside the presence of students, teachers, and filmmakers involved. Programmed by Inga, a Pilsen bookshop, and hosted by Watershed, a space for thinking across and with art & ecology.
This program is supported by Hyde Park Art Center’s Artists Run Chicago Fund in partnership with Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Sunday, September 22
1-4pm
Museum Studies or... launch with Thomas Huston
"A book about museum labor and sleight of hand and doubt and Elvis and birdhouses and other things." Short video screening plus ice cream by @bonnardslemon and some wine to sip.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Thursday, September 19th
6-8pm
Land.Place.Belonging. reader #2 launch and conversation
Join us for our pubic conversation and light refreshments and pick up the new Land.Place.Belonging. reader #2!~ “Land.Place.Belonging. is a series of readers of fresh, honest, provocative and timely conversations between Nance Klehm of Social Ecologies and scientists, activists, writers, makers, and doers."
The contributors In Land.Place.Belonging. #2 are:
🌱 Lydia Cheshewalla: indigenous artist living and working in motion throughout the Great Plains ecoregion engages with place-based relationship. 🌱 CA Conrad: somatic ritual poet and author shares their conversations with animals and ghosts and shares some of their recent poetry. 🌱 Csilla Hodí: embodied public space researcher and mycologist who talks to practices thinking with fungi in outsider & migrating contexts. 🌱 Elijah Rodriguez: speaks to the heart centered work of listening deeply to plants and community to guide in how he responds to and stewards urban land. 🌱 Phera Singh: queer, mixed, Punjabi & Sikh shares their reciprocal relationship with wild willow through the handcraft of basketry. 🌱 Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina: interdisciplinary eco-puppetry artist, writer and disability culture activist who stories her work with forests and soil. 🌱 Adam Grossi: writer, painter and teacher of embodied spirituality and psychological stability speaks to the inner instability of opening to authentic consciousness. 🌸 Illustrations throughout the book (and on this post) by Fiona Cook
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Monday, September 2nd
6pm
Bhopal – 40 years of confronting corporate crime
Join the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, Environmental Justice Task Force, and Panasia Solidarity Coalition for a conversation on the Bhopal gas leak disaster. Two survivors of the disaster, Farhat Jahan and Bati Bai Rajak, will join us to talk about their experiences as well as their engagement in efforts to provide free-of-cost medical care in Bhopal, conduct research on groundwater contamination and continuing health disparities faced by the gas-exposed population, and lead advocacy efforts towards accountability for, and clean-up of, the disaster. Food provided and please wear a mask!
2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak disaster, which remains the worst industrial disaster in history. For nearly four decades, gas-exposed communities in Bhopal continue to face significantly higher mortality rates, various diseases, neurological disorders, and two generations of birth defects. Today, well over 150,000 people in Bhopal are battling chronic illnesses that are related to their own exposure or that of their parents, and 500,000 lives remain physically and economically harmed from the disaster. These survivors will present an account of how gas-exposed communities in Bhopal have persisted for 40 years, treating illness and documenting the continued environmental pollution and damage to health faced in their communities. We will also discuss how the fight for environmental justice in Bhopal is fundamentally linked to the fight for environmental justice in Chicago, and how international solidarity can empower our movements for liberation.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Body Images launch and reading
Launching this Saturday with a reading from 7-9pm 📒📸 Body Images: Photography, Technology, and Beauty Culture by Liz Barr 📳 exploring how photography, editing, and publishing technologies have influenced beauty culture from 1839 through the present day."From the manual retouching processes of the 19th century to the instantaneous beauty filters of the 21st century, how has photo-editing shaped the way we see ourselves and each other? Do manipulated photos warp our perception of reality? Do un-manipulated photos exist? Has the ubiquity of digital photography and publishing platforms exacerbated our insecurities, or helped to expand our ideas of beauty? Body Images grapples with these questions while providing historical context to our contemporary anxieties."Readings by @lizbarrrr, @solemnburger & @adgzines ✨🧃 light refreshments will be provided 😷 masks are required (while not actively eating or drinking), and there will be air purifiers in the space
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
HELL/FORMAZIONE double feature screening
Join us next Tuesday, May 7th, for HEEL/FORMAZIONE—a double feature film screening in conjunction with KLUB WRKR, a traveling exhibition by Kyle Bellucci Johanson (& co) composed of interactive media and custom-made furniture inspired by Alexander Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club. KLUB WRKR (open May 5th, from 3-6pm at Monk Parakeet) points to the oppositional forces of struggle and exploitation that form subjectivity, and centers the politics and economy of friendship as a method for revolutionary action.
Showing are OMICRON (1963)—between ironic science fiction, comedy, surrealism, television investigation, and journalism: a tale of "alienation" via the extraterrestrial possession of a factory worker's body—and RED ARMY/PFLP: DECLARATION OF WORLD WAR—a propaganda newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance via the the everyday banality of military training and slow-paced preparation exercises
for imminent battle. In both films, reading (on- and off-screen) plays a pivotal role.
Organized in collaboration with Will Lee. 🇵🇸🧰🛠🦠 We'll start at or shortly after 6pm, with an intermission at 8pm before the second film. Drinks on-site, BYOP 🍿
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, April 27
6-7:30pm
YOU ARE NOT A LOAN film screening and conversation, with the Debt Collective
Join us for YOU ARE NOT A LOAN by Astra Taylor, a film screening and conversation presented by The Debt Collective (@thedebtcollective) 🏦🚫🚧 in which activists and academics discuss the crisis of higher education and the growing movement to cancel student debt and make college free for all.Come through to learn more about the work of the Debt Collective, the strides being made toward student load debt abolition, and how you can get involved.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Wednesday, April 17
6-7pm
Bill Ayers + Centro Martin Luther King (Havana, Cuba) conversation
"Under the Tree Podcast & Chicago Religious Leadership Network present a lively discussion with leaders from the internationally recognized Centro Martin Luther King in Havana, Cuba. We’ll be discussing their approach to political organizing through popular education, recent updates to the Cuban constitution and its impact on families and the LGBTQ community, the ongoing embargo, what does international solidarity look like today, and much more! 🇨🇺"
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Sunday, April 7th
3:30-6pm
¡San Romero Vive! Documentary and conversation
🇸🇻❤️🔥 ¡San Romero Vive! Join us on Sunday, April 7th, from 3:30-6pm for a commemoration and political education surrounding the life of Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran Archbishop killed during mass in 1980 by U.S.-backed death squads for being an outspoken defender of the poor, supporting popular social movements in the face of state oppression, and being a voice for the disappeared. Organized by Alma de Izote Chicago in collaboration with the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN).
On the 44th anniversary of his martyrdom, we’re screening Moñsenor: The Last Journey of Oscar Romero, a documentary with footage of Romero and his proximity to liberation theology, including a wide range of interviews with those whose lives were changed by him, including church activists, human rights lawyers, former guerrillas, politicians, and most importantly, everyday people.
🔊 In addition, we'll have music, Yolocamba Ita's Misa Popular Salvadoreña, Salvadoran snacks and coffee, and a post-screening discussion connecting Romero's legacy of denouncing oppression with the contemporary condition in El Salvador under Bukele of militarized repression; crackdowns on organized social movements—including the arrests of union leaders, organizers, and activists; and widespread disappearances.
All are welcome, and where necessary/possible things will be translated from English to Spanish and vice versa. Doors open at 3:30pm, with the screening beginning at 4pm.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Sunday, March 24th
12-2pm
Inhabiting the Library / Habitar la Biblioteca conversation
Join us Sunday, March 24th, at 12:30pm for a conversation with Javiera Barrientos, Bel Olid, and Andrea Reed-Leal surrounding the Latin American collective book Inhabiting the Library (Habitar la Biblioteca) 📖 🪢 🧰 on libraries, intimacies, politics, and archives in war-conflicts."Part of this project is to make evident the inter-relationality and economics of knowledge exchange via the library—in our homes, with friends and institutions, we continually circulate knowledge. It is not only in the public library where we find and acquire books, it is also, and above all, from personal collections that collective networks are created. A tribute *to* books and the written word, the project recognizes libraries as emotional, creative, vulnerable, open and sites constantly in flux.” 🌀📕 Javiera Barrientos is a book historian and bookbinder. She investigates the intersections between material culture, literary genres, and practices of colonial and postcolonial extractivism and bibliographic exchange. She is co-writer of Inhabiting the Library. @notasdearte📗 Bel Olid is a language and Literature professor at the University of Chicago, they have also been very active as a translator of Catalan and, to a lesser extent, of Spanish, mainly of feminist literature and children's books. @bel_olid📘 Andrea Reed-Leal is a historian and independent editor. She investigates the history of the book and libraries, female intellectuality, and objects as knowledge. She is the co-editor of Inhabiting the Library. @anreedl
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, March 23rd
6-8pm
Waybill Launch Party
On Saturday, March 23rd we'll host the launch of Waybill (@waybill.zip), a journal on global logistics, trade, supply chains, and their mediatization 🛰️ 📡 🚢 Contributions to the first volume include the history of the shipping container as technology, a zine of shredded trucking magazines, the life of a unionized shipping port strategy game, and globalization and colonization through the lens of a Central American seaport, among many others...🌊 ⚓️ Join us for a brief presentation from the editors, along with drinks, conversation, and an opportunity to get up your copy of Waybill🚚 📦️ Doors open at 6pm, with talks beginning at 6:30pm
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, March 2nd
5:30-8pm
Lisa Lapinski’s Miss Swiss
Join us in hosting the Chicago stop for artist Lisa Lapinski’s book tour 🛤️ for her recent monograph Miss Swiss 🏁 published by @inventorypress. 🛖Doors Open at 5:30 for drinks🧃and browsing 👀, with reading/conversation alongside artists Catherine Sullivan and Eli Greene at 6PM 🕕🗣️. More details below:Lisa Lapinski: Miss Swiss is artist Lisa Lapinski’s most comprehensive monograph to date. Lisa Lapinski is an artist living and working in Houston, Texas. Published on the occasion of Drunk Hawking, her 2020 mid-career survey at Visual Arts Center (VAC) at the University of Texas at Austin, the book will include never before published images of Lapinski’s exhibitions and artworks from 2000 to the present. Miss Swiss features contributions by Bruce Hainley, Graham Bader, Kyle Dancewicz, Sabrina Tarasoff, and MacKenzie Stevens, as well as a conversation between the artist and linguist Viola Schmitt. Designed by artists Laura Owens and Asha Schechter of Apogee Graphics, the book is an inventive collaboration between Owens, Schechter, and Lapinski, providing new insights into Lapinski’s influential and idiosyncratic practice.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Sunday, February 25th
6-8pm
NO SHELTER video series and discussion
Join us Sunday, February 25th for NO SHELTER, a video series exposing new forms of migrant detention being concocted by collaborations between the state and the non-profit industrial complex. Made by a semi-anonymous collective of filmmakers, activists, survivors, and whistleblowers in Chicago, these films address the detention of migrant children in facilities run by Heartland Alliance, the inhumane warehousing of Venezuelan migrants by the Brandon Johnson administration, and the related manufactured public housing “crisis.” The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers and activists from several organizations and autonomous projects present
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Sunday, February 18th
2-4pm
Honoring Palestinian Martyrs: Art Build and Screening
Join us this Sunday at 2PM for the event “Honoring Palestinian Martyrs: Art Build and Screening.” Hosted at Inga in collaboration with Debbie Patino (@arte_curandero) Roshni Bano, and Jackie Guataquira (@jackiegeee), the afternoon will be comprised of a screening of Jumana Manna’s documentary Foragers (2022) and a tissue cempasúchil flower making workshop. Eventbrite link in bio with more information as well as a donation page for medical workers in Palestine. ⛑️🌸🧃Light snacks and drinks will be provided, masks are required 😷—some will be available on site. Due to the smaller space, there is a limited amount of spots, and an RSVP is needed. We look forward to gathering for this time of art-making, film watching, and community building, while centering those in Gaza. Free Palestine!
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, February 17th
5:30-7:30pm
Reading and conversation with Raquel Gutiérrez and Sandra Ruiz
Join us Saturday, February 17th, when we'll be accompanied by Raquel Gutiérrez and Sandra Ruiz, both reading and in conversation with each other surrounding their recent and forthcoming books (Gutiérrez: Brown Neon, Ruiz: Left Turns in Brown Study, Ricanness) on southwestern terrains, intergenerational queer dynamics, minoritarian literary aesthetics, study as an emancipatory practice, and m🌀re!
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Saturday, January 13th
4-6pm
Land.Place.Belonging. book launch + conversation
Join us for the book launch of + a conversation (with Nance Klehm, Anjulie Rao and Lydia Cheshewalla) surrounding issue #1 of Land.Place.Belonging. 📚🌱 a collection of conversations with Nance Klehm of Social Ecologies with:Journalist and critic Anjulie Rao calls for equitable stewardship of urban spaces, MarkMcIntyre speaks on New York City’s Clean Soil Bank, soil scientist S. Perl Egendorf champions creating technosoils for urban landscapes, Cornell extension agent and composter Kwesi Joseph sings the praises of soil mineralization, poet Timothy Otto tells a tale of repairing relationship with both contaminated land and his father and biogeochemist Johannes Lehmann shares his long history working with biochar.✏️🌿 With ink illustrations by Julie Wu 🍪☕️ and sweet treats by Alma Lindgren (@almalindg) 🖨 Produced by Social Ecologies (@socialecologies)
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
PREVIOUSLY:
Wednesday, December 6th
7-8:30pm
🍉 The Gaza Monologues of Ashtar Theatre: collective reading
In response to Ashtar Theatre’s request to collectively read The Monologues of Gaza in different settings around the world, we have organized this gathering as a way to show solidarity with Palestine here in Chicago. This event will take place on Dec. 6th at Inga, 7 pm. If you wish to read one of the monologues please go to the link in our stories (which we'll be repeatedly posting over the next few days).🇵🇸 "The Gaza Monologues are testimonies written by ASHTAR youth in 2010, after the first war on the Gaza Strip. Tragically, these Monologues are still accurate today. They are highlighting the horrors, hopes and resilience of the courageous Gazans to a wider audience, bringing out the voices of children and people in Gaza." –@ashtartheatreThanks to @ercaba_ and @leticiapardo_ for organization/coordination
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................