FRINGE BINGE JOY EVENTS 08.02.13
2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2nd - August 26th, 2013
Edinburgh, Scotland
Dizzying acrobatics, magical flights of fancy, and pure theater swing and tumble, swirl and fling in every performance of Australia’s Circa Wunderkammer. Human pyramids pile up and break down into handstands, backflips and other lithe tricks.
It’s emotional. It’s breathtaking. It’s complicated. And -- It’s a bit dangerous. It fulfills its company mission: to move the heart, mind, and soul. Even the performers themselves tear and up and choke up.
Part circus, part ballet, part acrobatics, there’s a lot of motion and beautiful commotion happening here. It is a serendipitous performance, with the players considering and choosing costumes, dialog, and movement as they go --- like a good jazz jam.
This is but one of the 40,000 performances scheduled at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival, comprised of 2,500 shows taking places at 250 venues across the city. There’s theater, music, literary arts, dance, and all sorts of creative arts. At the Fringe Festival, anyone can claim their piece of the stage, from superstars testing out new material to amateurs rocking the edge. You never know all of what you will experience. But the uncertainty is part of the excitement.
Werner Herzog’s Hearsay of the Soul
7/23/2013 ~ 1/19/2014
Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA
“Step into the enigmatic mind of filmmaker Werner Herzog, by fusing your consciousness with his five-channel video installation.”
Immerse yourself in the world of one of the great filmmakers of our time at Hearsay of the Soul at the Getty Center.
Coupling Herzog’s visions together with an experimental music score by Dutch musician and composer Ernst Reijseger, the event is an intimate and epic avante garde pas de deux --- diving into the relationship between enigmatic images and music.
The 18-minute video is projected onto three walls, and features lush landscape etchings by Hercules Segers, a 16th century Dutch artist. Segers’ evocative vistas, caressed by Reijseger’s sensuous richly layered music, transports you into a poetic past, not unlike the experience of watching Herzog’s earlier iconic films.
Herzog first made his cinematic imprint with his 1972 masterpiece Aguirre, The Wrath of God. He went on to explore and innovate in both narrative and documentary formats with Grizzly Man (2005) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). His unique style has influenced many contemporary filmmakers and artists.
Reijseger has worked with Herzog in the past as well, writing several scores for his films. He is also a also brilliant cellist, favoring jazz, improvised music, and contemporary classical music. He has worked with Yo-Yo Ma, among others.
While originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum, Hearsay of the Soul is at now home for your viewing and listening pleasure at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
July 31 - August 4th, 2013
London, UK
Become part of the art at Arbonauts: Biped’s Monitor, a gorgeous multimedia avante garde site-based performance that will blow your mind. We guarantee you’ve never done anything like this before.
The piece is performed at nightfall in the trees, chapel, and avenues of Nunhead Cemetery. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s extraordinary folk-tale “The Baron in the Trees,” it merges “highly visual, surreal environments, with an ethereal operatic score.” The storyline unfolds as you are transported through Calvin’s utopian manifesto of Arboria. The beautifully bizarre costumes and set alone are enough to make this a must see. But the piece as a whole is magnificent.
The Times said “Biped’s monitor will create a leafy haven in a secret urban location”
Underbelly Arts 2013: Festival + Public Lab
Festival Weekend: August 3 - 4
Cockatoo Island, Australia
Underbelly Arts is a program which began in 2007 in Sydney, Australia. It is a social experiment whose mission is to bring together a diverse range of artists into one big creative melting pot, exposing them both to each other and to new audiences.
This year, the event takes place on the iconic and historic Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbor. The Lab portion of the program, which took place earlier this week, was a work session, with over 100 artists, working on 30 projects. Visitors were not only able to watch these creations take place, they were able to interact with the artists, collaboratively, adding their own creative visions to the mix. These projects are now on exhibit at the Festival.
You’ll see phosphorescent deep-sea creatures float by. You’ll watch real humans box in a life-sized video game. You’ll marvel at brick walls as they transform into playlands. You’ll be a voyeur to a cyber love affair as it plays out in real time. You’ll witness imaginary cities collapsing, while gargantuan and decaying machines are resuscitated. And you’ll immerse in ghost stories while large-scale appear to spheres suspend from the skies.
Photo: Courtesy of Wee birdy. “Edible Walls,” Sydney Design
August 3rd - August 18th, 2013
Sydney, Australia
Can design save the world? Find out at Sydney Design 2013, presented by the Powerhouse Museum. Enjoy more than 75 inspiring exhibitions, workshops, talks, installations and tours in a city-wide program set to stimulate conversation and creativity.
We love the Edible Walls installation. It is a vertical garden full of silverbeet, lettuce, beetroot, cucumbers, edible flowers, native salad greens, and fruits, with an integrated Aquaponics system combining silver perch and edible plants. More than just an art piece, Edible Walls is a model for future urban farming. The project is a collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney, the Powerhouse Museum and some of Australia’s leading urban farming and greenwall practitioners.
If you want to learn more about edible walls and how to get one growing in your space come along to the Edible Walls talks and the City of Sydney’s Green Roofs and Walls forum at the Powerhouse Museum.
For details check out the links below.
How to Build an Edible Greenwall
How to Plant and Tend an Edible Greenwall
Also on exhibit, the iconic visionary work of George Nelson, one of the most influential figures in 20th century American design. Nelson was not only a leading designer and notable architect, but also a prominent author, editor, lecturer, exhibition designer and a passionate photographer. As design director of Herman Miller, Nelson created classics of modern furniture and interior design such as the Ball Clock (1947), Coconut Chair (1956), the Marshmallow Sofa (1956), Bubble Lamps (starting in 1952) and Action Office (1964).
Sydney Design 2013 is presented by the Australian Design Centre in partnership with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and the University of Technology Sydney. Its mission is raise awareness for design as more than just utility and beauty, but also as a means to help mankind meet the challenges of life on our increasingly challenged planet.
Check out the rest of our posts on Joy this week in Arts/Design, Food/Drink, Mind/Body, Place/Time, Nature/Science, and Soul Impact. And enter this week's photo competition. The theme: Joy (Deadline, August 4th, 2013).
