Writers, performers, artists, musicians, designers!
Take a look at this cool opportunity and please pass on to fellow artists you think would be interested. The Orphan Works series at The Chicago Underground Library is looking for participants:

Orphan Works is a reinterpretation series, which will begin appearing again in 2009 on a bimonthly basis (third week of every other month) in May. The Chicago Underground Library is calling upon a variety of the most creative minds in Chicago to burrow deep into their collection of anonymous works or ones for which no further information on the author can be found. Commonly referred to as “Orphan Works,” these lost publications will be brought back to life: read, reinterpreted, and reunited with the audience they’ve been missing. These works may never see the light of day again unless you adopt them. (Each show features three interpreters performing, displaying, reading or otherwise showing their work.)

To participate please contact:
Hannah Kushnick
[email protected]

About the Chicago Underground Library’s archive:
The Chicago Underground Library is a location-specific archive of independent and small press media. We are always seeking books, magazines, zines, journals, broadsides, newspapers, and art books of all types, genres, and print runs as long as they were produced outside of mass media outlets. We accept everything from the area, regardless of perceived quality or importance, in order to create a detailed index from which connections among the publications will emerge.

The CUL seeks to give the underexposed a voice, give the community something new to chew on, and encourage artistic producers to make connections between different media, different backgrounds, and different social groups.

Image via Knot 84 Rooms

This just in from Chicago-based art collective Material Exchange, a group that deals with objects and materials whose “valued properties have diminished”: low-tech, homemade games are sought for a project that challenges the dominance high-technology.

The idea strikes me as a reverent albeit nostalgic look at simplicity for modern lives consumed by the newest, the latest, and the next big thing. Submission deadline is March 22nd, 2009.

Photo: Material Exchange Analog Pinball Machine

If you think you’ve seen all the wackiness possible on YouTube, brace yourself. All I can say is a certain Thorn2200 has created stop motion animation with Legos that enact the jokes of comedian Eddie Izzard.

So, for those of you who are freezing in the colder parts of the globe this winter, this is definitely the nerdy comedy to keep your spirits up. Behold, the animation of Eddie Izzard’s ‘death star canteen’:

In the words of our favorite web video maven Vanessa Roanhorse: “Chicken Goose Rhino Monkey, um OK!” Who knew balloons could be erotic?