Ben Pranger wistfully transforms found objects with an eye toward making them reveal poetic resonances. He changes contexts, proposes absurd usages, descends to puns, and creates curious conglomerations, all while discovering the frailties of literal meanings and systems. His intervention can at times be both slight and pointedly direct; Traveling Bag, 1992, is just that—a battered and much used small suitcase inside which Pranger secreted a motor and wheels. The flick of a switch sets this suitcase ambling across the floor in a slow and leisurely circle. It just goes and goes and goes. Ladder

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, founder of Street-Level Video (S-L.V.), organized what was a spectacular collaboration, a one-day, video-installation block party called Tele-Vecindario: A Street-Level Video Project, sponsored by Sculpture Chicago. With a complicated coalition, whose very name—Video Neighbors’ Network—emphasizes its delicate, perhaps temporary nature, Manglano-Ovalle brought together more than fifty teenagers who live in Chicago’s largely Latino West Town neighborhood (where the artist has lived for the past two years) to learn video techniques with which to map their community and