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The Absurd critique and the materialist critique at the Fringe.

There is a general law of cultural consumption that you must sort through disappointing stuff in order to find gems.  The law has graver implications for performing arts than for gallery and museum visits, because of ticket prices and the captive nature of being audience.  The Fringe Festival is among those annual events whose arrival, though welcome, also unsettles me, because to watch performance seriously is hard work, and yet I find myself compelled to let the festival take over my life, temporarily.  For the past four years I’ve spent in Philadelphia,  I’ve made the Fringe weeks sacred, spending a ... More » »

Battle Hymn at the Armory and other Hidden City offerings

Large and particularly bland office buildings line the gradual ascent of Market Street westward, as it prepares to cross the Schuylkill.  I was headed to the First Troop Armory; I’d read the address, but couldn’t quite remember it.  My eyes were out for the blue easel which sits on the sidewalk and marks all Hidden City venues, but what caught me first was the giant rusticated turret sticking out just south on 23rd St.  This, clearly, was my destination.  Though I’d passed the spot countless times, and though I’m endlessly curious about the city’s buildings, I’d somehow failed to ever ... More » »

Dali’s Liquid Ladies

At its essence, Puppet Uprising is not a consortium of puppeteers from up-beat Philadelphia, but a presenting company – a core of people tapped into the traffic of alternative performers circulating the country, who find venues and assemble audiences for these pieces.  They make it possible for the inclined public to see work that would otherwise find its element in backyards or living rooms.  The genre ranges wildly in style and in tradition (or lack thereof), but as creative expression it falls more under art than theater.  Uprising has grown in this direction from roots in radical puppetry, and is ... More » »

East Africans in India in Philadelphia

On Wednesday, Leslie Rogers called.  A mad puppeteer, among other things, also sells her labor-power to Painted Bride.  She was promoting an African-Indian dance troupe the coming weekend.  At that point, it was still uncertain: “we’re having a hell of a time worrying if these guys will get here or not.”  Painted Bride was in communication with senators and congresspeople, because visa officials on both sides had balked at twelve black men leaving their insular displaced community in Gujarat for JFK Airport.  The troupe call themselves Sidi Goma, and are devout Muslims.  Thanks to a supportive network of promoters and ... More » »

Six!

Ahem, attention please.  This is your contributing writer Jacob speaking.  Know how some people don’t bother telling others it’s their birthday?  Well, I happened to mentioned artblog’s age in passing, and here’s what I received in response: On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:44 AM, roberta fallon <robertafallon@gmail.com> wrote:... > artblog celebrates its 6th birthday ...OMG....today!  April 14, 2003 > we began.  We had a first birthday party at Libby's house and a second > at Standard Tap but nothing  since...We're overdue another one. In May, > maybe, or June...??? Happy birthday Artblog.  

Volunteers needed-apply at Hidden City!

  You may have caught word of the month-long event called Hidden City — Peregrine Arts has been planning it for years (literally), and artblog covered a trial performance at Girard College last May.  Finally, in late May and June, we’ll get to see a slew of site-based works and performances commissioned for normally inaccessible spaces, including abandoned theaters and power plants.  

Pilgrimage to D.C.

Watch it if you take the 5pm Chinatown bus to D.C.; it will not get you there quite on time for the curtain call of Hell Meets Henry Halfway. You also might read up on Polish dissident Gombrowicz. His texts were the conceptual bedrock for the two most forceful performacnes at the 2006 and 2007 Fringe Festivals (performed by Dada von Bzudulow Theater). Philly all-stars Pig Iron Theater Company also fed on Gombrowicz while they developed this piece, which won an Obie in 2004 and is being revived through March 1st at the Wooly Mammoth Theater in D.C.

Radical Cartography at Basekamp

A stack of monochrome marker drawings, with a common motif of stick figures linked by arrows to “$” icons and symbols of economic hardship: a boarded-up art gallery announcing “For Rent”; elsewhere, under a list titled “Basekamp costs”, the stratagem “Steal materials from construction sites.”  These drawings were the fruit of a 2-hour workshop held at Basekamp this past Saturday.  It followed the opening of An Atlas, an exhibit of “radical cartography” that compliments a two-volume publication of essays matched to artist-made maps.    Different approaches to the assignment “map the global economic crisis” The workshop kicked off a global tour; Lize ... More » »

The Architecture of Inflated Spaces

Artblog last covered the grandly-named Philadelphia Institute For Advanced Studies (PIFAS) during ‘Each One Teach One’ this summer. Among other virtues, the Institute subcontracts out their event-planning to enthusiastic involvees. Melissa J. Frost, a 26-year-old architecture student and West Philly homeowner, has organized a lecture series called ‘Architecture without Architects’ for several Thursdays beginning last month and continuing TONIGHT (the architecture of inflatable forms). The title suggests, yes, a challenge to the dominant mode of authoring buildings. But it also describes these lectures themselves: “a bunch of people who aren’t architects, sitting around and talking about architecture,” says Melissa. They ... More » »

Uprising / Missoula Oblongata / Wham City

           Except for the all-professional Mum Puppettheater, most puppet troops grace Philadelphia with only single-night runs.  Artblog likes to tell you about things you can still go see for yourself – so consider these jottings from recent fringe theater as anticipation of the upcoming Puppet Uprising Cabaret, tonite 12/5 and Saturday 12/6 at the Rotunda.             Missoula Oblongata takes its aesthetic more from puppetry than from theater: conspicuously home-made sets, heavy on patchwork and paper mache.  Via the Puppet Uprising network, they brought ‘Last Hurrah of the Clementines to a yoga studio on ... More » »