Busker

BUSKER is an art space in Pilsen (formerly located in the East Village) operating out of the greenhouse of an old flowershop which is also home to various other projects, including dai5ychain. We host audio/visual projects and new media programming/performances and hope to combine resources and efforts with other local venues to help strengthen and support the Film/Video/NewMedia art community in Chicago. We operate as a non-commercial, artist-run project and are flexibility with curatorial approaches that gives artists a platform to facilitate critical discourse in contemporary mediums. We recognize the collaborative and distributive nature of new media practices and want to extend the role of BUSKER into contemporary modes of networking. BUSKER functions not only as a physical aggregation point of local new media practices in Chicago, but also as one of many nodes comprising a larger network of media art.

BUSKER's long term goals are to not only to help facilitate Film/Video/NewMedia projects to occur on an open, non-financially driven physical platform, but also to encourage artistic interaction with members of the immediate local community by means of educational programs, as well as workshops in conjunction with Chicago programs/spaces like Messhall and Marwin. BUSKER hopes that this type of interaction will help spur a more reciprocating relationship between local neighborhoods and local artists.

BUSKER, started in August 2005, is maintained by Tamas Kemenczy and Nicholas O'Brien, as well as the help and support of the rest of the flowershop residents. During the summer of 2006, BUSKER relocated to Pilsen due to the former building sadly being sold, demolished, and redeveloped.