mrcc / continental drift itinerary

Some of you know that I've been helping to coordinate an itinerary for this foray by a few art-activists into the 'regional,' an effort some of us are calling the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor. There are many dimensions to the MRCC, and it is an idea or set of ideas more than anything else. But here's a few of us who decided to make the idea an experiential thing. For ten days in June, we will be traveling, experiencing, learning, and soaking in this region we probably at one time thought we knew so well.

Food justice, food ecology, sustainability, and settler histories are all on the idea-agenda. Strawberries are on the material agenda. (But we need some rain!)

The provisional itinerary of open events follows below. I'll update it as details continue to get firmed up.

People taking up the planning for this and coming along for some or all of the ten days include our collaborators and colleagues Brett Bloom, Claire Pentecost, Nick Brown, Sarah Kanouse, Brian Holmes, and others. Think about joining up for an afternoon, a day, or a few days.

And what is the Continental Drift, anyways?

Continental Drift is an invitation to look at our collective existence on all the relevant scales: the intimate, the local, the national, the continental and the global.

Continental Drift is a mobile assemblage of people presenting their projects, observations, experiments, discoveries and questions, and producing value through social exchange.

Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a self-educating tour through our concrete world and its abstract representations, discovering distant lives in familiar situations, and embracing the interdependency that links what is usually treated as separate.

Continental Drift is intended for anyone seeking to locate global economies, pressures and possibilities in daily life and to reorient aesthetic invention in response to an ethics of equality.

Email me for specifics on where and when.

    CHAMPAIGN - URBANA
DAY 1: Wednesday, June 4
* The Audacity of Desperation-- making compromises in an inadequate  political system.
* Kevin Hamiliton: the university, technology and markets (biocomputing lab).
* Claire Pentecost and Brian Holmes: Introduction to Drift.

DAY 2: Thursday, June 5
* 10:30-12:00 PM – Talk with Lisa Bralts-Kelly, 910 S. Lynn St., Urbana. Bralts-Kelly, direc-
tor of Urbana’s farmers market and veteran food activist, will share her knowledge on regional food sustainability and challenges for local populations.
* 12:30 PM – Visit Tomahnous Farms, Mahomet. Carpool from 910 S. Lynn St.,
Urbana at 12:00 PM. The farm grows organic fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs and honey. Haynes, farmer and land use activist, will give a tour and discuss issues with losing farm land in this ‘suburb’ of Champaign.

* 7 PM:  Exhibition and potluck at 706 E. Fairlawn, Urbana. There will be projects about the re-
use of locally produced waste, imagined neighborhoods,
and things to take with you.  (www.letsremake.info/garage-
garden.html)

DAY 3: Friday, June 6
MORNING
* 10 AM–Fighting Toxicity, Douglass Branch Library, 504 E. Grove Street, Champaign. Ryan Griffis with members of CUCPJ: Racialized geography, toxic tour.

AFTERNOON
* Drift to Chicago/next stop with intermission at an Illinois State rest stop.
* 6:00 PM – Movies & discussion: Who controls our food? Our Daily Bread (1934)
& The World According to Monsanto (2008)
@ Mess Hall, 6932 N. Glenwood, Chicago.
Bring home- made bread to share. (www.messhall.org)

CHICAGO
DAY 4: Saturday, June 7
* Release Party for  AREA Chicago #6: City As Lab Saturday.
2pm-4pm
@ Paseo Prairie Garden, adjacent to the south exit of the Logan Square 'el' exit
This issue of AREA Chicago looks at Chicago as a policy laboratory in which experimental public policy in the areas of housing, labor and education are tested on the residents of Chicago.

* Gerald Raunig in dialogue.
7 pm
@ InCUBATE
2129 North Rockwell
Vienna-based philosopher visits Chicago for the first time, breaks down the latest in art/social action theory.

DAY 5: Sunday, June 8
* Tour the C/CURE-Raising Spirits! initiative with Martha Boyd in the Riverdale neighborhood.
1pm - 5pm, byo-picnic
meet @ Resource Center, 222 East 135th Pl.

The Raising Spirits! initiative is a local proposal for rebuilding healthy, self-sustaining human communities in the context of climate change and pervasive ecological and economic dysfunction. The project commits to creative problem-solving out of the challenges and opportunities in a particular community and place: in this case, Chicago's Riverdale community along the Little Calumet River - in our own lower 9th ward. Martha Boyd will describe the project and activities through the Chicago/Calumet Underground Railroad Effort (C/CURE) to link cultural and ecological tourism with community health and wealth. Environment, enterprise, history, policy, education, infrastructure -
and ultimately: survival.

Martha Boyd is Program Director of Angelic Organics Learning Center¹s Urban Initiative in Chicago.

* Screening of The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Filmmaker and author Sam Greenlee in attendance!
7 pm
@ Backstory Cafe
6100 South Blackstone
potluck dinner

MILWAUKEE
DAY 6: Monday June 9
* Visit to Growing Power.
* Visit the Black Holocaust Museum.
* Visit the Brady Street Pharmacy.

WESTWARD
DAY 7: Tuesday, June 10
* Travel to Elk Mound the long way, arrive in the late afternoon.
* Noon break at Marl Lake, swimming.
* Evening meal and hang out with the Langbys and some friends/collaborators of theirs from progressive home schooling and local food networks.

DAY 8: Wed, June 11
* Walk a mile to the Langby's neighbors for a tour of their organic dairy farm (they are farmer members of CROPP).
* Help out around the garden. Evening explorations.

DAY 9: Thurs, June 12
* Travel to Viroqua/LaFarge/West Lima.
* See and traipse the Brown Family land.
* Tour the HQ of CROPP
3:30 PM
* Evening picnic and walk-through of Heavy Duty Acres, with Mike Koppa.
* Lodge/camp at Dreamtime Village.

DAY 10: Friday, June 13
* Work on trellis projects at Dreamtime.
* Evening Drift session: Articulating our Visions.

MADISON
DAY 11: Sat, June 14
* Travel to Madison, stop somewhere for U-pick strawberries.
* Strawberry jam making party at the home of Dan and Sarah, plus strawberry shortcake feed.