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Workshop: RP Collaborative Soundwork

What do we learn about a place by listening to the sounds that comprise its sonic dimensions?
Led by multi-disciplinary artist Mark Alcazar Diaz, participants in this sound workshop will explore the soundscapes of the Rogers Park neighborhood through walks and sound exercises. As the participants traverse the area, they will record sound clips of various parts of the community and reflect on the human and nonhuman interactions that generate these sounds. The group will then create a collective sound work that will illuminate layers of crossings and friction between the indeterminate objects that make up Rogers Park.
The collaboratively created soundpiece will be part of a group exhibition held at PO Box Collective in Spring-Summer 2025.
This workshop is free and open to the public.

Generative Writing Workshop + Potluck

The PO Box Poetry Series now offers a generative writing workshop and potluck prior to the reading, starting at 6:30pm.

The workshop, led by Alex Jane Cope, features guest writers and aims to look at work by the months’ readers as well as work that has inspired their poetry.

We encourage folks to bring something to eat for themselves or to share with the group.

RSVP encouraged but not required.

Workshop in Trans Studies Welcome Reception

Northwestern University’s Workshop in Trans Studies (WITS) invites you to an opening reception at the PO Box. Come to learn more about WITS programming and discuss future projects and possibilities.

Food + drinks provided.

Use QR code to RSVP or email: [email protected]

The PO Box Poetry Series – every 3rd Thursday

The PO Box Poetry Series aims to bring local poets together with poets from across the city and beyond to build a stronger community through poetry.

The November reading features Megan Pinto, Daniel Borzutzky, and Caitlin Cowan.

The event is free and open to the public!

The PO Box space is wheelchair accessible and has a single stall bathroom. Masks are required. Free masks are provided for those who don’t have one.

We hope to see you there!

Event contact: [email protected]

PO Box Poetry Series – every 3rd Thursday

The PO Box Poetry Series aims to bring local poets together with poets from across the city and beyond to build a stronger community through poetry.

The October reading features Cass Donish, Temperance Aghamohammadi, and Kai Ihns.

The event is free and open to the public!

The PO Box space is wheelchair accessible and has a single stall bathroom. Masks are required. Free masks are provided for those who don’t have one.

We hope to see you there!

Event contact: [email protected]

PO Box Poetry Series – every 3rd Thursday

The PO Box Poetry Series aims to bring local poets together with poets from across the city and beyond to build a stronger community through poetry.

The September reading features Lisa Low, Alyssa Moore, and Chris Rife.

The event is free and open to the public!

The PO Box space is wheelchair accessible and has a single stall bathroom. Masks are required. Free masks are provided for those who don’t have one.

We hope to see you there!

Event contact: [email protected]

Film Screening & Discussion: An Island and One Night (Une Ile et Une Nuit)

PO Box Collective is thrilled to present an exclusive screening of An Island and One Night (Une Ile et Une Nuit) from the French ZAD-occupation of the Quartier Libre de Lentillères, about the rebellious joy of radical land reclamation.

ZAD, or “zone à defender,” has entered the European lexicon as a general term for militant direct collective action against large-scale development projects. To be a “zadiste” is defined in the Le Petit Robert dictionary as “a militant occupying a ZAD to oppose a proposed development that would damage the environment.”

An Island and One Night (1 hour 40 mins) is a fictional film that was made collectively over two years by the residents and users of the Quartier Libre des Lentillères, a self-managed place extending over the last market gardening lands of the city of Dijon. Eight hectares have been occupied and brought back into cultivation for 13 years, in resistance to a concrete “ecocity” project that still threatens them today. The film is self-produced, self-distributed, and based on volunteer participation. It was shot on 16mm silver film and developed over the course of the area’s life, in correlation with it, to the rhythm of events and seasons.

An Island and One Night has screened widely in Europe, but is normally only shown when one of the activists from Lentillieres is with it. Activist/artist Kilian Jörg is visiting North America for two months in the Fall of 2024, and has been invited by the filmmakers to share it with us. Chicago is one of the very few screening sites in North America. Come hear from a visiting European radical who has spent time on many ZADs over the last years and will present the film as an introduction to the political strategy of ZADism.

A cross-Atlantic conversation about the differences and possible alliances between revolutionary projects of reclaiming land, commons and territories for radical ecological and anti-capitalist transformation between Kilian Jörg and Eman Abdelhadi, co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072.

The event is free and open to the public. The space is wheelchair accessible, has a single stall bathroom, and people are asked to wear masks (free masks will be provided to those who don’t have one).

Generative Writing Workshop + Potluck

The PO Box Poetry Series is now offering a generative writing workshop & potluck prior to each reading at 6:30pm-7:30pm.

This workshop is led by guest writers— sometimes readers, sometimes other poets local to Chicago. Either way, the workshop aims to read and consider work by that month’s readers as well as the work that has inspired their own poetry. We also encourage folks to bring a bite to eat for themselves or to share with the group.

PO Box Poetry Series Open Mic Featuring Léon Pradeau

The Po Box Poetry Series was started in the spring of 2022 to assist in bringing poetry back into the Rogers Park community, after many series shuttered during the pandemic. This month Alex Jane Cope will be hosting a multilingual open mic with a guest reader, Léon Pradeau. You can sign up for the Open Mic using the QR code (click on image to see QR code).

The readings are free & open to the public and the space is wheelchair accessible, has a single stall bathroom, and folks are, indeed, still asked to wear a mask (free masks will be provided to those who don’t have one).

We hope to see you there!

Union Film Workers’ Screening: Who Needs Sleep?

Please join us for a screening of Who Needs Sleep? by Haskell Wexler, hosted by local members of CREW (Caucus of Rank-and-File Entertainment Workers).
Union film workers will lead a post-discussion about current working issues as well as the recent film crew union IATSE contract negotiations.
Haskell Wexler was a well known cinematographer known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestWho’s Afraid of Virginia WoolfThe Conversation among many other notable films. Some of his projects dealt with social and political issues such as his Chicago-set 1969 film Medium Cool and the John Sayles film Matewan. In 2006, Wexler highlighted the issue of sleep deprivation and long work hours that many film workers experience in his documentary Who Needs Sleep? 
August 3, 2024
Doors 6:30
Screening 7:00
Free and open to the public!
ACCESSIBILITY:
Masks are required. The @poboxcollective is accessible by ramp with an accessible bathroom. Two air purifiers are always running.