Guerrilla Art Action 2007 Exhibition

Guerilla Art Action was a course designed to introduce secondary students to activist art and street theater; in it, the students collaboratively created and performed a conceptual piece. The first Guerrilla Art Action class in 2003 developed The Committee for Better Labeling, a satirical organization whose mission is to facilitate snap judgments and promote stereotypes. The students produced packets of stickers that mock the stereotypical labels people assign to one another. These labels were handed out as part of the performance on a busy downtown street in Chicago. The labels and other paraphernalia from the street performance were featured in an exhibition at Marwens main gallery in the spring of 2003. The second incarnation of Guerrilla Art Action in 2007 yielded the Transit Youth Movement (TYM), an organization of concerned teenage citizens critical of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Chicagos public transportation agency. Students in this class implored CTA riders they encountered outside of train platforms and bus stops to try their alternate form of public transportation, a customized toddler play vehicle they claimed could beat the CTAs painfully slow commute times. They also handed out literature that mimicked CTA fare cards to individuals outside of train stations and bus stops. The performance was documented and exhibited in Marwens main gallery in the summer of 2007.