Philadelphia Contemporary Announces FESTIVAL FOR THE PEOPLE This October

Philadelphia Contemporary, in partnership with the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC), is proud to announce its latest public project, the Festival for the People. Spread across two central piers on the Delaware River waterfront, the festival will feature a dynamic set of participatory programs and events, sculptures, installations, videos, and banners over three weekends, from October 13-28, 2018.

The festival celebrates the rich subcultural forms across Philadelphia, from comics to tattoos to internet culture, while also offering a fun and critical perspective on populism. Festival for the People will be the kickoff event in the newly opened Cherry Street Pier, a former municipal shipping pier transformed into a public destination and a hub for Philadelphia's creative community. Funding for the Festival for the People has been generously provided by the William Penn Foundation.

In keeping with Philadelphia Contemporary's mission, the Festival for the People aims to expand the public conception of what contemporary art is and can be with installations and programming across a range of mediums and subjects. Visitors are invited to enjoy two interactive sculpture installations, brought to Philadelphia in collaboration with the Montreal-based group Creos: Impulse, an installation of seesaws designed by CS Design and Lateral Office, and Prismatica, a group of colorful spinning prisms by Raw Design. The Festival will also feature numerous other installations, including a collaboration with Philly Typewriter, specially commissioned banners celebrating Philadelphia's neighborhoods by Erlin Geffrard, short films by artists including Andrea Bowers, Yoshua Okón, Hiwa K, Jennifer Levonian, and Maider López, an installation of selections from Pledges of Allegiance, an artist-designed flag series originally commissioned by the public art nonprofit Creative Time, and talks by artistic luminaries such as Hito Steyerl and Emory Douglas.

"The Festival for the People is exactly what it sounds like: a festival celebrating the art forms of everyday people. In these fractured political times, it's important to remember what brings us together as well as to reflect on the forces that divide us," says Philadelphia Contemporary Artistic Director Nato Thompson.

Rendering of the renovated Cherry St. Pier Presented in collaboration with the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC), the festival will extend from the Race Street Pier to the newly opened Cherry Street Pier. In addition to a range of works and installations throughout the duration of the festival, each weekend will have additional programming tied to a thematic focus, celebrating today's popular analog, digital, and embodied cultures with fairs, talks, installations, screenings, and other programming, created in collaboration with arts and community groups from across Philadelphia and beyond.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Acclaimed German artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl will give a kickoff lecture on Sunday, October 7 at 5pm on digital culture and new media at Moore College of Art & Design. This lecture is part of the Conversation@Moore Series.

October 13-14| The People's Analog Weekend

The analog weekend will feature a Festival of Analog Technology and printed materials, from comics to artist zines, vinyl, antiques, and art-making stations including comics by Robert Pruitt, artwork by Sedakial Gebremedhin, and artist books from Ulises.

The festival will be accompanied by a dialogue on Sunday, October 14 between Colette Gaiter, Associate Professor at the University of Delaware's Department of Art and Design, and Emory Douglas, who, as Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, was the art director and designer of the movement's newspaper, The Black Panther.

October 20-21 | The People's Embodied Weekend

The body and dance weekend will feature participatory dance performances and an opportunity for visitors to share their tattoos and body art.

The Tattoo and Body Art Fair will take place Saturday, October 20. It will feature women and gender non-conforming tattoo artists, including representatives from Spirited Tattooing Coalition and Invisible Man Tattoo, and opportunities for visitors to receive temporary and Henna tattoos. Accompanying the fair will be a story slam in partnership with First Person Arts.

The Dance Art Fair will take place Sunday, October 21. It will feature a warm-up yoga and poetry session, "Verse and Vinyasa," with Jean-Jacques Gabriel and Lyrispect. It will also feature social dancing with local performers such as Jazz Attack Swings and Damian and Sarah Tango.

October 27-28 | The People's Digital Culture Weekend

Digital culture weekend will feature the Oddly Satisfying Film Festival, an ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) Film Festival featuring film submissions by local teenagers, highlighting an immensely popular branch of YouTube culture.

The film festival will accept submissions from teens 12-18 years of age from neighborhoods in and around Philadelphia. The award ceremony will take place Saturday, October 27 and will feature live ASMR demonstrations from ASMR stars, including Bread Face, Lily Whispers ASMR, and Glitter Slimes.

About Philadelphia Contemporary
Founded in 2016, Philadelphia Contemporary presents visual art, performance art, and spoken word across the city of Philadelphia. A nomadic contemporary art organization with ambitions to establish a freestanding, globally oriented and locally aware museum, Philadelphia Contemporary has pioneered a vibrant and sustainable model based on partnerships and collaborations. Having commenced pop-up programming in October 2016, Philadelphia Contemporary continues to develop an ambitious roster of projects that will be mounted in the coming years, while planning for a permanent home in a new building.

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