Events on Friday, October 24

The Roots

Music: Hip-Hop

The Roots

Friday 10/24 @ Congress Theater

Defying the laws of gravity isn't always the aim of underground hip-hop artists, but for the legendary Roots crew, "between greenhouse... 

The Rumble Strips

Music

The Rumble Strips

Friday 10/24 @ Abbey Pub

Failed romantics the Rumble Strips have taken the UK by storm with the Jens Lekman-style tune "Girls and Boys in Love,"... 

An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

Film: Animation

Don Hertzfeldt

Friday 10/24 @ Music Box Theatre

Academy Award-nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt stops in Chicago tonight to show a selection of his shorts and premiere his new film,... 

Legendary Pink Dots

Music: Experimental

Legendary Pink Dots

Friday 10/24 @ The Empty Bottle

Confounding music critics is not the Legendary Pink Dots' modus operandi, but it must amuse them to peruse the long lists... 

Found Footage Festival

Festival: Performing Arts

Found Footage Festival

Friday 10/24 @ Lakeshore Theater

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher have been hoarding found videos for more than 15 years: abandoned home movies, bizarre corporate-training tapes,... 

Ongoing Events

Cecil Balmond: <em>Solid Void</em>

Art

Cecil Balmond: Solid Void

Friday 10/24 @ Graham Foundation

Labyrinthine hedges of gleaming, die-cast metal fill the ground floor of the Graham Foundation's Prairie-style mansion, like viral arabesques from a... 

<em>The Dark Knight</em>: The IMAX Experience

Film

The Dark Knight

Friday 10/24 @ Navy Pier

The Dark Knight might go down as Heath Ledger's final film, but it would be a shame if the actor's tragic... 

Trisha Brown Dance Company: Four Decades of Dance

Dance

Trisha Brown Dance Company

Friday 10/24 @ Dance Center of Columbia College

Of the dozen-odd postmodern choreographers to come out of the "Judson Church" movement, none has had as much lasting impact as... 

<em>Twisted Into Recognition: Clich&eacute;</em><em>s of Jews and Others</em>

Art

Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others

Friday 10/24 @ Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

Hoping to eliminate stereotypes about Jewish people — they all subsist on gefilte fish and bagels with lox, for example —... 

Disruptions: The Political in Art Now

Conferences

Disruptions: The Political in Art Now

Friday 10/24 @ Museum of Contemporary Art

What's the relationship between art and politics? How can art contribute to social change? These questions aren't new, but they never... 

<em>Art of Democracy</em>

Art

Art of Democracy

Friday 10/24 @ Loyola University Museum of Art

Whether critiquing economic injustice, spotlighting social issues, satirizing public officials, or inspiring change, 20th-century printmaking has a long and storied history... 

<em>Night of the Living Artist</em>

Art

Night of the Living Artist

Friday 10/24 @ Chicago Art Department

Turning your artistic influences into zombies is either a Halloween-flavored Oepidal dream or a curiously macabre motion for their immortality. In... 

<em>Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books</em>

Special Event

Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Childrens Books

Friday 10/24 @ The Newberry Library

The Newberry Library's celebrated collection boasts copies of Shakespeare's first folio and the Popol Vuh, but a new exhibition showcases a... 

Amy Mayfield: <em>Doog Vs. Live</em>

Art

Amy Mayfield

Friday 10/24 @ threewalls

With viscous rivers of paint and delicate black lines, Amy Mayfield conjures phantasmagorical realms that are sensuous and chaotic, sinister yet... 

44th Chicago International Film Festival

Festival: Performing Arts

Chicago International Film Festival

Friday 10/24 @ Various locations

Now in its 44th year, the Chicago International Film Festival offers a sneak preview of the most anticipated movies of the... 

Tamar Halpern

Art: Photography

Tamar Halpern

Friday 10/24 @ Tony Wight Gallery

Should anyone need criteria by which to measure the success of emerging artists, one could investigate whether they had their first... 

<em>Campaign Supernova!</em><em> or How Many Democrats Does It Take to Lose an Election?</em>

Comedy

Campaign Supernova!

Friday 10/24 @ The Second City e.t.c.

From the director of the recent hit Between Barack and a Hard Place comes another election-season winner, Campaign Supernova!, performed by... 

Josh Azzarella

Art

Josh Azzarella

Friday 10/24 @ Kavi Gupta Gallery

Josh Azzarella's photographs and videos smolder with an eerie silence and a sense of emptiness. They are also faintly, unnervingly familiar.... 

Joe DeNardo and Aaron Henderson

Art

Joe DeNardo and Aaron Henderson

Friday 10/24 @ Normal Projects

Normal Projects is a new salon-style apartment gallery that spotlights video and works on paper. The space hosts two-person shows by... 

<em>Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art</em>

Art

Displacement

Friday 10/24 @ Smart Museum of Art

China's Three Gorges Dam has become a dark muse for many artists. One of the largest engineering efforts in history, it... 

<em>Sunday Painters: Discarded Paintings by Gifted Amateurs</em>

Art

Discarded Paintings by Gifted Amateurs

Friday 10/24 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

Whereas most found-art exhibitions make aesthetic objects out of forgotten knick-knacks, the focus of this exhibition is, more literally, fine art... 

<em>Deceptive Design: Experiments in Furniture</em>

Art

Deceptive Design

Friday 10/24 @ Chicago Cultural Center

Can a chair be more than just a place to sit and rest your feet? In a modern-art exhibit, the answer... 

Carrie Schneider: <em>How Not to Fall</em>

Art

Carrie Schneider: How Not to Fall

Friday 10/24 @ moniquemeloche gallery

The northern landscape is a compelling, mysterious presence in Carrie Schneider's new photographs and films, made mostly in Finland this past... 

Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary

City Gems

Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary

Friday 10/24 @ Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary

If nothing else, taking up birdwatching gives you a convenient excuse to bring terms like "Magnificent Frigatebird" and "Purple Gallinule" into... 

Baby Wants Candy

Comedy

Baby Wants Candy

Friday 10/24 @ Apollo Theater

Whether you love or fear musicals, you can delight in Baby Wants Candy, a fully improvised comedy show with song, dance,... 

Francis Al&yuml;s

Art

Francis Alÿs

Friday 10/24 @ The Renaissance Society

Francis Alÿs is a renowned nomad who follows a global circuit of art biennials and museum commissions, but in his work... 

<em>Zero for Conduct</em> (1933) and <em>Man's Castle </em>(1933)

Film: Double Feature

Zero for Conduct and Man's Castle

Friday 10/24 @ Gene Siskel Film Center

A revenge fantasy with an emphasis on the fantastical, Jean Vigo's comic-surrealist classic Zero for Conduct is the alpha point for... 

Rodney Graham

Art

Rodney Graham

Friday 10/24 @ Donald Young Gallery

Rodney Graham's latest exhibition features both a kinetic op-art sculpture modeled after a Black Sabbath stage set and a room full... 

Ian Pedigo: <em>Left in the Open Terraces</em>

Art

Ian Pedigo

Friday 10/24 @ 65GRAND

Although Ian Pedigo makes raw-feeling sculptures out of humble materials — cardboard, plastic, scraps of wood — they reflect a certain... 

<em>Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum</em>

Special Event

Chic Chicago

Friday 10/24 @ Chicago History Museum

In this glittering costume exhibition, the Chicago History Museum presents a rarely seen collection of haute couture fashions designed for the... 

Doug Smithenry: <em>Real Nobodies</em>

Art

Doug Smithenry

Friday 10/24 @ Packer Schopf Gallery

In his latest exhibition exploring the phenomenon of Internet identities, painter Doug Smithenry slyly asks "Are you a nobody?" He calls... 

<em>Religulous</em>

Film: Documentary

Religulous

Friday 10/24 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema

In Religulous, veteran comedian and free thinker Bill Maher travels the world, visiting a Holy Land theme park in Florida, London's... 

Alec Soth: <em>Dog Days, Bogot&aacute;</em>

Art: Photography

Alec Soth

Friday 10/24 @ Stephen Daiter Gallery

In 2002, after finishing his breakthrough series Sleeping by the Mississippi, photographer Alec Soth traveled to Bogotá, Columbia, to adopt a... 

<em>Buddy:  The Buddy Holly Story</em>

Theatre

Buddy

Friday 10/24 @ Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place

Mamma Mia! and Movin' Out conquered Broadway even though their books are, respectively, a silly romantic melodrama and a confused narrative... 

Doug and Mike Starn: <em>alleverythingthatisyou</em>

Art: Photography

Doug and Mike Starn

Friday 10/24 @ David Weinberg Gallery

Conventional wisdom has it that art and science don't get along. For years, artists/twins Mike and Doug Starn have been gracefully... 

Mike Andrews and Kaylee Rae Wyant: <em>Built According to an Arrangement of Domestic Functions Which Has Now Reached the Final Stage of an Old Concept</em>

Art

Mike Andrews and Kaylee Rae Wyant

Friday 10/24 @ Roots & Culture

Mike Andrews and Kaylee Rae Wyant's joint exhibition coyly takes the guise of a domestic scene — furniture positioned appropriately, paintings... 

New Catalogue: <em>Sergio Vieira de Mello: Rally Paris-Darfur</em>

Art

New Catalogue: Sergio Vieira de Mello: Rally Paris-Darfur  

Friday 10/24 @ Rhona Hoffman Gallery

Artist collaborative New Catalogue often operates like a stock-photo agency or a design company in order to explore fictional imagery and... 

<em>Jack Kerouac: On the Road</em>

Special Event

Jack Kerouac: On the Road

Friday 10/24 @ Center for Book & Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago

Jack Kerouac's On the Road — the landmark work of the Beat Generation — is a thrilling, chaotic, Benzedrine-soaked whirl of... 

<em>Made in Chicago: Photographs from the Bank of America LaSalle Collection</em>

Art: Photography

Made in Chicago

Friday 10/24 @ Chicago Cultural Center

For years, the photographic collection of Chicago's LaSalle Bank has been one of the small number of corporate art collections to... 

Art

Marcel Broodthaers: Décor: A Conquest

Friday 10/24 @ The Arts Club of Chicago

Though it's cited as a seminal example of installation art, Marcel Broodthaers imagined his late work Décor: A Conquest (1975) as... 

Smart Home: Green + Wired

City Gems

Smart Home

Friday 10/24 @ Museum Campus

Just admit it, you've ogled the sleek modern houses you pass on certain streets and wished you could peek inside. The... 

<em> Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Art and Photography of Paris</em>

Art

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Friday 10/24 @ The Art Institute of Chicago

A canonized master of photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson's legacy includes a staggering number of great images, as well as his influential idea... 

<em>Kafka on the Shore</em>

Theatre

Kafka on the Shore

Friday 10/24 @ Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

Novelist Haruki Murakami may be our preeminent purveyor of dreamlike narratives, fraught with surrealist tremors, pop-culture curios, and the echoes of... 

Regin Igloria: <em>The Legacy of Mountainous Prairies</em>

Art

Regin Igloria

Friday 10/24 @ Zg Gallery

With an eye to nature as a romantic ideal, Regin Igloria explores how we carry the wilderness along with us, both... 

<em>Psychodrama</em>

Art: Photography

Psychodrama

Friday 10/24 @ Golden

In personal memorabilia, frozen grins tend to dominate — smiling is the Pavlovian response to the appearance of a lens. Chicagoan... 

Bill O'Donnell: <em>Elevations</em>

Art: Photography

Bill O'Donnell

Friday 10/24 @ City Gallery

Bill O'Donnell's color photographs offer a world of spooky little vacation homes, troubling the eye with mixed-up scales and half-focused views.... 

Omer Fast

Art

Omer Fast

Friday 10/24 @ Betty Rymer Gallery

Omer Fast rightly grabbed the grand prize at the 2008 Whitney Biennial for The Casting, a challenging four-screen video piece that... 

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

City Gems

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

Friday 10/24 @ Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

Escape the roaring cars on Lake Shore Drive and the crowds at Lincoln Park Zoo by slipping through the unobtrusive entrance...