AUX provides administrative support to help artist-run initiatives realize their work. We apply what we have learned as an artist-led nonprofit to support others through fiscal sponsorship, grant writing, project management, and offering space for cause-oriented gatherings. AUX operates on a sliding-scale, project-by-project basis.
Reach out if you are interested in working together!
Roman Susan is a grateful partner of Performance Response Journal, with support from the Walder Foundation, Hyde Park Art Center Artists Run Chicago Fund, and individual donors. Joining our Rogers Park storefront neighbors at PO Box Collective, we are acting as fiscal sponsors for their expanding efforts. Working with 6018North, we’re learning about our surrounding neighborhoods, local sustainability, and the arts infrastructure of Chicagoland. As a fiscal sponsor for Protected by Invisible Fence, we support the 2024-2025 Chicago Cultural Center residency of artist and choreographer Ginger Krebs. At 4750 N Sheridan Road, we are offering space for the North Side launch of Queer Trans Sit organized by Rosé Hernandez, SK Kerastas, and blake nemec.
In the past, we’ve relocated artworks with 062 to preserve and celebrate the creative legacy of Thomas Kong, helped build prairie platforms for the Chop Wood Carry Water residency, been the fiscal sponsor of Stitch x Stitch with support from Illinois Humanities, and facilitated a grant for The Back Room with support from The Propeller Fund.
The animation here was created by Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson to commemorate the start of the AUX program. Gwyneth was one of the Roman Susan directors in our early stages of learning how non-profiting worked for us.
Queer Trans Sit is a weekly artist-led meditation group alternating between the North Side meetings on Thursday evenings and South Side meetings on Saturday mornings. The initial gathering is organized by Rosé Hernandez, SK Kerastas, and blake nemec for those seeking the medicine of regular practice in community. Roman Susan is providing the space for Thursday evenings at 4750 N Sheridan Road in Uptown.
Protected by Invisible Fence is a work in development by Ginger Krebs as a part of her 2024-2025 Dance Studio Residency at the Chicago Cultural Center. Krebs began as an artist by making sculptures, but an interest in networks and relationship dynamics led her to want to enact systems through movement – and so she’s been making dances since 2005. Her dance draws from vernacular movement that non-dancers can relate to. Its physicality and self-effacing humor celebrate Midwestern working-class virtues. Often the movement is inherently funny without having an obvious joke to “get.” Ginger’s performances are preoccupied with power, and haunted by the ways power hides behind the mirages of capitalist ideology while enforcing visibility on other bodies. Roman Susan acts as a fiscal sponsor for this Residency.
Performance Response Journal is an online platform run by performing artists, writers, cultural producers, and witnesses of performance work in Chicago. Co-founded in 2016 by Joanna Furnans and Hope Goldman, and relaunched in 2020 with Aaliyah Christina and Felicia Holman, Performance Response Journal holds an open year-round call for response. Roman Susan has worked with PRJ since 2020 to facilitate financial support from the Walder Foundation, Hyde Park Art Center Artists Run Chicago Fund, and individual donors.
Image above is a film still from Trio A Translation Project by Cherrie Yu.
PO Box Collective is a creative intergenerational social practice center dedicated to building Rogers Park community through radical art making, mutual aid, and programming. PO Box embraces a horizontal organization model that centers marginalized voices while fostering mutual growth and healing. PO Box intentionally works to counter systemic oppression, while building up positive alternatives outside of those systems and structures. Roman Susan is working with PO Box Collective as a fiscal sponsor for grants, while the collective applies for their own nonprofit status.