Events in Bloomington, IN
Your Heart Breaks is sometimes solo, sometimes richly accompanied pop songs played by Clyde who hails from Seattle. I think the songs are really great – catchy but intelligent and personal. I have not heard Caethua, but I’ve heard good things. Claire also plays free jazz and hip-hop music, but her performance as Caethua was described to me as solo-accoustic-based music.
Link to Caethua’s MySpace page.
Link to Your Hear Break’s website.
 From the SOFA Gallery website:
Fusion Culture: Transportable Living and the Landscape will explore ideas about environmental change related to global warming and inventions created by visual artists in response to these changes. With increased access to the Internet and media though a variety of outlets, people often lack a sense of ownership or belonging to a specific place, landscape or environment. This has diminished traditional connections to the land, creating a new relationship to our sense of place. Because we are no longer connected to our immediate environment, we have lost our ability to measure our effect on the world and the ways that we affect the global environment.
Sarah FitzSimons is an artist whose work combines sculpture, outdoor installation, photography and video. She collaborates with oceans, deserts, rivers, and mountain ranges, exploring collisions of the physical and metaphoric.
The show runs from February 19-March 7.
Sarah Fitzsimons is giving a lecture at 6pm on Friday, February 22 followed by an opening reception for the show.
From a WFHB press release:
Bloomington Community Radio pre-empts normal programming for national special on homelessness
On Wednesday, February 20 and Thursday, February 21, Bloomington’s community radio station will once again unite listeners with people all across the country to raise awareness of the defining social justice issue of our time. WFHB is one of more than 120 independent radio stations carrying the National Homelessness Marathon, a 14-hour live broadcast featuring the voices and stories of homeless people from around the U.S. WFHB will air the entire fourteen-hour program, currently in its eleventh year, starting at 7pm on Wednesday and ending at 9am on Thursday, when the station returns to its regularly-scheduled programming. This year is extra-special because the national broadcast will feature a segment produced by WFHB News Director Chad Carrothers.
“We slept out in a tent in the middle of winter, so that was kind of rough…we had like fifty blankets it seemed like and we were still cold…tryin’ to fight, we gotta figure out something, and I remember saying we gotta find something because we can’t be out here forever”
– 22-year-old Josh Morales, Shalom Center client
Josh and his father Abraham are featured in WFHB’s special segment “Father and Son: Generational Homelessness”, exploring how being homeless together has bonded them in a way that transcends typical father-son relationships.
As a local lead-in to the National Homelessness Marathon, WFHB will air an hour of locally-produced programming on these issues, including a feature-length interview with the Morales father-son team and a rebroadcast of the recent memorial service for the people who died homeless on our streets this past year. Airing from 6-7pm on Feb. 20, the local programming will include Joel Rekas, director of Bloomington’s Shalom Center, a day facility for local people struggling with poverty and homelessness.
“It’s unacceptable in a country like the United States that this continues to be an issue”, says Rekas. “We’re twenty years out now from this being identified as a major social issue, and unfortunately for most of us, a walk downtown in a big city involves stepping over people on the sidewalk and lying on park benches and we don’t blink an eye. Folks experiencing homelessness have really become part of the urban landscape.”
There are approximately 4,000 homeless individuals and families living in poverty right now in the Bloomington area, according to Rekas. That’s just one reason why WFHB News Director Chad Carrothers channels significant volunteer effort into local coverage of the issue.
“The best way to understand someone is to really listen to what they have to say,” Carrothers opines. “Radio can be a very personal and intimate experience. The stories told to me by people living on the streets of my town leave the mike wobbling in my hand. The stark reality is overpowering.”
While WFHB News regularly produces its own stories and special features on homelessness, being a part of a national broadcast is a unique opportunity to bring different communities together. The Eleventh Annual Homelessness Marathon will originate from Nashville, Tennessee. It will be hosted by Nashville’s community radio station WRFN and a committee of activists on poverty and housing issues.
“As the Marathon has grown, its philosophy has evolved. When I started, I thought I had to scold people and tell them why they ought to care,” confesses the Homelessness Marathon’s director, Jeremy Weir Alderson. “But now I know that Americans really do care, and that no matter how grave the failings of our society may be, homeless people aren’t on the streets because that’s where we, as a people, want them to be. I now mostly look at the Marathon as giving people the reasons for what they already know in their hearts.”
The Homelessness Marathon isn’t a fundraiser; there isn’t a single pitch to donate a dime to anyone. Instead it’s what Carrothers calls an “awareness raiser”:
“There’s no 800 number, there’s no slick ads for donations. These are real people talking about what life is like for them. They don’t want your money, they want to be understood. They want you to think about how your life is different from theirs, but also how it’s similar. They want your humanity.”
This special programming will air February 20th and 21st from 7pm to 9am on Indiana’s original community radio station, WFHB 91.3/98.1/100.7/106.3 FM and live on the web at www.wfhb.org. More information is available by contacting News Director Chad Carrothers at news@wfhb.org or by calling (812) 337-7827. Additional information about the Homelessness Marathon can be found at www.homelessnessmarathon.org.
The Sex Workers’ Art Show Tour is coming to Indiana University,
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 7 pm at the Whittenberger Auditorium,
Indiana Memorial Union. This event is FREE and open to the public
(18+, please)!
The show is an eye-popping evening of visual and performance art
created by people who work in the sex industry to dispel the myth that
they are anything short of artists, innovators, and geniuses!
The wildly successful cabaret-style show is hitting the road again,
bringing audiences a blend of spoken word, music, drag, burlesque, and
multimedia performance art. Intelligent and hot, disturbing and
hilarious, the performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex
work, from celebration of prostitutes’ rights and sex-positivity to
views from the darker sides of the industry.
The show includes people from all areas of the sex industry:
strippers, prostitutes, dommes, film stars, phone sex operators,
internet models, etc. It smashes traditional stereotypes and moves
beyond “positive” and “negative” into a fuller articulation of the
complicated ways sex workers experience their jobs and their lives.
The Sex Workers’ Art Show entertains, arouses, and amazes while
simultaneously offering scathing and insightful commentary on notions
of class, race, gender, labor and sexuality!
For more information, visit http://www.sexworkersartshow.com or email
cps@indiana.edu
Sponsored by: Office for Women’s Affairs, Commission on Multicultural
Understanding, GLBT Student Support Services, Kinsey Institute, Gender
Studies Department, Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, CommUNITY
Education Program, OUT, Crossroads, Keshet, Women’s Students
Association, Feminist Law Forum, Feminist Majority Leadership
Alliance, Friends of Middle Way House, Sigma Lambda Gamma, Progressive
Librarians Guild, PFLAG of Spencer, IN, bloomingOUT, Boxcar Books
Spirit of ’68 Promotions and IU Department of Gender Studies Present:
Baby Dee (Drag City Recording artist)
w/ Tammar
+ The Silent Era
@ John Waldron Arts Center Auditorium
Wednesday February 27, 2008, 8pm
$7 General Admission
From the press release:
 Baby Dee released her latest record, “Safe inside the Day†(January 22, 2008), on Drag City Records, to much critical acclaim. The album was produced by Matt Sweeney and Will Oldham, of Bonnie “Prince†Billy fame, and Will also performs on many of the songs on the album. Other performers on this latest album include Andrew WK, Robbie Lee, Max Moston (Antony and the Johnsons), Bill Breeze (Psychic TV), John Contreras (Current 93), and James Lo (Chavez). Baby Dee will be bring along a full band for this tour.  Band members will be John Contreras (a cellist that plays with Current 93, Calexico and others), Alex Neilson (a drummer who has played with Will Oldham, Jandek, Isobel Campbell and many more), Emmet Kelly (guitarist – The Cairo Gang), and Paul Oldham (Will’s brother). Â
Baby Dee is the moniker of a musician who has performed in various capacities for most of her life. She has performed as a street musician in New York, as the harp-playing bear in Central Park, in circus side-shows, and even had a steady job as the organist in a Catholic church in the South Bronx. She ultimately changed her decision about her life’s work in the church because of her sexuality. Baby Dee spent most of her life as a male before finally making the decision to become a woman. The transformation was purportedly tough, but strengthened her in the long run – which clearly shows through in the performance of her music. www.babydee.orgÂ
Tammar will grace the stage with their hauntingly beautiful and beautifully haunting indie-pop. There is no such thing as too much reverb. Â http://www.myspace.com/tammarband Â
The Silent Era is a wondrous mix of folk and fantasy with hints of Western-European and Middle-Eastern musical influences. Â Sure to soon be a Bloomington favorite, the band is comprised of seasoned Bloomington artists, including Vincent Edwards (keyboardist, formerly of Murder by Death), Caleb Weintraub (guitarist, song-writer, vocalist, painter, and assistant professor of drawing and painting at Indiana University), Eric Radoux (multi-instrumentalist), Katie Wrightmire (violist), Taylor Peters (double bassist), and John Taylor (percussionist). Â http://www.myspace.com/thesilentera Â
Wow. What an awesome show. The return of Bloomington’s the Door-keys, One Reason, and The Hot New Mexicans
Mp3s:
I also saw this on Boing Boing. A DIY Video Conference put on by USC:
24/7: A DIY Video Summit will bring together the many communities that have evolved around do-it-yourself (DIY) video:
artists, audiences, technology providers, academics, policy makers and industry executives. The aim is to discover common ground, and to chart the path to a future in which grassroots and mainstream, amateur and professional, artist and audience can all benefit as the medium continues to evolve.
It looks like they will be streaming some of Friday’s academic content on the web.
Link to conference website.
Link to live video stream of panel discussions.
Link to info about forums, IRC channels, and other ways of communicating amongs conference participants
CRITICAL ISSUES LECTURE SERIES presents Rashad Shabazz, Berkeley University “Carceral Geographies and Black Masculinity: The Prisonization of Black Living Space”
Time and Location: 4 p.m.
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Bridgewaters Lounge
Sponsors: African American and African Diaspora Studies
From the BHM website:
On behalf of the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs and the IU Bloomington Black History Month Committee, we are inviting you to join us celebrating Black History Month. The Black History Month website will navigate you through the activities that the Indiana University and Bloomington Communities will feature during the month of February.
The 2008 Black History Month theme is “Building Our Community: Celebrating Our Past; Securing Our Future.” During Black History Month, the campus and the community will come together to celebrate the invaluable contributions that African Americans have made to our community and to our larger society. As we strive to build a better and more equitable community for all of our citizens, our celebration will include programs and activities which, while taking a look at our past, will offer a vision for the future.
The variety of programs planned for Black History Month include our keynote lecture by Terrance Roberts, a member of the Little Rock Nine; Film Director Raquel Cepeda and the Blood Diamonds Documentary; Step Afrikah! Step Show Performance; and the African American Dance Company and its 11th Annual Dance Showcase. Our hope is that you will regularly refer to the calendar of Black History Month programs and activities on this website and join us in our month long celebration. A full schedule of events and contact information are available on our calendar link.
Sincerely,
David F. Hummons,
Chair, IU Bloomington Black History Month Committee
See http://www.indiana.edu/~bhm/events.html for event listing and details.
Herculaneum is off-kilter cool-jazz from Chicago’s Icy Demons, Bronze, and Cursive. Basilica is Bloomington’s spontaneous combustion of violins, guitars, drums, and video projections. Ground-Ups is a three-way underground trainwreck of the most rare and eclectic influences.