The first Tokyo Hotaru festival was held last weekend and was kicked off with an incredible display of 100,000 LED lights – made to resemble hotaru (fireflies) – floating down the Sumida River through central Tokyo. These LED lights, known as ‘prayer stars’, were designed to light up upon contact with water and were, apparently, solely powered by solar energy.
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New skills exchange members Pretty Handsome studio are currently designing some limited edition screen print posters for the Trash Culture Revue and I’m delighted to introduce you to them. They combine the DIY aesthetic of screenprinting, with inspired musings and doodlings, in a mission to produce the finest t-shirts, designs and prints for your wondering eyes to feast on. So here’s what they have to say themselves:
We are a graphic design and screenprint studio based in Cork city. The studio specializes in print based design but our heart lies in screen printing high quality, limited edition tshirts. We are currently creating a line of original fashion tees, while also supplying the service of printing t-shirts for bands, events and the like. As graphic designers we specialize in logo design, branding, advertising, promotion and illustration.
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Isn’t this incredible?! Its the Luminarie De Cagna, an imposing cathedral-like structure that was on show at the 2012 Light Festival in Ghent, Belgium. The festival is world famous and had over 30 exhibitions including; 3D projection mapping, fields of luminous flowers, and a glowing phone booth aquarium, however this 28 metre high luminarie with its 55,000 LEDs was the darling of the show Continue reading »
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I’m losing interest in everything cultural, anything, ho hum. I feel like I’m coming into a new season of festival work with the same players, playing against the same teams at the same odds; terrible cliches, jaundiced views, narrowed focus, closed minds. It’s almost unbearable. I’m much happier sitting on the couch in my daughters cushion made pirate ship keeping her and the plastic cow and horse and pig and sheep company while looking through a cardboard telescope for marauding robots and rockets flown by monkeys.
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Burning Man 2007 was the spark that lit the fire in me and out of those embers came mutantspace. It is one of the largest arts and culture festivals in the United States and takes place annually during the last week of August in the temporary Black Rock City that springs up for the event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
On Friday I received details from Burners Ireland about the award given to Dubliner Diarmuid Horkan, cofounder of the International Arts MegaCrew (IAM), who was awarded the commission to create and construct the official 2011 Temple project for the Burning Man event. The Temple is the largest art commission awarded by Burning Man, and this is the first time this commission has gone to an international artist.
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The Trash Culture Revue programme is finally together – at last and every time the festival comes around more members get involved. This growth is a testament to what we’re doing in mutantspace, a testament to our members and their commitment to collectively working together; making, playing, producing, helping out, volunteering, administrating, managing, designing and so on. It’s a mammoth task. Festivals always are no matter how small; from the programme to the production, design to marketing of the events. And we all do it on a zero budget. Z – E – R – O. That’s impressive. That’s special. And that co – operation feeds out into our festival space, in the days coming up to and through the festival. There is a sense of camaraderie, a joy, a party.
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I’m in festival mode. I can’t help it. Our DIY Trash Culture Revue is on next week and after a meeting with Cork DJ, venue owner and all round sound bloke, Stevie G, yesterday I’m now going to help start another local – get – up – off – your – ass – and – just – do – it – because – noone – else – will event in February. Why February? Well its simple micro economics. At the end of January we start getting our credit card bills in the post and the truth of Christmas quickly dawns upon us. We realise that we’ve over spent on drink, food, presents, travel, sweets, cake, nights out, family gatherings and so on. Christmas is a splurge. A parsimonious Christmas is always a fantasy, a lost thought, amongst the baubles, tinsel and merriment of Christmas time.
So are these small festival events to be my fate? Am I to forever be local? I believe I am. Ironic really as I feel like the perpetual outsider – due to my upbringing and moving around – yet am always drawn into where I live, always want to make things better, brighter, want to get people more involved in their place. Maybe that feeling of being an outsider is why I do it. Because I understand the value and luxury of having roots in a single place, a history, a sense of flow that is unique to each and every city, town and village on the planet.
The building of the local is also integral to the way we feel, develop, learn and participate in the emotional and cultural growth of ourselves as a society, a community. It is critical that we never feel powerless, never let authority, the system convince us that there is only one path, one answer, one way of living, doing, being. We must never forget that it is in their interest to keep us ignorant of opportunity through alternative means, it is their interest to keep us close, supervised, controlled. I don’t want to live like that, do you? I’m only around a short while, we all are and we must strive to live life on our own terms. You’ve only got one go, one chance, one opportunity, so why hand that responsibility over to a state apparatus that is only interested in itself, in self preservation?
The local then is where we must start, where change starts. If we want to better ourselves and our society, our place then we must take responsibility, we must stand up and take action. For some that’s marching on the institutions of the state for me its creating new spaces in which possibility creates opportunity for things to happen.
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