About this project

2nd Floor Rear is a 24-hour festival of alternative spaces, apartment galleries, and ephemeral and migrant projects celebrating Chicago’s vibrant community of alternative and DIY art spaces.

 In 1980, the Neoists, a little-known avant-garde subculture descended from Fluxus, held their first annual "International Neoist Apartment Festival" or APT, a four-day long event complete with concerts, performances, film screenings, and installations, in the apartment of one of the members of the Neoist group. Poorly documented and marginally historicized, it is thought that APT carried on annually, in various iterations, until 1988.

 Drawing on the 24-hour block party model (think Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Mainx24 festival), 2nd Floor Rear adapts the spirit of APT to a condensed, 24-hour timeline. From noon on February 4th to noon on February 5th, festival participants such as Pop-up Art Loop, Carousel Space Projects, Milk Gallery, the Happy Collaborationists, and individual artists such as Chiara Galimberti and Karen Faith will host pop-up exhibitions, dream yoga sleepovers, site-specific installations, and New Wave synth-pop art extravaganzas.

Where the money goes:

Printing: promotional materials, identifying signage, and printed schedules and maps so y'all know what is happening and where.

Documentation: We want to throw our photographers and/or videographers some bones because good documentation=greater posterity, which will help with publicity and funding in the future, so we can keep this thing going.

Wishlist: If we get the basics covered, and this campaign is wildly successful, there are a few perk items we would like to cover, in this order: 1) a shuttle to and from an off-site afterparty, 2) refreshments for festival-goers, because art parties are hard work, and 3) recovery brunch. 

So the beauty of this campaign is that everything it funds benefits you, the festival attendee. More money=more perks, and ultimately more fun. Everyone wants that.