The Borderbend Arts Collective presents the Sixth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival, which is a multi-disciplinary collaboration festival that happens during Chicago Artists Month. During the Sixth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival, people in the Chicago area work with people outside of Chicago—both here in the U.S. and abroad; these collaborations include a range of art forms, such as music, dance, film, literature, and intermedia—and they are prepared or improvised. Some Chicago Calling events involve live feeds between Chicago and other locations. Many Chicago Calling        events also include partnerships with local arts organizations and other institutions.     
        2011 Chicago Calling events include “Bicycles and the Arts” at Chicago Hot Glass, Chicago Scratch Orchestra performances on WNUR’s Airplay show and at Ball Hall, an event at the Chicago Underground Library and Studio 914, “Berlin-Chicago Kaleidoscope: Cultures Connecting” at        Mess Hall, “Chicago Calling, Waiting for the Bus” at Café Ballou, “Oh, Bleek Strategies” at the Newberry Library, an event at Spudnik Press, a performance event at Elastic Sound & Vision Gallery, a soundwalk and Chicago Phonography concert at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, “Long Now & Then” at Myopic Books, “Open :: House :: Chicago :: Calling” at the Fine Arts Building, a performance with Chicago Modern Orchestra Project at Brown Rice, a Walkabout Theater Company performance at Defibrillator, and other TBA programs.       

Chicago Artists Month

        Chicago Artists Month is a citywide, collaborative effort showcasing Chicago visual artists and their work throughout the month of October. Coordinated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in partnership with the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, Chicago Artists Month showcases over 200 events, ranging from exhibitions to open studio tours and neighborhood art walks presented by museums, galleries, cultural centers, artist collaboratives, and other organizations throughout the city.  The primary goal of Chicago Artists Month is to raise awareness of the extraordinary quality and depth of our visual arts community.      
        Explore this site to see what happened during Chicago Artists Month 2010!     
        This year's theme, “Artful Networks,” explores the communities that nurture and inspire Chicago artists and their work. The people with whom artists choose to work can be supportive in encouraging creative growth, experimentation, dialogue among peers, and community building. Ranging from traditional residency programs to collaboratives to informal relationships, our communities impact the way we create, support and appreciate art.  In celebration of the Alliance of Artists Communities' 20th Anniversary Conference, which takes place in Chicago from October 19 to 22, Chicago Artists Month 2011 looks at the various ways artists in Chicago are influenced by their social environments.     
        Chicago Calling is presented by the Borderbend Arts Collective, a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to promote the arts by to creating opportunities for artists to explore the aesthetic geography along the borders and boundaries between art forms. Poetry, music, performance, and the visual arts are no longer discreet modes: hybrid forms, and inter-arts collaborations proliferate in global arenas.     
        Borderbend events encourage artists to use innovative aesthetic technologies and create strategies to engage and collaborate with artists from divergent communities in Chicago and the world. Multi-venue performances of music, poetry and visual arts exhibitions and interdisciplinary festivals reach beyond immediate cultural and aesthetic neighborhoods to cross borders and boundaries among participants, audiences and art forms. Annual Borderbend projects include Chicago Calling and the Mingus Awareness Project. Other organizations partner with Borderbend to enrich and extend the  reach of its programs.      
        Please consider supporting the Borderbend Arts Collective—your kind donation will help us to continue our ongoing arts and cultural        programming. Because Borderbend is a 501(c)(3) organization, your donation is tax deductible. www.borderbend.org