WHO WE ARE
Public Media Institute (PMI) is a non-profit, community-based art and culture organization founded by Chicago artists and independent media workers who have operated spaces and publications as a front on the left for the arts since 1991, beginning with the periodical Lumpen Times. PMI champions the work of historically oppressed producers and strives to create inclusive and welcoming communities. Through a network of spaces, platforms, and partnerships, PMI generates exhibitions, publications, radio broadcasts, collaborative festivals, and more.
PMI is led by BIPOC and Queer cultural workers from Bridgeport, Chicagoland, and the greater midwest. Its many programs, all of which provide amplification for independent media and culture, include: 1. Publications, including Lumpen and the Quarantine Times; 2. Exhibitions, at Co-Prosperity Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center 3. Broadcast, including Lumpen Radio and Lumpen TV TV; 4. Buddy, a shop for local artists at the Chicago Cultural Center; and 5. MdW, a coalition of artist-run spaces in the Midwest through which PMI and its partners are working to uncover and archive the history and future of our region’s cultural and social ecologies.
Ahniya Butler
Exhibition Manager
ahniya (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Ahniya Butler is a Chicago-based visual artist, organizer, and art administrator. From 2015 to 2017 she served as a member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Teen Creative Agency before studying Art History with a focus in Museology at The University of Illinois Chicago. During her studies she continued to develop her multi-media arts & arts organizing practices. In 2018 she secured an Exhibitions & Programs Internship with PMI and has since risen to the position of Exhibition Manager. She has aided in the production in development of several projects including the MDW Fair. In her spare time she creates portraits, sculptures, and illustrations that explore mental wellness, anxiety, and sexual-emotional trauma. Her work is inspired by her experiences growing up in Robbins, IL.
Charly Garcia
Lumpen TV Director and Lead Engineer
charly (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Carlos “Charly” Garcia is an audiovisual artist, electronic arts advocate, and cultural organizer. He is also known for his work on independent radio, and his extensive world roots music research as a vinyl collector and music curator. Documenting and promoting music and cultural events during his time at Radio Arte allowed Charly to creatively shed a light on introducing innovative artistic tendencies in Latino communities by co-founding the Latin Electronic Music Festival, FMEL Chicago – a cultural event organized to encourage visual, digital and multimedia art and music. Charly is also a founding member of the Chicago-based DJ collective and record label SONORAMA, focusing on Latin Vintage Sounds from the 1960s and 1970s.
Kimberly Kim
Buddy Director
kim (at) publcmediainstitute.com
Kimberly Kim is an artist and arts administrator from Chicago. Kim's work focuses on manipulating ceramic objects and photography, which explores the cross section of art and product design. She is inspired by biographical storytelling, landscape polaroids that reference 1970’s Russian sci-fi cinema, and everyday kitchen objects visually imagined through bizarre and crude humor. Her cross-cultural background of having grown up in Seoul and Chicago has directed her to focus on methods of human connection over shared experiences, along with humor and tangibility of objects. She received BS in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Chicago and BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago.
S.Y. Lim
Programming Director
sy (at) publicmediainstitute.com
S.Y. Lim is an artist and organizer based in Chicago and Seoul. Lim founded 062, a 501(c)(3) art gallery, in 2017 in Bridgeport Chicago to support the work of emerging and established artists. Lim has been curating exhibitions partnering with other cultural organizations based in Chicago, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing etc. Before joining PMI in 2023, she worked as a Director of Programming at Mana Contemporary Chicago.
Edward Marszewski
Founding Director
edmarlumpen (at) gmail.com
Ed Marszewski is the Founding Director of Public Media Institute, the nonprofit corporation that programs the Co-Prosperity Sphere, produces the annual Version Festival and publishes Lumpen Magazine, Proximity Magazine, Mash Tun Journal, and other titles. He is the President of Marz Community Brewing Co. He also makes artwork from time to time, focusing on housing rights issues and gentrification.
Stephanie Manriquez
Lumpen Radio Director, Communities Amplified Director
stephanie (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Stephanie Manriquez is an award-winning writer, radio producer, journalist, and teaching artist based in Chicago. Documenting current events in public radio during her time at Radio Arte allowed Stephanie to creatively shed light on social justice issues affecting Latino communities. A Mexico City native, Stephanie has also reported on issues including adult education, literacy, housing, mental health and migration, including working closely with community organizations Casa Aztlán, Frida Kahlo Community Organization, Elevarte Community Studios and The Resurrection Project. She has collaborated with and contributed to several publications and her extended collaboration with Contratiempo since 2010, has allowed her to focus efforts on issues concerning Little Village and Pilsen’s immigrant community, development, arts and culture. Her previous work includes leading the National Museum of Mexican Art’s youth journalism program and as a member of the Social Justice News Nexus Fellowship at Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism, as a reporter and as a youth mentor. She was recognized in 2020 by the Field and MacArthur Foundations as one of 11 "Leaders for a New Chicago” and in 2023 received the “Public Humanities Award” from the IL Humanities.
Sara Prado
Buddy Manager
sara (at) hi-buddy.org
Sara Prado is a multidisciplinary designer and researcher. Her current work reflects her social practices, which explore intersectional and inclusive frameworks within design, craft, decoration, community, and research. Her work focuses on resisting western, eurocentric, and masculine influences that have dominated design, while exploring her own “in -between’’ Mexican American identity growing up in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MA in Designed Objects.
Nick Wylie
Managing Director
nick (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Nick Wylie is an artist, organizer, and educator based in Chicago. From 2015-18 he served as Associate Director of Southern Exposure, a 45-year-old artist-run nonprofit Southern Exposure in San Francisco. Wylie received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, did post-baccalaureate work in Art History at Northwestern University, and went to University of Illinois at Chicago for his MFA. In 2006 he co-founded Harold Arts, a Chicago-based non-profit arts organization with a residency in Ohio, and was its co-director until early 2010. He then co-founded ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions), a 501(c)3 with residency in rural Wisconsin and an extensive exhibitions program in Chicago. Wylie served as co-director of ACRE until moving to San Francisco and joining its Board of Directors in 2015. Wylie was also Founding Artistic Director at Mana Contemporary Chicago, a large art center in Pilsen from 2012-15. He has taught artmaking and arts administration courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of St Francis. Wylie's art practice, which incorporates video technology, performance, drawing, and queer futurity, has haunted galleries in Chicago and beyond for the past fifteen years. His work currently focuses on Elmer Ellsworth, dandy abolitionist and purported lover of Lincoln, who was first to die in the Civil War after taking down a giant Confederate flag.
Linglin Yan
Development and Finance Manager
linglin (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Linglin Yan is a visual artist. She graduated from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 with an emphasis in painting and drawing. From then, she pursued her practice of arts administration at the Research House for Asian Art and Co-Prosperity as a gallery assistant intern. In 2022, she received her Master’s Degree in Arts Management at George Mason University. Her recent practice primarily focuses on maintaining healthy financial status for nonprofits, including fundraising, grant writing and bookkeeping.
Brandon Alvendia
Technical Director
brandon (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Brandon Alvendia, artist, curator, and educator, promotes artist-run initiatives across North America, fostering community-driven exhibitions, events, and publications. Co-Founder of artLedge, BEN RUSSELL, The Storefront, and Silver Galleon Press, he served as Independent Curators International's Inaugural Curatorial Research Fellow in 2021, focusing on projects in the Mississippi River Basin. In addition to his curatorial work Brandon has extensive teaching experience at institutions including the School of The Art Institute, UIC, Columbia College, and MECA. Brandon holds degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Additionally, he has participated in programs such as the Copycat Academy in Toronto and the ICI Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans.
Noah Karapanagiotidis Communications Manager
noah (at) publicmediainstitute.com
Noah Karapanagiotidis is an artist and writer from Thessaloniki, Greece and London, UK. He received his BA in Visual Arts from the University of Chicago in 2023. He has interned and worked at a number of visual arts institutions, including Western Exhibitions, Wrightwood 659, and Bridge Chicago. His practice explores sensory experience through painting, with an interest in creating abstract “mindscapes” that were made to be touched. He likes to go hiking, play increasingly complicated board games, lift weights, hang out with cats, and write songs.