The Version festival has been using mixed metaphors to spread the gospel of independent art and utopian politics for six years now. This year’s theme is The Insurrection Internationale, and the main show, We’re Rollin’, They’re Hatin, combines dice-based fantasy role-playing with the usual brew of anarchist ideals and noise music (or is that musical noise?). According to organizer Ed Marszewski, this will be the most coherent Version to date, inaugurating the peripatetic festival’s recently rehabbed headquarters, a former department store at 3219 S. Morgan called the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
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“We’re Rollin’, They’re Hatin’,” happening at the new space, features lots of screenings, performance, music, visual art, and of course role-playing games. You’ll also have the opportunity to view entries in Lumpen magazine’s recent fashion show, The Secret of the Ranger: Version Fantasy Fund-raiser (expect goat-horn headdresses and furry barbarian underwear).
Screenings and performances take place in a castle installation built by Cody Hudson and Andrew J. Rice. In its basement, viewers can enter a forest created by Jackie Kilmer and a fantasy village by Drew Zigler and Randall Cristopher Bailey. Todd Bailey and Nate Murphy’s dazzling homemade Dungeons & Dragons module debuts (see Noah Berlatsky’s Our Town in Section 1), and artists like Seripop and Noah Butkus provide trippy wall work.
