Building block

In October of last year, artist and Columbia College professor Dan S. Wang found himself at the Hyde Park dinner table of an infamous stranger. Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman radical, served Wang, Wang’s wife and another couple grilled salmon with salad and bread. Ayers discussed dealing with the aftershocks of the right-wing smear campaign, which played up a tenuous link between Barack Obama and the Vietnam War–era radical. Ayers had become a target of death threats during the presidential election, and another of his university speaking engagements had just been canceled.

“When we got to Bill’s house, we were curious about what kind of mood he would be in and if we’d have to step lightly around the controversy,” says Wang, a self-described “student of the ’60s” who had read Ayers’s memoir, Fugitive Days. “The first indicator that this was a guy who was quite comfortable, if very tired, with it all was that his front door was wide open. There was a note that said, ‘Hello. Come in. I’m grilling out back.’”

Wang got into a bidding war for the four-person meal with Ayers at the December 2008 Wants and Needs Auction, which benefits AREA Chicago, a biannual magazine that covers art, education and activist practices in Chicago. Wang lost, but the winning couple invited him and his wife along on the condition that they split the $400 cost.

At AREA’s fourth-annual fund-raising auction on December 4, Ayers is once again offering dinner at the home he shares with his wife, Northwestern University law professor and former Weather Undergrounder Bernadine Dohrn. The auction inventory looks, as usual, like a group of activist artists and writers overthrew Sotheby’s. Over the years, the list has included an hour of consulting on poo composting and chicken keeping; a personal librarian to research questions on architecture, urban planning and design; and someone from the Illinois Arts Council to lobby public officials on an issue the bidder is pissed-off about. On the early list for the 2010 block: a dance party initiator service, a ride down the Chicago River on a handmade boat-gondola-catamaran called the Aqua Cat, a custom ringtone made by new-media artist Ryan Griffis and various homemade meals.

The AREA auction stresses service-oriented experiences to facilitate community interaction—part of the magazine’s goal, says Rebecca Zorach, a U. of C. art history prof who’s organizing this year’s offerings. “The auction brings people together,” she says. “People get to know one another while teaching or learning a skill.” In 2008 and ’09, bidders bought Zorach’s grad-school consulting services; in ’07, she scored a historical tour of the Haymarket Riot.

At last year’s AREA auction, Roxy Trudeau won a weekend staycation. In August, she brought five friends to the Edgewater condo (with private beach access) owned by MCA curator Tricia Van Eck. The condo association happened to be hosting its summer party, Patiopalooza. “They were all asking, ‘Where are you in town from?’” says Trudeau, the outreach and education coordinator at Chicago Women’s Health Center. “?‘Well, Logan Square, actually.’”

SAIC prof Claire Pentecost, an AREA auction regular, had the winning bid last year on an adult-sitting session by Temporary Services art group member Salem Collo-Julin. She has yet to claim it, explaining, “I’m waiting till my parents are in town and I have to go to work.”

“The auction is a playful version of community politics,” says SAIC prof Laurie Palmer, who’s offering, as she did in ’08, to build a cat entertainment center. “It gets people together in the spirit of giving what you have to give.”

AREA Chicago’s Wants and Needs Auction happens December 4. Visit areachicago.org closer to the event for location and time.

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