Welcome. Join Us!
A flyer from the original MDW Fair, designed by Jeremiah Chiu. / alt: a white, dark red, and pale blue poster that reads “MDW Fair: Visual Arts Landing in Chicago” in circular, capital letters.
For years, our organization, Public Media Institute, has been doing what we can to fight the good fight: bringing together various artists, activists, agitators, and educators from around the world; sharing their tactics and strategies for survival; and amplifying our collective efforts to build a better world.
The first MDW Fair was an important intersection that helped us retool our dissent and reactivate our mission. It was also a series of art exhibitions and conferences that took place in Chicago in 2011 and 2012, bringing artist-run spaces, organizations, and groups together over a weekend to share their work and ideas. It was launched during our annual Version Festival Convergence, an platform that promoted art and activism in all forms.
The manifold moments of discovery and conversation at the first MDW Fair helped facilitate and map possibilities, propelling us all forward to create more platforms and outlets, especially for the voices, stories, and ideas of the marginalized in our communities. We opened more art spaces, produced more publications, and opened an FM radio station. Since then, we try everything we can think of to help facilitate opportunity and access for the emerging and established organizations, individuals, and groups that need them. During the first months of the pandemic, we provided direct financial aid to working people in Chicagoland with our Quarantine Times project, a daily publication that inspired MDW Atlas, the 2022 initiative that you’re reading now. We also worked with dozens of restaurants and chefs to make over 150,000 hot meals and gave them to those who needed them, in an ongoing project called Community Kitchen. It was only possible to do this because of the mutual aid network that has developed around us over the decades. We celebrate the MDW Fair for helping us cement the bonds within that network.
In 2022, we are bringing back the spirit of that first MDW Fair, and expanding the period of interaction and programming, in the hope that we can spark some new ideas and immerse ourselves in some needed organized solidarity. In past ideations, the event itself became the main point of engagement. In-person communication and gathering remain very important in our social mediated age. However, in this edition of MDW, we want to introduce our six Midwestern partners, their work, and projects happening throughout the Central Midwest region, prior to gathering in Chicago. We want to start the conversation and to include folks who can't join us in-person at the Fair.
For the next few months, we will be publishing stories, artwork, media, and other genres from our partners and their friends and allies. Each of our organizing partners has nominated a July and August Editor, and these editors will each commission three pieces of work from their community. All the contributions will eventually become a book. We intend to create a living archive of strategies, and to open a dialogue with a Midwestern approach to facing the madness that surrounds us politically, civically, and economically.
Join us. We need you to help us build forward the world we want to live in.
Atlas questions?
Contact Mairead Case: mairead.case @ gmail
Images from some of the original MDW Fairs, which were held at the Iron Studios (pictured) and Mana Contemporary, where we will return 2022 MdW Assembly.
