Deem Journal (2025)

24/10/2025

Consider this a reminder that pre-events for Symposium 03 kick off tonight!

We’re starting with our pre-party, co-hosted by and , at Stony Island Arts Bank, then heading to The Land School for a conversation between and and a sonic experience from Duane Powell ().

We also wanted to let you know that, in continuation with the last two years, our third Symposium will include a public Reference Room, located adjacent to the theater , where guests and museum visitors can experience some of the reading materials that have inspired Deem for the last six years. These texts represent a combination of research, specific mentions from the journal’s pages, and recommendations from contributors and participants from past issues and programs, as well as this year’s symposium. Some of the books have been sourced from the MCA library’s closed stacks. We hope not only to provide access to context and tools around Deem’s interests and values, but also to create a dedicated space for reflection and repose. The Reference Room will be open for the duration of Saturday’s program.

16/10/2025

Friday night’s inaugural dialogue between & at The Land School will be followed by a unique sound experience presented by seminal Chicago house DJ and cultural guardian Duane E Powell ().
A music historian and longtime steward of long-time steward of Rebuild’s work with the Frankie Knuckles Collection, he will spin a special selection of sonics inspired by the archive.

Powell’s love for music began at an early age, when he was growing up in the 1970s and exposed to Chicago’s rich sonic landscape. His lifelong passion has made him a beloved figure in Chicago’s music community and beyond. He is the creator of Sunday Service, a celebrated house music activation where he blends gospel and house to inspirational and tribal sounds, all with an aim to connect soulfully and deeply with his “congregation.” In the mid-1980s, he and his crew were the go-to marketeers for some of the city’s most prominent DJs, helping shape Chicago’s burgeoning music and club culture. Over a 12-year span, his title of tastemaker took shape, as he introduced several artists to the local and national stage. During this time, he worked extensively with the legendary Chicago record store Dr. Wax Records. In 1999, Powell launched SOUNDROTATION, further cultivating Chicago’s underground soul scene and facilitating performance debuts. As an ethnomusicologist and historian, he also hosts interactive lecture series, sharing his vast musical knowledge at various institutions. Holding residencies at legendary venues and galleries spanning the city of Chicago and beyond, he has shared the bill with legendary DJs and Grammy-winning producers and continues to move rooms with every set he spins.

(Please note that this event does not take place at the MCA. You can RSVP through Eventbrite at the link in our bio.)

15/10/2025

We hope you’re as excited as we are that Deem’s third symposium with is happening later this month. Tickets are still on sale! Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing all the details. In case you missed a beat, here’s a recap of what’s in store.

On Friday October 24th, we’ll be touching down in Chicago with a welcome pre-party, hosted by , at Stony Island Arts Bank. The first program in our Symposium, in partnership with , will be a conversation between and later that evening at The Land School, followed by a sonic experience presented by Duane Powell ().

On Saturday October 25th at , the day will begin with a keynote from followed by a conversation between Ghian Foreman (), Andres L. Hernandez (), and Katherine Darnstadt (). After lunch, we’ll reconvene for our first-ever Practice Activation with , followed by a conversation between Nadia Elokdah (), Cate Fox, and Sruti Suryanarayanan (), and Marz Lovejoy (). We’ll close with an endnote by Mabel O. Wilson.

We can’t wait, and for those of you who will be there in person, we can’t wait to see you, too.

If you can’t make it but would like to join for any or all parts of this program, virtual streaming tickets are still available at the link in our bio

02/10/2025

Festivities on Friday 10/24 will begin with a Pre-Party at Stony Island Arts Bank hosted by our partners . The space of this former savings and loan was restored by and reopened in 2015 as a hybrid gallery, library, media archive, and community center aimed at preserving Black culture and artistic expression. This fall, it serves as a site of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, hosting five installations by architects and designers from around the world.

Please also note that it is located only a 5 minute drive/15 minute walk from The Land School (’s newest space-based project in the former St. Laurence Elementary) where Symposium programming will begin that evening at 7PM!

26/09/2025

Our second dialogue on 10/25 welcomes Nadia Elokdah (), Cate Fox, and Sruti Suryanarayanan () for a conversation moderated by Marz Lovejoy () on solidarity economies for the present. Paying special consideration to artists and culture workers who are most affected by our current administration’s defunding actions, they will reconsider what it takes to meaningfully sustain the work of artists over time.

Nadia Elokdah is an urbanist and design strategist with more than a decade working at the intersection of public systems and cultural practice. She currently serves as Vice President & Director of Programs at . She is devoted to civic engagement through culturally responsible, inclusive, and equitable design practice.

Cate Fox is the Director of AmbitioUS—’ national pooled fund program that invests in alternative economic paradigms and fresh social contracts in ways that artists and cultural communities can achieve financial freedom. Prior to joining CCI, she spent nine years at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Sruti Suryanarayanan is an Artist Organizer with , a collective that exists to grow an arts/culture movement rooted in solidarity by centering artists and cultural workers making systems-change irresistible. Based in Brooklyn, NY, they build systems that help people channel their culture to resist the dominant systems of racial, economic, and migration inequity.

Marz Lovejoy is an artist, community caretaker, and cultural strategist
born in the Midwest and raised on both coasts.. Drawing from both nonprofit and creative sectors, she creates projects that are expressive and structurally transformative. Committed to reimagining systems of valuable human connection, she views alternative currencies—beyond monetary exchange—essential to sustainable models of thriving and collective well-being. She is the Founder and Executive Director of and a student-midwife under the guidance of Minnesota’s only two Black homebirth midwives.

Symposium tickets (with both live and streaming options) are on sale through the link in our bio.

23/09/2025

Our approach to design is all about community, so we’re teaming up to give away tickets to BOTH The Design Summit for Friends of Friends and the Deem Symposium.
To win: Jump in the comments and tag at least one friend in the design community that you’d bring with. Follow .designsummit and
Watch your inbox, we’ll pick winner(s) by Friday 9/25

16/09/2025

We’re so excited to tell you more about Symposium 03’s program.

For the first dialogue on Saturday, October 25, Ghian Foreman (), Andres L. Hernandez (), and Katherine Darnstadt () will consider possibilities for spatial futures in Chicago, and what it means to design equitable approaches to urban revitalization and regeneration that are, both conceptually and functionally, by and for the communities who hold this city dear.

Ghian Foreman is the President and CEO of , which generates community wealth and amplifies local culture through shared pride, power, and investment for Chicago’s mid-South Side. Emerald South attracts and coordinates investment through community convening and collaborative partnerships that increase local ownership and prosperity.

Andres L. Hernandez is a conceptual artist and educator who explores models for imagining and existing otherwise. Inspired by the cultural, knowledge, and spatial production of African-descent peoples, his practice encompasses collaborative, socially-engaged, and independent artmaking. Hernandez’s projects include individual and collaborative commissions for Threewalls, University of Arizona, Venice Architecture Biennale, and Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Washington University in St. Louis.

Katherine Darnstadt is the founder of , an architecture and urbanism firm exploring the influence of design as small or as large as the context allows, in the search of social and spatial justice. Since founding Latent in 2010, Darnstadt and her firm have pursued projects at the bench, building, and block scale across Chicago and the Midwest.

Symposium tickets (with both live and streaming options) are on sale through the link in our bio.

12/09/2025

This year we’re bringing Symposium guests our first-ever Practice Activation—an interactive presentation that explores a discipline through participatory connection. We’re delighted to welcome architect turned speculative designer, educator, and storyteller , who will lead a meditation on futures practices and possibilities, and the art of imagining what could be.

Radha Mistry has a background in architecture, narrative environments, and strategic foresight. She leads the Americas Region foresight practice at global design and engineering firm, Arup, teaches futures studies and speculative design on the M.Arch I and II programs at Southern California Institute of Architecture, and spends most of her time exploring the impact of emerging trends and how they’ll change the way we design and make things in the future. Her purpose is to collaboratively build more equitable and inclusive futures: to make space for communities who might not yet see themselves in our future visions. Most recently, Radha established and led the Foresight practice at Autodesk and taught speculative design on the Design MBA program at California College of the Arts and the Parsons (The New School) MFA Transdisciplinary Design program. She has also exhibited during the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and worked on design-led community engagement initiatives in cities across Europe.

Symposium tickets (with both live and streaming options) are on sale through the link in our bio.

09/09/2025

Deem’s third Symposium will kick off on the evening of Friday October 24 with conversation, music, and mingling in partnership with and onsite at the St. Laurence Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side.

“Multi-Sensory Placemaking: A Social Practice Experience” brings full circle our fourth issue’s cover story with artist , which took place here exactly three years ago when the building was still under construction. This opening program will offer an embodied experience of the now-finished space, initiated by a conversation between Gates and cofounder/creative director Nu Goteh (), which will expand on the multi-sensory potentials of placemaking as a mode of social practice.

The discussion will be followed by a sound experience presented by seminal Chicago house DJ and music historian Duane Powell (), who is a long-time steward of Rebuild’s work with the Frankie Knuckles Collection. He will spin a special selection of sonics inspired by the archive.

Please note: The Friday, October 24 event does not take place at the MCA. It is included in your ticket, but please RSVP through Eventbrite.

08/09/2025

Deem’s third Symposium will kick off on the evening of Friday October 24 with conversation, music, and mingling in partnership with and onsite at the St. Laurence Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side.

“Multi-Sensory Placemaking: A Social Practice Experience” brings full circle our fourth issue’s cover story with artist , which took place here exactly three years ago when the building was still under construction. This opening program will offer an embodied experience of the now-finished space, initiated by a conversation between Gates and cofounder/creative director Nu Goteh (), which will expand on the multi-sensory potentials of placemaking as a mode of social practice.

The discussion will be followed by a sound experience presented by seminal Chicago house DJ and music historian Duane Powell (), who is a long-time steward of Rebuild’s work with the Frankie Knuckles Collection. He will spin a special selection of sonics inspired by the archive.

Please note: The Friday, October 24 event does not take place at the MCA. It is included in your ticket price, and we ask that you please RSVP through Eventbrite.

05/09/2025

This year’s endnote welcomes an architect, designer, scholar, and author whose work has inspired us since Deem’s inception. We’re honored that Mabel O. Wilson will join us to close our Symposium program on Saturday 10/25 .

She is the Nancy and George E Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a Professor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. With her practice Studio&, she was a member of the design team that recently completed the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. Exhibitions of her work have been featured at Venice Architecture Biennale, SFMoMA, Art Institute of Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennale, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Wilson has authored of Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016), Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012), and co-edited the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020). For the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, she was co-curator of the exhibition “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America” (2021).

In her endnote, Wilson will explore the complexities of the architectures of commemoration. She will reconsider how marginalized histories challenge conventional uses of archives and the design of commemorative landscapes in ways that catalyze new modalities of remembering and imagining possible futures.

04/09/2025

The keynote speaker who will usher in our third Symposium is an artist, educator, and community steward who is deeply immersed in her community here in Chicago.

We’re overjoyed to welcome , co-director of , whose work instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge, as well as constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.

Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at The Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Maine College of Art & Design; Hyde Park Art Center; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. Her work has been featured in notable group exhibitions, including the Carnegie Museum of Art; Driehaus Museum, IL; and MSU Broad Art Museum, among others. Soto has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Joyce Award; 3Arts Next Level Award; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund, among others. She has received numerous public commissions, including from Public Art Fund at Central Park, New York; Noor Riyadh; the Boston Public Art Triennial; the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Terminal 5 at O’Hare International Airport; Chicago Botanic Garden; and Millennium Park, Chicago.

To open the day on Saturday 10/25, Soto will speak on how she strives to empower unheard voices and celebrate fellow creatives in order to build spaces for reflection, convening, and collaboration.

Deem Journal

24/10/2025

16/10/2025

15/10/2025

02/10/2025

26/09/2025

23/09/2025

16/09/2025

12/09/2025

09/09/2025

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