15 free things to do this weekend | November 10–13, 2011

Design on the Edge

John Ronan, design for a SuperElevated transit system, 2011.

Photo: Courtesy of the Chicago Architecture Foundation

Thursday 10

6pm, Ferguson Lecture Hall, Columbia College
Luster speaks about the photographs in her book, Tooth for an Eye: A Choreography of Violence in Orleans Parish, which depicts sites in New Orleans where homicides have occurred. A selection of these works appears in the Museum of Contemporary Photography's exhibition "Crime Unseen.


6:30pm-8:30pm, DePaul Art Museum
AREA Chicago releases Notes for a People’s Atlas, which documents the growth of its six-year-old community mapping project to cities such as Zagreb, Croatia; Portland, Oregon; and Granada, Spain. Contributors include Samuel Barnett, Euan Hague, Jayne Hileman, Daniel Tucker and Rebecca Zorach.


7pm, Block Cinema, Northwestern University
Dir. Chad Freidrichs. 2011. 83mins. Documentary. The rise and fall of public housing in America is explored through the fate of a housing project in St. Louis that was demolished in the mid-'70s.


10pm, Beauty BarThe Porn and Chicken crew expands its SRTB (So Ready to Bang) franchise to Beauty Bar with a chicken's favorite counterpart, the waffle. The music salon hosts Lollapalooza alum Lady D, Gun Love, Phenom and Porn and Chicken resident Orville Klein, who spin house, electro and dubstep. GlitterGuts shoots from the photo booth, and the girls from Strange Beauty do up free hair extensions.

Friday 11

6pm, Instituto Cervantes Chicago
The architect of the Thompson Center and the University of Chicago's Mansueto Library, among many other local projects, speaks at the closing reception for "European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award 2011."


7pm, Northeastern Illinois University Center for Inner City Studies
The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians' Great Black Music Project kicks off a new concert series at NEIU's Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, which has blossomed into a hub for the South Side organization in the year since the Velvet Lounge closed. The AACM roster presented here includes singer and flutist Taalib-Din Ziyad, pianist Ann Ward, saxist Edwin Daugherty and percussionist Art "Turk" Burton.


9pm, WTTW Channel 11
Kartemquin Films' A Good Man follows choreographer Bill T. Jones in process for Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray, his 2009 work inspired by Abraham Lincoln and commissioned by the Ravinia Festival. This fine doc functions as a kind of decoder ring for Fondly, lending valuable insight to the unwieldy production's less-than-parsable moments. Part of PBS's American Masters series.


9:30pm, Abbey Pub
You don't have to love a band that cites acts as diverse as Can, the Flamin' Groovies and the Staple Singers as influences, but you should at least give it a shot, especially when it nails psychedelic soul as well as the Velcro Lewis Group.

Saturday 12

12pm-4pm, Empty Bottle
If your only Bottle experiences involve booze and ringing ears, don't miss this chance to hit up the rock venue in a more mellow fashion. Every item for sale—from feather earrings to baby clothing—is handmade, and prices are reasonable.


1pm, moniquemeloche
Stack speaks about the mesmerizing paintings in his ongoing show with Grabner, chair of SAIC's department of painting and drawing.


2pm-4pm, Women Made Gallery
"Bare Essentials" curator Ingrid Fassbender speaks with Paul Krainak, chair of Bradley University's department of art.


6pm-9pm, Iceberg Projects
Majeed, the former executive director of the South Side Community Art Center, presents sculptures inspired by the late Margaret Burroughs, who founded the SSCAC, and her activities as an artist, advocate and institution builder. By appointment only through Dec 30.

Sunday 13


9:30am-5pm, Chicago Architecture Foundation
Stanley Tigerman asked nine architects including Jeanne Gang, John Ronan and the late Doug Garofalo to propose El-oriented projects that would make Chicago a more livable city. Most ideas—such as Ronan’s plan to replace the Red Line with a maglev monorail topped by a path for cyclists and pedestrians—won’t be realized any time soon. But the show’s emphasis on public transit, sustainability and Chicago’s neighborhoods rather than the Loop couldn’t be more practical.


2pm, Art Institute of Chicago
The second installment of Avalon's titanic undertaking of the complete Beethoven string quartets, this gig compares and contrasts his first and 11th quartets with the paintings of Gerhard Richter, in a gallery tour afterward.


10pm, The Shrine
Rising out of the South Side in the early ’90s, DJ Terry Hunter has been synonymous with Chicago house ever since. The past few years have seen a lot of action between him and Masters at Work’s Kenny Dope, but at this new Sunday residency, it’s all Hunter.