InCubate Chicago

Just a couple of weeks ago, I visited an exciting and intelligent project space in Chicago called the Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and The Everyday, aka. InCubate. InCubate is run by a group of art history and arts administration students at the Arts Institute who are interested in exploring ways to "disengage with the traditional strategies governing today's art market." In addition to running the traveling exhibition Other Options, a residency program and an ingenious Sunday Soup granting program, they are also using wiki, mapping and TV documentation as part of their explorations.

Bryce, the InCubate staff on hand, gave me several pieces of reading material created by prior artists in residence including a "Sunday Soup" user guide (compiled by Hideous Beast) explaining how to create my own soup-oriented granting program, and a "Cold Call Friendly Phone Book" (compiled by Michael Bauer) listing the names, phone numbers and short descriptions about 41 artistic people living in Chicago who wouldn't mind a phone call from an artistic stranger in need of entertainment/assistance/information.