Registered student organizations, get ready to show off that Redbird spirit! Our contest encourages RSO walking and mobile units to submit a spirited video (that incorporates the Homecoming theme, Redbirds Reign) with their parade entry on September 28. This can be a choreographed cheer, singing the ISU Fight Song, performing a song connected to the RSO, etc. A link will be sent closer to the parade to submit the video. Judging will take place Homecoming weekend with winners announced Monday, September 30, and monetary prizes awarded to first, second and third place. Submit parade entries online by September 16 and select "Yes" for RSOs wanting to participate.Submit band entries online by September 17. Review parade resource guide prior to September 28.All floats must schedule an inspection with Environmental Health and Safety the week of or prior to Saturday, September 28. Call (309) 438-8325.View Parade Map Questions? Email homecomingparade@IllinoisState.eduHosted by: Alumni AssociationAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10257450

Home league gameHosted by: Women’s Ice Hockey ClubAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10318029

Come out and play some games! OR, swing by and learn a new game and hang out with good people!Hosted by: Redbird Wargaming ClubAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10298832

Join University Galleries education staff for an artmaking workshop inspired by Rafael Soldi's exhibition A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory. Participants will create text-based artworks inspired by Soldi's Shards. Registration is required. A  moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory features photographs, a handwritten text installation, and an EKG made from 2009 through 2023. Informed by the artist’s queer, Peruvian identity, the selected works reflect on the possibilities of language, memory, and imagining. In Soldi’s words, he “probes states of in-betweenness—especially as it occurs across tongues—providing nuanced insight into immigrant identity while also offering a rich metaphor for queer experience.” The exhibition title is excerpted from one of Soldi’s own texts, which appeared on the cover of his Imagined Futures book. In the text, the artist addresses The Sun Will Set in the Same Place, a photograph featured in this exhibition. Soldi grew up in Peru and moved to the United States as a teenager, first to the east coast and then to the west coast. When he saw the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean in Seattle, 15 years after regularly seeing the same sight as a child in Peru, he was struck by a wave of nostalgia and a desire to reconcile his feelings about his home country. He then made the black-and-white photograph of what appears to be a brilliant, radiating orb. He writes, “I liked the ambiguity of this image too… it’s like being blinded by the sun, or it could be an eclipse or a black hole or a camera shutter or a moon or an explosion or a flashing memory or a peephole.” Special Collections at Milner Library recently acquired Soldi’s Imagined Futures book, and it will be on view in the exhibition. Imagined Futures comprises 36 tiny, black-and-white self-portraits made in photo booths. Rather than making silly faces with friends or posing for an identification photo, Soldi was repeatedly photographed alone and with his eyes closed. In his words, the project marks his “persistent attempt at acknowledging the grief surrounding the futures abandoned after immigrating from his homeland and the social violence enacted on queer bodies.” Soldi extended the project to other queer, male-identifying, Latinx immigrants for Entre Hermanos. He collaborated with social worker Joel Aguirre to facilitate a conversation about how the participants “perceived their future as young people in their countries of origin,” how that perception may have changed, and how they could “reimagine their futures and pasts today.” Following the discussion, each participant could make their own self-portrait in a photo booth while being guided through a meditation exercise. The resulting photographs are presented in color and at a significantly larger scale than Soldi’s self-portraits. For mouth to mouth, Soldi explores fluidity between two languages, Spanish and English, one that was slipping away and one that he was learning. The installation features dozens of handwritten words presented in individual frames: poema, problema, home, body, historia, histeria, memoria. Soldi said that the errors and mistranslations “yielded a directory of invented terms, a collection of tiny unintended poems.” Meanwhile Shards—which brings together poetry, astronomy, history, and language—is titled after one of Jay Hopler’s poems. Soldi etched four glass panels with a single word each: mother, boy, soft, and tongue. The words can form a variety of combinations and evoke a range of feelings depending on the background of the viewer. Behind each word is a black-and-white photograph depicting the stars over his mother on the night Soldi was born. The artist visited the observatory in Lima, Peru, to create the images. Marcapasos, an EKG displayed as an artist’s book, demonstrates another form of language. The EKG recorded the electrical activities in Soldi’s heart when he was eleven years old. The artist writes, “I was moved by finding this ‘written record of my own heart as a child, at a time when I was aware of my queerness and my difference but had no language for it.”Hosted by: University GalleriesAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10252185

Come learn how to be a Game Master, or how to improve the games you're already running. This is a workshop primarily focused around Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, but many of the topics are applicable to a variety of game systems. We'll have experienced GMs to talk about the best tips and tricks for running games, and give new GMs the chance to ask questions about how best to get started with their own games. Some of the topics covered will include managing group dynamics, learning which rules are important, and developing improvisation and acting skills. This is a great opportunity for players to see what it would be like to run a game and sit on the other side of the table.Hosted by: Redbird Dungeons and Dragons ClubAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10483890

Bags tournament on the mini quad outside of the Rec!   Hosted by: Bowling Club at Illinois State University, Women’s Ice Hockey ClubAdditional Information can be found at: https://redbirdlife.illinoisstate.edu/event/10280867