NFO XPO DIRECTORY



The directory of participants for the NFO XPO April 19 & 20, 2008
Viaduct Theater • 3111 N. Western (link)
Hours: 1pm to 3am (2am on sunday) • $8 ($10 for 2-day pass)

Art Shanty (MNPLS)
Http://www.artshantyprojects.org

The Art Shanty Project invites artists (in the broadest sense of the word) to re-imagine the use of ice fishing shanties for uses other than fishing. The result is a 5 week show on the frozen surface of Medicine Lake in suburban Minneapolis, with Art Shanties used for Karaoke, an on ice radio station (KICE), knitting, limnology, time travel archeology and the sub prime mortgage lending crisis. This will be our 4th year bringing Shanties to Chicago on a mission to spread the word and eat hot dogs every day.

Center for Tactical Magic (LA)
http://www.tacticalmagic.org
The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation.

Chicago Poster War
chicagoposterwar@gmail.com
The Chicago Poster War will be using the NFO XPO as an oppurtunity to educate the public about the role of the artist during wartime. By showing the public our example we hope to encourage similar action among the artistic community of Chicago. The time has come for the artistic community of Chicago to join together and respond to the US-led occupation of Iraq! With little to no visual reaction present in the public sphere, we are calling all artists to unite with a reactionary visual response. The American public is not faced with these concerns on the street level; therefore we have organized the Chicago Poster War Project to bring silkscreeners, printmakers, zine makers, distributors, and anyone else interested to cover the city walls with our protest. This is the only the beginning! Artists need to leave the confines of the gallery and bring their art to the public eye.

Collage Detritus
http://www.resourcecenterchicago.org/70thfarm.html
Rock, Scissors, Paper, Glue + What ever Re-Useable Bits you can find to make collage...

A small group of coworkers from the professional recylcing team, The Resource, have been enjoying each other's company... while making stuff outta stuff. And for this event we bring to you heaps from our day job, sorting recycleable heaps. Please join us in the stuff making.

Join us at our work table.

Also learn more about sources for reuseable materials. such as Chicago's infamous Creative Re-Use Center ( 222 E 135th Pl.) as well other sources for good collage/assemblage finds.

Corpus Corpus
DIY publishing venture committed to distributing the work of overlooked and marginalized artists.
Editions: Paul Nudd, Anne Van Der Linden, Bruno Richard, Terrence Hannum, Onsmith, Gregory Jacobsen, Ryan Christian, Mike Diana, Edith Sloat, Sophie Greenstalk, Mariano Chavez, Kristen Romaniszak. Self
published works by Paul Nudd, Terrence Hannum, Chris Kerr, Chris Uphues, and Patrick W. Welch also available.

Country Club Gallery
http://www.countryclubchicago.com/
We are artists. Some of us like paint. Others photoshop. We all like music. And one of us likes chocolate flavored with bacon. But that’s how a collective goes. And that’s who we are. Country Club Chicago is a group of artists and an art gallery dedicated to all things beautiful. Or beautiful to at least one of us. Meet the artists all up in this Club.

Daniel Demchuck
Circuit Bending
Dan Demchuk, Program Director for WZRD and working DJ, will be onsite to demonstrate the art of circuit bending. He will be short-circuiting low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices, ranging from children's toys to Casio keyboards, to create new musical instruments and sound generators.  Demchuk has been teaching circuit bending for the last 3 years, beginning with members from The Guild of Acquired Technology (G.O.A.T.) before hosting workshops on his own at spaces such as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, North Park University, Northeastern Illinois University, DePaul, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Demchuk will also be performing for this year's BENT Festival in Minneapolis, MN, May 2nd and instructing May 3rd. 
www.myspace.com/soundshappy

Der Weiße Salon (Berlin)
http://www.weisser-salon.de

"Weißer Salon“ (white salon) is a collaborative project initiated by Sonia Alvarez, Sabrina Jung, Anne Lass and Patricia Neligan. The aim is to encourage the exchange between artists working in different media. The main focus is the development of a network amongst internationally based artists.

The website www.weisser-salon.de is the main platform accessible to the public. Here one will be able to find theme based projects of different artists and initiators every month.

"Weißer Salon” curates the exhibition "Mind the Gap“ featuring the work of Manuela Barczewski, Sonia Jimenez Alvarez, Annette Jonak, Sabrina Jung, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Anne Lass, Patricia Neligan,
Almut von Pusch & Rivkah Young. Tuesday April 22, 2008 - 6PM @ Country Club, 1100 N Damen Ave.

Dill Pickle Food Co-op
Dill Pickle Food Co-op is a member-owned cooperative grocery store forming in Logan Square.  Our goal is to offer healthy food choices and the benefits of cooperative practice to build a vibrant local community and more sustainable world.  We will meet community needs and strengthen area diversity through products, services, and education.  Contact pickle.people@gmail.com for information on joining or volunteering. 

Get Knifed
Get Knifed Together is an artist collective project designed to construct and maintain a community of Chicago artists by means of themed gallery events and workshops. Get Knifed owners Max Bare and Nathaniel Bettinger, who own and operate the base gallery, represent the project. The artists recruited are a mix of various styles, techniques and mediums: pop surrealists, illustrators, DIY junk sculptors, photographers, realists, filmmakers, low-brow, gallery plush creators, political shock, tattoo inkers, aerosol/stencil pop, erotic t-shirts designers, urban graphics. Established artists and relative unknowns unite at the opportunity to create new work under rotating guidelines. Get Knifed in turn introduces the collective to varying buying markets while collecting no profit from sales; the community aspect remains the key intent.

Get Knifed has since celebrated its 1 year anniversary as a gallery. In this time the gallery has hosted themed shows “9/12,” “Cash Credit or Debit,” and “Thanks.” For an anniversary show Get Knifed Together wandered beyond the gallery space to exhibit at Artistic Jeanius art house. Get Knifed Together is scheduled to travel to other spaces in the future. Also in the works are casual technique trading workshops for our artist community. This April the collective will participate in “Returns” our newest upcoming show.

Gallery representatives would utilize a table at the NFO XPO as a recruiting station for building the collective, an information post, and an outlet to expose our current artists to a new crowd of creative-minded individuals. Visitors will be invited to sign up to join our GKT collective and peruse examples from some of our current artists. Get Cultured. Get Social. Get Knifed.

Get Knifed 1932 S. Halsted unit 201 Chicago IL 60608 info@getknifed.com

Green Lantern
As part of Green Lantern's 2007/2008 programming, examining and implementing the process of rebirth, Meredith Kooi and La espacia, will install the two day event, "CALL TO ARMS." Interactive installations and performance facilitate new experiences within individual members of the audience. Kooi reveals her step-by-step plan of undoing the self as part of a larger call to deconstruct and rebuild the dominant social paradigm. Free currency give-away supplied by La Espacia. ZInes, books and other sundries will also be available.

Meredith Kooi's project "Clearing the Clutter: Losing the Self to Greener Pastures" explores the notions of self and ego. Kooi seeks to cleanse or demolish the self in order to rebuild anew. The exhibition will be featuring a video installation, text object, and a live performance introducing Kooi's new methodology of social change.

Harold Arts
http://www.haroldarts.org/
Harold Arts plans to utilize a ten by ten foot installation space within the Viaduct Theatre to offer information about our annual residency program, which is held each July in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Within our installation space we will be constructing a cabin-esque structure based on the housing available at the residency. NFOXPO coincides with our last push for applicants for this summer’s program before applications are due. We hope to attract new artists, contributors, and like-minded organizations, which might help us fulfill our mission to cultivate creative opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists though concerts, exhibitions and residency programs.
We plan to exhibit works by prior residents and affiliated artists inside this structure where we will also be providing complimentary s’mores and wieners cooked over a portable propane fueled grill. In addition to using NFOXPO as a promotional opportunity, we will also be holding one solo concert per day inside the “cabin.” Participating instrumentalists include Jason Ajemian, Jaimie Branch, and Jeff Kimmel, who represent past residency participants. NFOXPO visitors will be inundated with Harold propaganda including residency applications, works by our residents, our annual compilation CD, and other Harold related media.

InCUbate presents EMPATHY™

InCUBATE presents EMPATHY™
http://www.incubate-chicago.org < http://www.incubate-chicago.org/ >
EMPATHY™, an artistic research group from Holland, will be represented at NFO XPO by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Katinka Simonse and Jonas Staal. EMPATHY™ develops public analyses of how empathy works: both as a fundamental characteristic of human nature and a commodified product. Van Gerven Oei & Staal will focus on the photographic dynamics in relation to the issue of ethnicity during the democratic nominations, Simonse will focus on the obsessive treatment of pets as 'fully installed' family members.

EMPATHY™: http://www.empathy-research.com/

Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei: http://www.vincentwj.nl/
Katinka Simonse: http://www.tinkebell.com/
Jonas Staal: http://www.jonasstaal.nl/

Jack Bratitch
The indigenous Tibetan tradition known as Bon contains a rite of passage known as the Dark Retreat. A sensory deprivation technique, the Dark Retreat involves solitary living in a pitch-black cave for weeks on end. It is a time of transformation, a rebooting of the self through contact with thought-forms, ancient and emergent. Could our culture be said to be undergoing such a process, collectively and unconsciously?
This presentation examines the recent popularization of the occult and secrecy, or popular occulture, in order to think about political strategies. Scientific bestsellers include titles like The Invisible Century and Shadows. Professional journalism regularly displays the art of leaking and disinformation. Cable documentaries on secret societies and pirates work in tandem with their fictional counterparts. Kid culture narrativizing ninjas and wizard schools mix with adult fare glamorizing spies (especially their recruitment). The swarming of stage magic into reality TV and everyday spaces (e.g. Phenomenon, Mindfreak, and Mind Control with Darren Brown) brings the ancient arts of deception and legerdemain close to home. Finally, a video and book simply titled The Secret spreads like wildfire in self-transformation and therapeutic circles.
This popularization cannot simply be equated with the exposure of things hidden. There are lots of ways of making darkness visible. We heed Walter Benjamin’s esoteric injunction: analysis means telling a ‘truth that is not a matter of exposure which destroys the secret, but a revelation which does justice to it.’ Exposing secrets might be an attempt to contain the power of secrecy by turning it into box and then controlling its secretion. However, this does not exhaust secrecy’s powers, its virtues.

What can we learn from these popular techniques of revelation and shrouding as we develop our own experiments in secret becomings and virtual shadow worlds? When secret agency becomes popular, what does it do people’s agency? Here we glimpse another history of the secret agent: a secret history if you will, one that does not only belong to the state but in fact belongs to what Deleuze and Guattari call the war machine. In these hidden figures (secret societies, occult intelligence networks) we might find another set of political possibilities for secret agency, a popular secrecy rooted in custom rather than juridical spheres.

Publicizing secrecy also popularizes it—perhaps even making a secret people. In our cultural dark retreat, what people will emerge? And how can percept- and concept- makers create the necessary rituals for gathering our own dark matters, our own invocations and evocations?

A temporary interactive public memorial has been in the works since April 30, 2006. It is in part a musical incantation, a local resting space to ponder a conversation striped to sonic deliberations from audio artist and musician Faiz Razi. We started speaking in 1993 prior to Danger Adventure about all matters conjoined and impossible. These passages began as dialogues and exaltations and here explore how one might remember someone through a kind of musical gesturing. Mike Omens began log rolling with Jim Duignan around artist Michael Piazza's life and work using featured archival elements that map primary and undocumented projects of the artist in Chicago. Prison bus seats with leg iron shackle rings, speakers, mp3 players, works of Michael Piazza, spray paint and collage, 2008.

Jim Duignan
Mike Omens
Faiz Razi

Knock knock Gallery
In the tradition of other Chicago artist run art venues such as Dogmatic, Art Ledge, Old Gold, Green Lantern, and Alterspace, Knock Knock Gallery embraces the domestic resonance of a site, rather than opting for white, anonymous space. Created as a platform for site-specific work, the gallery itself presents a definitive context for the work. The installation space utilizes the upper and lower landings of a staircase that join the street level entrance and the living space of a Southside residency. In addition to the main gallery space, there is a small project room off the upper landing. Knock Knock Gallery is located at 3658 S. Wolcott: on the NW corner of 37th and Wolcott.

The booth will be composed of an arrangement of works current to the show Goodnight, Moon, a two-person show with J.T. Rogstad and Noah Furman. In addition to this, work from the past shows will be on display. Short video works, along with documentation and promotional materials will round out the set up.

Jason Wallace Triefenbach • > COVER STORY: Through the Looking Rox (Outsider Internment Process Mural )
http://www.myspace.com/jasonwallacetriefenbach

Is anyone innocent of cultural piracy? Is maintaining an ethnic or [sub]cultural identity within the larger social stew advantageous, necessary, or even possible?

This installation of 2D works on paper- mainly black and white but with highlights of color appearing sporadically- is comprised of drawings, photocopies and prints depicting Navajo rug designs as well as the artist's own 'outsider' interpretation of such, drawn in ink, charcoal and pencil. Interspersed therein are drippy ink abstractions in layers of wash, tending towards the style of sixties rock poster psychedelia as churned and regurgitated by contemporary 'prog punk' graphical lexicon. The interplay of
these various elements provides interference or 'static' within the logic of the arrangement, obscuring a clear and easy reading of the whole.References
are made to ideas of Authenticity,Representation, and the migration and cross-pollenization of cultural tropes (occuring both temporally and geographically, and often in a less than equitable manner).

The resulting artwork represents a collapse of said authenticity, calling into question the manner in which each of us comes to understand and/or assimilate The Other into our own worldview.

Kristen Cox and Salem Collo-Julin
10 Chairs. 1 Baseball Field: Privilege, Inequality and Our Cultural Work
with Kristen Cox and Salem Collo-Julin

Kristen Cox and Salem Collo-Julin, both local cultural producers and class investigator, conversationalists, will lead a fun exercise - part interactive workshop, part conversation - designed to spur discussion about class. We are indeed living in very dark days, the Second Gilded Age in fact, a time of extreme economic
inequality. Using the map of a baseball field to talk about class stratification, and ten chairs to personify who has benefited and who has not over the past thirty years, we'll segue into a larger discussion about privilege, inequality, our activism and cultural work - how they interact with each other and what we can do about it.

Motherland • Polly Perez - 'Soft High Way' (TX)
http://www.wooloo.org/tofucat

Shared culture is smaller and bigger simultaneously - and a more efficient engine for 'disposability' as it creates tangible and visual refuse faster than ever. The life cycle of goods in the marketplace begs intervention after being sold, bought, and used, to be returned to the cycle as something different instead of an ending.

Polly Perez' installation Soft High Way is a compact environment in which discarded print media, clothing and fabric, become hybrid creatures, reconfigured and sewn into their next existence. After humans participate in consumerism they create another life cycle in which the remains of inanimate objects live again.

Institute of Sociometry

Institute of Sociometry, or is, represents a world wide syndicate of special agents involved in the practice and promotion of guerrilla sociometry. As the term implies, guerrilla sociometry is similar in focus to text book sociometry, yet in no way conforms to the rigorous demands of mathematics! http://www.sociometry.com

National Lawyers Guild

Neighborhood Watch (FL)
Neighborhood Watch: Projection Walk is an interventionist style art project that combines a nocturnal walk through residential neighborhoods with illuminated installations, performances, and video projections. Art is integrated within the neighborhood, on houses, garages, windows and fences where neighbors and visitors are invited to visit. The project as a whole is an effort to promote discussion about the sense of place, public and private space, as well as home within the context of the neighborhood.

To begin the project, artists propose videos, installations, and site specific performances. We delve into the neighborhood, and with the collaboration of artists and residents (many are one and the same) create an ephemeral event. We invite strangers onto our lawns with the purpose of watching, and simultaneously meeting neighbors we previously didn't know. To complete the project we need neighbors to share their homes, lawns, and a little about themselves.

This year’s project connects experiences in the historic neighborhoods of Seminole Heights in Tampa, FL with Sunset Heights in El Paso, TX.

TAMPA, FL artists include
Wendy Babcox
Deon Blackwell
Desiree D’Alessandro
Chelsea Ann Goodwin
Vince Kral
Daniel Moore
Yoko Nagami
Anat Pollack
James Reiman
Greg Slimko
You (As always, projects like this depend on You)
EL PASO, TX artists include
Jaime Carrejo
Elijah Fernandez
Monica Pedregon
Kalitia Roberts
Xochichi Rodriguez
Daniel Szwaczkowski
You (As always, projects like this depend on You)
CHICAGO, IL table
Chelsea Goodwin
Sunni Barbera
Michael Clarke

Nicole Garneau • Uprising #4
http://www.nicolegarneau.com
UPRISING #4 is the fourth in a series of monthly, site-specific performance works broadly exploring the practice of revolution, presented by Links Hall.

UPRISING #4 will be an audience-participation performance that attempts to maximize the creative and world-transforming energy of the people participating in Version>08.

2008 is 40 years since 1968, a year of worldwide revolutionary activity. In 2008, activists, historians, and cultural workers are contemplating the meanings and implications of this 40-year anniversary. Many comparisons are being made between 1968 and 2008.

Rather than attempting to re-create 1968, UPRISING performances create public demonstrations of the possibilities for a more loving, just and humane present and future. They are attempts at making the world in which we want to live, and then inviting people directly and immediately inside it. Performances are marked consistently by a commitment to flexible structure, ambitious intentions, and sense of humor.

We are currently seeking volunteer performers/participants for UPRISING #4!
If you want to be a part of the action, Email Nicole. nicolegarneau13 [at] sbcglobal.net. More info at www.nicolegarneau.com.

Nsumi Collective (NY)

Peripheral Media Projects • Wheat Paste Collage (NY)
http://www.peripheralmediaprojects.com/
Peripheral Media Projects, formed in 2004, is a group of artists, designers, printers, street artists and activists. We are committed to promoting awareness and social transformation through the creation of art and clothing, both within and outside the gallery and fashion systems. We are a swift, skilled, and focused coalition, open to collaboration with artists who want to produce prints for the street, gallery, and clothing. Our submission for Version8 will be a large scale wheat paste installation, composed of collaged elements. Many of there are prints created for the streets, large scale riot police, stencils and silkscreen prints. Our work is socially conscious and relevant to the interventionist theme of Version8. The piece is mounted to large format backdrop paper which can be easily installed as a single unit and rolled for shipping. The following image is an example of a similar piece.

People Project
ashknowsu@hotmail.com
There are appromimately six billion pepole in the world, and that is what i will be trying to illustrate. I plan, with the help of others, to draw a small line on many long paper scrolls, until I have a mark for everyone. My hope is that when this is finished it will make our human condition more tangible. It may illuminate how much and many consume and waste, it may lead us to feel smaller or part of a greater whole. I will invite anyone to mark people with me at a table at the NFO XPO.

The Platypus Affiliated Society and The Platypus Review 
Platypus is a forthcoming international journal of critical letters and emancipatory politics, dedicated
to reconstituting the Marxian Left. 

The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora,
research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New"
(1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. 

The Platypus Review
"Published by a group of Leftists, or neo-Marxists, participating in an intellectual revolution. Platypus
engages heavy topics for heavy times."  -- Newcity Chicago, November 19, 2007 

The Editorial board of The Platypus Review is motivated by a sense that the very concepts of the
"political" and the "Left" have become so inclusive as to be meaningless. The Review seeks to be a forum
among a variety of tendencies and approaches to these categories of thought and action -- not out of a
concern with inclusiveness for its own sake, but rather to provoke productive disagreement and to open
shared goals as sites of contestation. 

In order to make sense of the present, we find it necessary to disentangle the vast accumulation of
positions on the Left, and to evaluate their saliency for an emancipatory politics today. Doing this work
implies a reconsideration of what we mean by "the Left." 

The editorial board wishes to provide an ongoing public forum wherein questioning and reconsidering
one's own convictions is not seen as a weakness, but as part of the necessary work of building a
revolutionary politics. We hope to create and sustain a space for interrogating and clarifying the variety
of positions and orientations currently represented on the political Left, in which questions may be raised
and discussions pursued that do not find a place within existing Left discourses, locally or internationally.

Plush Gallery/ Mahasukha Muthasucka (TX)
Mahasukha Muthasucka, a hybrid shrine, alleyway, refuge to souls descendent. Come one, come all, none will be turned away. Bring your offerings and make puja among dense layers of detritus: cardboard, strung-up lights, posters, sacred texts of pop music as the new scripture, porno devatis and pieced
together icons of ancient persuasion. Light, sound, texture, all combine to infuse feminine substance with active immaterial energy.

This immersive environment is an installation by Dallas artist Randall Garrett, and will be sponsored by Plush Gallery. Garrett has curated, performed, and shown work in Texas, Miami, New York, Puerto Rico, and many times in Chicago, most recently performance and installation work in 2007 at artist-run spaces polvo and Motherland.

Mahasukha, mutha-sucka, puja con rojo, spirit of dank alleyways, as light merges into dark matter.

Polvo
Miguel Cortez will be showing an ongoing project of mixed media artworks dealing with the concept of "recycling" that began in 2006. I am taking this idea and creating multi-media works, such as digital photos, computer drawings, Flash animation, business cards, and bumper stickers. In April part of this project will be shown at the Krannert Museum in Champaign IL in a show titled "Landscapes of Experience and Imagination: Explorations by Midwest Latina/Latino Artists". For more info on this series go to: http://recycle-ideas.blogspot.com/

Project Focus
Description of Project: ProjectFOCUS is a volunteer organization that promotes global awareness of the complex lives of those living in Uganda. Through art and self expression, Project FOCUS strives to develop sustainable solutions to complex problems. Allowing communities to express themselves through photos, film, and handmade art will allow Project FOCUS to personalize the stories of the Ugandans and inspire those in the United States to act towards a cause and begin to combat the apathy that exists in the global culture.

This particular project combines the pin hole photography created by Ugandan students and by Project FOCUS' members, capturing the process through both photos and film. The photo project gives the student photo participants and the final audience the opportunity to appreciate non traditional photography. The students learned about the way light travels and effects the way one captures images, the importance of exposure times and f-stops, and the composition of an image. The youth also had a chance to understand the philosophy behind pinhole photography and then build traditional pinhole cameras out of tin cans, giant boxes, and matchboxes. This class also included teaching Ugandan artists the basics of photography and pinhole camera construction so that they could continue with the photography once Project FOCUS members left Uganda. The photos and film that were taken by Project FOCUS members has helped to capture the entire process and provide insight into the complex worlds of these youth.

Reuben Kincaid
http://www.reubenkincaid.blogspot.com/
RKAM provides a gallery showroom for its clients by opening a 200 square foot project space in Bridgeport, the community of the future. The project space gives our clients exposure to various audiences that visit the experimental cultural center, the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Reuben Kincaid has also procured a window display case that is viewable from the street. Both the project space and the window display give our clients a flexible space to work on their installations, ideas and other presentations of their work. The showroom also allows us to provide interested parties a concise look at our clients work. We will be showing prints from the recent A Survey of Hallucinogenic Printmaking. Pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/versionfest/sets/72057594136155224/

Secret Order of the Lamprey
The Ever-So-Secret-Order Of The Lamprey was founded eons ago in response to the recognition of the artist as parasite, sucking on the soft fleshy underbelly of society. Every other Sunday we convene to eat drink and be merry (woohoo, yippee, yahoo) and show off our creations for the week. We can't allow people to create just anything: granting their intuition free reign to produce objects, paintings, poetry, or diversions from their own thoughts without any connection to the other pieces... drawing forth, from the ether, the unspoken object that never existed until they plucked it up and plopped it on a base.......That would be obscene!!! We may be Lampreys, but we are not barbarians!!! No, we use words. A stand against chaos! Every other week a word is chosen for the members to attempt to capture in some fashion. In our attempt to annihilate the over-inflated egos that abound, an adjudicator is summoned and put to the task of smiting those egos. Armed with a bevy of unspeakable weapons. And justice is served with the biting and the killing and the gnashing of the teeth and the murder and the mayhem and the killing,and the ... I shouldn't say any more. Long live the secret order!!!

Space 1026 (philly)
http://space1026.com/site.php
Space 1026 is a artist collective based in Philadelphia's Chinatown which consists of over 30 members and co-conspirators.

Founded in 1997 by four friends and recent RISD grads, Space has grown from its two floors of a building at 11th and Arch into an international art giant.

It is a supportive network of dozens of artists who share studios at the Space, past and present. It is dozens of artists who've had shows at the Space over the last 10 years.

Contributing artist are Myles, Meg Kemner, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Thom Lessner, Crystal Stokowski, Mark Price, Justin Myer Staller, Jesse Goldstien, Isaac Lin, Caitlin Emma Perkis, Ben Woodward, Delilah Knuckley, Zac Beaver, O. Roman Hasiuk, Jayson Scott Musson, Jason Hsu, Alex Lukas, Elena Nestico, Mollie Williamson, Bill McRight, Salty Snacks, Ted Passon, Jesse Olanday, Beth Brandon, Dave Dunn, and more.

Stop Trying So Hard (NY)

Earthman (Texas)

Team Lump, Manifestation Gestation Station (NC)
http://www.teamlump.org
For NFO XPO TeamLump will be installing, "Manifestation Gestation
Station", a large drawing wall of over 350 small drawings. In a Declaration of TeamLump, published in Jan/Feb issue of NY Arts Magazine, TeamLump listed 356 adjectives that describe our collective prowess. With "Manifestation Gestation Station" , we will display a drawing for each listed adjective in the order of the original declaration. Also, we will be exhibiting two collaborative sculptures that sit on the floor in front of the wall.

The Finch Gallery
http://www.finchgallery.com
The Finch Gallery will be launching a young artist education program at our space in Humboldt Park. It is to be a one-on-one mentoring course designed to help high school students prepare themselves for higher level arts education. Focus is primarily on portfolio development and the exploring of new technical approaches in each student's media of interest. Information will also be provided concerning specific programs of the nation's art academies and state universities.

Our presence at the NFO XPO is to gain contact with potential instructors for the program and to built a registry of working artists in the city. This database will be used to form a small panel of artists working in a similar field which are to meet with the student and to further expose them to innovative techniques and allow for direct contact with professionals in their future working environments.

As an exhibition venue, our goal is to bridge the esoteric divide between artist and audience in an effort to facilitate learning opportunities on both sides. Located in a storefront near the intersection of Armitage and California, The Finch Gallery is designed to allow artists to showcase their work outside of the sales-oriented gallery circuit. We are focused on presenting one artist's work at a time, allowing for a fuller exploration of the ideas put forth. Open to all medias, the gallery has been home to experimental music and political cartoons, hand-made books and kinetic sculpture.

The Gay Utopia
The gay utopia is an imaginary future in which gender, sexuality, and identity are fluid and in which
pleasure is unregulated by either external or internal censors. It's a place where taboos dissolve and
sublimation vanishes; every relationship is erotic, every action sensual. At NFO XPO, we want to pass out a print overview of the project and promote the site, just because we're proud of it. We don't know if there will be another edition at any point.

The Plaines Project
myspace/plaineprojects
The Plaines Project is a collectively run live/work alternative art gallery and show space located in East Pilsen, Chicago. The Plaines Project seeks to accommodate the production and exhibition of a broad spectrum of creative practices and progressive social exchanges by providing a venue for such cultural activity to thrive. With two floors of mixed use project and gallery space, as well as private living quarters for its residents, The Plaines Project is an experiment in the possibilities of urban domesticity by blurring the lines between public and residential.

At this years NFO XPO, The Plaines Project will host a recruitment station for the Field Of Dreams show, which will be opening on the last day of Version Fest. The Field Of Dreams show will be part sculpture garden, part autonomous art zone, and part BBQ celebration in which art is "curated" and installed in a vacant block of Chicago's post-industrial landscape. If you have any questions or would like to participate, please stop by the booth or e-mail plainesproject@gmail.com

Three Walls

The Tea Party
Leaping off from the Tea Party scene in Walt Disney's version of Caroll's classic Alice stories, the Non-Traditional Approach to Clay class taught by Max Reinhardt at SAIC seeks to render an altogether different version or notion of the tea party. Incorporating the concept of the simulacrum, the class will create an installation and performance rendering various versions of tea ceremonies and "parties" through a kind of absurdist conflation or contrast. This event will consist of sculpted and found objects, dance, art performance, music, food and costuming.

Trendbeheer (NL)
Trendbeheer is the biggest weblog about art and visual culture in the Netherlands. Trendbeheer provides an update on international developments in art and culture with an emphasis on it’s homebase, the city of Rotterdam. For the NFO XPO Trendbeheer will show 6 Rotterdam based artists; Jeroen Jongeleen, Jan de Bruin, Alex Jacobs, Jeroen Kuster, Jeroen Bosch and Niels Post.