Long story short, we make artists of Chicago sit next to each other. The only thing we really care about is being able to provide spaces for artists of Chicago to come together. We aim to foster collaboration, friendship, community, and anything else that has to do with having fun and growing together.
Freak Society was never anything we planned on creating. When we were freshly graduated, Eli and I were having conversations with our peers about all the trouble we were having with being able to remain creative and active within our practice, even though many of us had not been able to land any industry jobs. We, along with many of our peers, felt like we had failed and proved the world right about being able to make it as artists. But determined not to let that dictate our voices and creativity, we decided to persist and keep making work.
Eli and I came up with an idea for a film, and in order to give us a hard deadline, we set up a date to show our friends the film we had been working on. But as we were planning that out, we figured our other friends might want to share work as well. So we opened the viewing up to friends, and then to just acquaintances and anyone who might have stumbled upon our call on Instagram.
That was the first Freak Society Film Fest. (At the time we had named it the Shitty-poo-poo-garbage-awesome-cool-amazing-indie-animation-screening) That screening netted about 20 attendees. Mostly friends we had already known, and a couple of new faces we would turn into friends. A year later, we hosted the second film festival at Dorothy Downstairs. We turned it into a horror themed festival because of the surrounding fall festivities and with the help of our friends and the backing community of Dorothy Downstairs, drew in about 80-90 people. At that festival, we were also able to host a couple of local artists and their wares. Needless to say it was a hit.
From there we've been hosting (almost) yearly film festivals. The last one being at the end of 2024, hosted at the Chicago Athletic Association. 10 films, and 12 local artists. It was there when we decided to label ourselves Freak Society. A collective where we encouraged creativity amongst not just "established" artists, but anyone with a desire to make and share.
If you know Freak Society, you know it is mainly Eli and I (Slime/Hua). I'll add more to our bios in the future. But for now, the shorthand is that Eli and I both are multi-disciplinary artists with a focus in narritive driven art. We both wear many hats in our day-to-day so we might be a little hard to reach, but know that we are trying our best and we do not mind if you bug us a little to keep us on our feet.
