NAME: Jeremy BilesAGE: 35HOMETOWN: Laurel, MarylandACHIEVEMENT: Managing Editor of Prompt, a twice-yearly journal published by the Chicago Artists’ Coalition set to premiere in October.BACKGROUND: Currently teaching philosophy at the Illinois Institute of Art, has organized exhibits at the Hyde Park Art Center. Works as Publications Manager for the Chicago Artists’ Coalition.

I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School and I got a Ph.D. in religion and literature. I think I had the unfortunate knack of being a decent proofreader and editor, and after graduating, I edited a little thing called Sightings, an electronic biweekly publication that came out of the divinity school.

I’ve taught a class at the School of the Art Institute – a graduate art history seminar on this French writer/philosopher, Georges Bataille, and his relationship to modern art. My dissertation also had an art history component, and it’s now a book. It also makes a great gift.

When I heard about this job at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, it seemed natural, and like magic, it happened. Prompt is an exciting project, and really one of the things that attracted me to this job was the prospect of being a part of a new Chicago publication. Our director at CAC, Olga, got it into her head to undertake this nervy project, which I have taken some role to help conceptualize.

Prompt will focus on contemporary arts, gestures, actions and aesthetics. Also, we want to prompt action in the real world, prompt new ways of thinking, new modes of thought, new forms of life. It’s ambitious. I don’t know if it will happen, but that’s the idea behind it.

It has to be accessible, or it won’t fulfill its purpose, which is to reach people and to get them to respond. It’s not some kind of rarefied art artifact; it’s something that’s meant to be read by a broad spectrum of people and illicit action from them and stimulate new thought.

We’re looking for something that gives productive tensions, that brings ideas into conversations, that allows them to clash, that does something to stir things up.

The first issue is going to focus on this theme of practical revolutions, so we’re going to call into question stuff that’s taken to be revolutionary within the art world or wider culture in recent months or years.

A revolution we’re focusing on is the fetishization of organization. People are very obsessed about getting together – collective action, instigating movements, especially as the election is approaching. We’re looking into whether this has become a way of displacing or replacing actual action.

I wish I could dance. I’m a crappy dancer. There’s a movie right now – I think it’s called Planet B-Boy – about the old break dancing movement. I saw some contemporary dance that incorporated hip hop stuff at Columbia College – it was amazing, entrancing. I love that, but I don’t know a lot about it.

I knew a kid who busted his lip doing the worm in our elementary school, and then they banned break dancing. It was a dark day. I still shiver when I think about it. It was James. He also sucked his thumb, until evidently really late in life – so one of his thumbs was really long. Then he busted his lip and that brought an end to break dancing.

In the movie, The Company, remember that part when the chick broke her leg and you heard that snap? I was like, “Wow, someone’s career just ended.” And she was all just stoic about it. That’s why I stick to the break dance – to keep it real.