AxS Festival Announces Program

Fulcrum Arts presents 2018's A×S Festival, a regional celebration of art and science, taking place from Friday, November 2 through Sunday, November 11, 2018. This year's festival, entitled A×S Festival: City as Wunderkammer, will incorporate the concept of the "wunderkammer," or "cabinet of curiosities," as a model for exploring the intersection of art and science. While often described as occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, art and science are instead understood to be powerful engines of contemporary culture. This ongoing festival features exhibitions, performances, and educational programming. As a thematic pivoting point, A×S Festival provides opportunities for discovering the fascinations, curiosities, and tensions ignited by pondering integrations of art and science. Experience the 10-day festival in public spaces and online, in collaboration with a dozen locations including local science and cultural institutions as well as the festival's own website. For more information, please visit https://axsfestival.org.

Website as Destination & Physical Locations
Organized rhizomatically, the City as Wunderkammer website functions as a visual/informational supplement to the Festival as well as an extension of the wunderkammer model. Organized around two central tropes - the macrocosm and microcosm - the website loosely positions exhibitions, performances, and events within these categories. Additionally, the website links the Festival to other innovative institutions and experimental entities that have been contributing to the rich artistic, cultural, and scientific landscape of Los Angeles for decades-such as the Carnegie Observatories, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

The festival will feature twelve programs comprising performances, lectures, exhibitions, and other events in partnership with A Noise Within, Armory Center for the Arts, ArtCenter College of Design, Carnegie Observatories, The Huntington Library, Mount Wilson Observatory, Pasadena City College, and Shumei Arts Council.

All but two festival programs are free (Shumei Arts Council's opening reception/tea ceremony on 11/3 and Fulcrum Arts Annual Benefit on 11/7).

Emerging in the Renaissance period, the wunderkammer is an ancestor of the modern museum. These collections exhibited a wide variety of objects and artifacts, and also played a fundamental role in the development of modern science. They typically combined natural specimens, proto-scientific equipment, and objects representing multiple disciplines, and marked the intersection of science, metaphysics, and art.

The concept of the wunderkammer will expand to embrace arts and culture on a civic scale as a means to reimagine the city as its own cabinet of curiosities. Often referred to as "The City of Art and Science," Pasadena embodies many of the qualities of a wunderkammer, with an abundance of art, science, and faith-based institutions all in close proximity to one another. It is through these unique juxtapositions that we hope to foster new ways of seeing and thinking about the interrelationships between art, science, culture, community, and citizenship.

A×S Festival: City as Wunderkammer is made possible with the support of the National Endowments of the Arts, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, the Pasadena Art Alliance, the City of Pasadena, and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Based in Pasadena, California, Fulcrum Arts empowers artists to invent, inspire, and provoke. The 501(c)(3) provides resources and opportunities for artists, collectives, and independent arts organizations to advance their visions and contribute to a vibrant, challenging, and inclusive creative community. The nonprofit advances the fields of art and science to impact culture on a national level through exhibitions, partnerships, interdisciplinary symposia and convenings, and residencies.

Fulcrum Arts is the new incarnation of Pasadena Arts Council (PAC), an art service organization originally formed in 1964 to provide resources, communication services and other support to artists, cultural organizations, audiences and visitors throughout the Pasadena area. As the first umbrella arts organization chartered in California, Pasadena Arts Council received its non-profit status in 1968.

For more information about A×S Festival: City as Wunderkammer: https://axsfestival.org

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