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Celebrating the release of Shifter’s issue 21, Other Spaces, artists and former Shifter contributors Zachary Cahill, Kelly Kaczynski, and Simon Leung deliver presentations at Mana Studios, Chicago. Shifter is a topical publication that aims to illuminate and broaden our understanding of the intersections between contemporary art, politics, and philosophy. The publication remains malleable and responsive in its form and activities, and represents a diversity of positions and backgrounds in its contributors. Originally conceived as an online publication in order to create an inter-continental commons, Shifter now engages in a multiplicity of formats including printed matter, public dialogues, and exhibitions. Shifter issue 21, “Other Spaces,” considers the body as a site where architecture’s traditional polarities of private and public collapse. This polarity, mirrored in the distinctions we draw between individual and social freedoms, and domestic and political action, are challenged everyday by spontaneous, collaborative re-imagingings of space. “Other Spaces” considers the body as a self-sufficient, albeit precarious, architecture. It not only builds, but becomes the very material with which to build.

Dessert, coffee, and wine are served from 8pm, while the artist presentations commence at 8:30pm. Additionally, Tara Lane and Lisa Yun Lee present Objectivist Cake and Confection Shop: Have your cake and eat it too, a pop-up homage to Wayne Thiebaud and the objective value of cake and sweets.

Zachary Cahill is an interdisciplinary artist whose art work and performances have been exhibited at the Center for Art and Media Technology Karlsruhe, Germany; rhus Kunstbygning, Aarhus, Denmark; TONYS, New York; The DeVos Art Museum, Marquette, Michigan; Princeton University; and threewalls, Chicago, among others. His writings have appeared in many exhibition catalogues and Mousse, The Journal of Visual Culture, Rethinking Marxism, Shifter, and Artforum. Cahill teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago where his is also the Open Practice Committee Coordinator.

Kelly Kaczynski is Chicago-based artist whose work has been featured at Gahlberg Gallery, Glen Ellyn, Illinois; threewalls, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Rowland Contemporary, Chicago; University at Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo, New York; Triple Candie, New York; Islip Art Museum, Islip, New York; Jos e Bienvenu Gallery, New York; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; and Boston Center for the Arts. Public installations include projects with the Main Line Art Center, Haverford, Pennsylvania; Interfaith Center of New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and Boston National Historic Park; and Boston Public Library. Curatorial projects include Mouthing (a sentient limb) at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, and an ongoing project-based entity, Unnamed Future Space. Kaczynski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University.

Simon Leung is from Hong Kong and lives in Los Angeles. His project-based practice spans mediums, including video, performance, sculpture, drawing, critical theory, fiction, and opera. His work has been exhibited at Pat Hearn Gallery, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago; Generali Foundation, Vienna; 1a space, Hong Kong; and Neue Gesellschaft f r Bildende Kunst, Berlin. Leung has participated in the 2008 Guangzhou Triennial, the 2005 Lule Summer Biennial, the 2003 Venice Biennale, and the 1993 Whitney Biennial. In 2008, he received a Guggenheim fellowship and the Art Journal Award for his essay The Look of Law. He has taught in the Studio Art Department at the University of California, Irvine since 2001.

Shifter is supported by a generous grant from the Graham Foundation.