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BUILT Festival || Contained Collaboration
Built Festival encourages collaboration in container filled art metropolis
By Alexander Perry
The first annual Built Festival this past weekend evoked the kind of laid-back ambiance you would expect from a make-shift hive of nearly twenty shipping containers parked in an Aldi’s parking lot in the middle of Bucktown. Set to the steady rhythm of countless musicians (with a new band taking the stage every hour), pretense was set aside in favor of a peek behind the art-making process. While there was some good art on display, founder Tristan Hummel’s focus was more centered on community building. If there was a central goal in this loosely curated and eclectic celebration of art, it was to dispel the myth of the lonely, tortured artist.
Scattered throughout the festival grounds was a labyrinthine maze of huge shipping containers (the big eight foot by twenty foot kind you find on freight trains) and a few tents devoted to corporate sponsors. Each shipping container was handed over to a team of artists to do with what they will. Some transformed their containers into mini-galleries, others into printing press workshops. The skill of nearly a hundred artists was on display. Most collaborated into teams to create art and support each other’s work. In total, sixteen teams and thirty five “free-range” artists contributed. Art, the festival seemed to say, is not built in a vacuum by an individual but by a community of collaborators living out in the world. It does not have to be hidden until perfected, but should be openly shared during the process of creation.
Particularly notable in expressing this sentiment was the graphic design and printing press factory of CMY Kittens, a local graphic design team. The artists here were extremely friendly and happy to answer any questions about their artwork. They helped guide visitors through the entire graphic design process, from conception on to production. Both prints and original artwork (much of it seemingly made during the festival itself) decorated the walls of their little part of the art metropolis. Operating a printing press in the back of their shipping container, the collective cranked out free artwork for all to have.
This very open and friendly atmosphere permeated the festival. The goal, says Hummel, was to create a miniature city where artists and the public could walk around and share ideas. This was certainly achieved. More like a block party than a carefully curated exhibit, the event encouraged people to actually talk to the artists, listening to music and drinking PBR. While every art showing needs to secure some kind of funding, the choice of companies such as Fuze, PBR, and Dick Blick Art Materials helped give the festival a worldly, unpretentious feel, stressing the fact that artists belong to the same community as non-artists.
If there was one drawback to this block-party, do-it-yourself atmosphere, it was the lost potential of utilizing the shipping containers to their fullest. Many simply used the container’s space as a mini-gallery. This certainly fit in with the make-shift metropolis vibe, but it would have been great to see a more radical transformation of these unique spaces, much like Hummel’s own “Art on Track” event. Perhaps this bothersome onus for performative brilliance would be less a problem if the Festival (or something like it) was an ongoing, permanent fixture in Chicago. Rather than being an annual event, imagine a weekly (or bi-weekly) festival of art open to the public where artists freely share and collaborate. In any case, it is refreshing to get a glimpse into such an open community of artists thriving in Chicago.
