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Global Public Art Festival Brings Visual and Performance Art
in Unexpected Public Spaces for Second Year
Art to be on display in downtown Orlando along Magnolia Avenue
(Danielle DeGuglimo, We All Fall Down. Photo courtesy of artist.)
ORLANDO, Fla. (October 18, 2016) – Art in Odd Places (AiOP), an international visual and performance public art festival, will return to downtown Orlando from November 11-13. Presented by Fifth Third Bank and produced by the Downtown Arts District, the event will be experienced along Downtown Orlando: Magnolia Avenue from Jefferson Street to South Street & Pine Street from Magnolia Avenue to Orange Avenue This year’s theme is PLAY, which will include any form of play ranging from acting, activities, celebration, charades, competition, creativity, dance, drama, exercise, frivolousness, fun, game(s), imagination, instrumentation, leeway, leisure, maneuvers, music, participation, performance, portrayal, practice, randomness, rehearsal, silliness, spontaneity, sport, stage, and theater. Artists will interpret PLAY through visual and sound installations, performances, and interventions. Using Magnolia Avenue as a laboratory, AiOP will stretch the boundaries of public communication outside the confines of traditional public spaces.
“We hope Art in Odd Places will give local and visiting artists a positive experience while inspiring the community stakeholders to imagine new possibilities and engagement with civic space,” said Barbara Hartley, executive director of the Downtown Arts District. “This year’s curators Genevieve Bernard and Vince Kral have a wonderful vision for the theme of PLAY and they bring a great deal of creative experience and passion to the festival.”
The second annual event will feature nearly 50 art projects in a variety of disciplines from artists around the globe, including 11 from Orlando, 20 from Florida, 18 from across the United States and four internationally (Canada, Israel, Mexico and The Netherlands).
“The purpose of the festival is to engage the diverse cultural communities of Orlando,” said Ed Woodham, AiOP founder and director. “AiOP PLAY presents meaningful interactive visual and performance work in downtown public spaces. The festival provides opportunities for accessibility to a wide range of art and opportunities to experience it outside traditional venues. Inviting artists from across the globe to Orlando opens up varieties of perspective about art, play, and social issues with the local community.”
AiOP 2016: PLAY/ORLANDO is presented by Fifth Third Bank and produced by the Downtown Arts District, Inc. with co-curators, Genevieve Bernard and Vincent Kral; AiOP founder and director, Ed Woodham; AiOP Orlando Manager Barbara Hartley; Hjordis-Linn Blanford, Production Manager; Website Designer + Developer Carey Estes.
AiOP is free for anyone to attend. Exhibit times will be Nov. 11 from 12 – 9 p.m.; Nov. 12 from 10-8 p.m. and Nov. 13 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Tours of the projects by the curators will also be available starting from City Arts Factory on Nov. 11 and 12 at noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and Nov. 13 at noon and 3 p.m. For more information about Art in Odd Places: 2016 PLAY/ORLANDO, CLICK HERE FOR WEBSITE.
(Priscilla Smith, Play Money. Photo courtesy of artist.)
FACT SHEET
WHO: The Projects and Artists
This Is Me, Trying to Remain Vertical – Julie Akerly & Matthew Mosher (Tempe, AZ): Dance
A Walk Poetic – Logan Anderson (Winter Park, FL): Improv
Intent to Re·Side – Monique Blom (Saskatchewan, Canada): Performance
Hopscotch – Megan Boye (Orlando, FL): Play installation
Pick How You Will Revise a Memory – Jesse Bradley (Orlando, FL): Text and digital installation
Play Station – Grace Brett (Clermont, FL): Interactive performance
Playing with Paint – Stephanie Cafcules (Jacksonville, FL): Interactive sculpture
Privileged Coffee Shop – Julia Caston (Greensboro, NC): Transactional installation
Cuffing Season: Categorical Variables – Donna Cleary (Brooklyn, NY): Visual participatory installation
changing sides – Emma Cotter (Brooklyn, NY): Roaming performance
Bankster Games – Derek Curry & Jennifer Gradecki (Buffalo, NY): Digital and analog games
The Agreement –Laura Curry (Oro Valley, AZ): Performance installation
Mix and Match 59 – Irina Danilova & Hiram Levy (Brooklyn, NY): Numerical game installation
Transcendent Traces – Anthony Deal (Winter Park, FL): Experimental printmaking project
We All Fall Down – Danielle DeGuglimo (Winter Park, FL): Domino installation
Ghosts of Magnolia – Juliet Dilenno & Masami Koshikawa (Apopka, FL): Performance art
Scratch Night – Brian Feldman (Washington D.C.): Performance and live stream installation
Hit Play Orlando! – Donald Gialanella (St. Petersburg, FL): Informational and physical installation
Play House – Christopher Gonzalez (Orlando, FL): Cerebral installation
Plop Prop – Dana Hargrove (Maitland, FL): Reclaimed packaging installations
Cuddle – Alexander Hernandez (San Francisco, CA): Sculpture installation
Positive Process Platform – Heather Hubbard (Orlando, FL): Performance
Dancing with Chairs – Ienke Kastelein (Utrecht, the Netherlands): Performance installation
When You Whistle, It’s Not Work – Kilmchak (Atlanta, GA): Musical instrument
At This Very Location – Jeff Knowlton (Newhall, CA): Mobile phone interactive experience
LabBodies – LabBodies: Ada Pinkston & Hoesy Corona with Noelle Tolbert & Alexander D’Agostino (Baltimore, MD ): ( Installation and performance)
pOm•trees – Karen Lao (Baltimore, MD): Participatory installation
Camp Inspiration Camp Lullaby – Kalup Linzy (Mascotte, FL): Visualization installation
Wired Up – Forrest MacDonald (Tampa, FL): Wire sculpture installation
The Ring of Freedom – Stephanie Mercedes (Brooklyn, NY): Visual installation
Loading – Eden Mitsenmacher (Tel-Aviv, Israel): Visual installation
Monsters on Parade – MoP Collective: Sean Hamilton, Rokaya Mikhailenko, Ayanna Nathifa, Nikki Peña & Shelly Torres (Orlando, FL): Roving movement installation
Crystal City – Adriaan Mol (Orlando, FL): Mirror and wood installations
Equalibria – Matthew Mosher (Orlando, FL): Sound installation
Cuffing Season: Categorical Variables – Elena Munoz (Mexico): Play installation
Where did the good times go? – Christopher Olszewski (Savannah, GA): Mobile art
Monsters on Parade – MoP Collective: Sean Hamilton, Rokaya Mikhailenko, Ayanna Nathifa, Nikki Peña & Shelly Torres) (Winter Park, FL): Imaginative play
Percussion Processional – Sean Perry (Orlando, FL): Percussion processional for world’s largest drum line
The Light House – LabBodies Co-founders Ada Pinkston and Hoesy Corona (Baltimore, MD): Interactive performance monument
YOUTunes – Preston Poe (St. Petersburg, FL): Conversational music installation
Rhizomatic Sounds – Jared Silvia & Lesley Silvia (Casselberry, FL): Interactive sound sculpture
Franchise: Happy Pills – SKIP Of Franchise Industries (Winter Park, FL): Interactive installation
Play Money – Priscilla Smith (Atlanta, GA): Storytelling with money
The Memory Hole: Home Movie Roulette – Holly Tavel (Orlando, FL): Collaborative film/performance project
Nature in existential crisis! – Chris Tobar & Yesenia Lima (Orlando, FL): Play and visual installation
The Incredible Memory Machine – Laura VonMutius (Orlando, FL): Interactive installation
AiOP ORLANDO CURATORS:
Genevieve Bernard, a choreographer, curator and producer, earned her M.Ed in Dance Education from Temple University in Philadelphia and has received awards and fellowships for her choreography. This is her second year as co-curator of Art in Odd Places. She is the Artistic Director of Voci Dance where she works collaboratively with dancers and artists with a focus on site-specific work. Locally, she participated in the Corridor Project, Walk On By, the TrIP Project and the Creative City Project. She is a choreographer and puppeteer with IBEX Puppetry and has set works at Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art-100 Acres, RISD, and The New Victory Theater among others.
Vincent Kral is a Tampa-based artist and independent curator who exhibits throughout the United States. Participating in more than 50 exhibitions during the past decade, Vincent uses video, audio, and sculptural installations to engage the viewer. His previous curating efforts have included The Ink Panther at Miami Art Basel, A Different Frame of Mind at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, So You Think You Can Paint competitions held in the Bay area and beyond, and exhibitions at the Hatchway Gallery. Vincent earned his BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Electronic Media from the University of South Florida in 2007.
AiOP ORLANDO LEADERSHIP:
Barbara Hartley, Executive Director of the Downtown Arts District, has served in her role for over 5 years. Prior to the Downtown Arts District, Hartley’s background was in marketing and business development with UNITY Mobile, Knight, Orlando Magazine, MIX 105.1 and Clear Channel Outdoor. Hartley currently serves as a trustee of the American Advertising Federation of Orlando, and on the Leadership Advisory Board for Crummer School of Business at Rollins College, and she has served in leadership roles on various community boards. She received her M.B.A. from the Rollins College Crummer Graduate School of Business and holds a B.A. in marketing from Florida State University.
Ed Woodham has been active in community art, education, and civic interventions across media and culture for over twenty-five years. Responding to constriction of civil liberties, Woodham created the project Art in Odd Places presenting visual and performance art to reclaim public spaces in New York City and beyond. In New York, Woodham teaches “City as Site: Public Performance and Social Intervention” at the School of Visual Art, as well as workshops in politically based public performance at New York University’s Hemispheric Institute’s EMERGENYC. He was a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow in Social Engagement. For 2016 he was commissioned to create a socially engaged work for Jamaica FLUX 2016 at The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens, NY. Currently, he is working on a commissioned work, “The Keepers,” for 2016 in his longtime neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn.
WHAT: Art in Odd Places Orlando 2016: PLAY The second annual Orlando festival featuring performances, interventions, visual installations, video, sound and more in public spaces. ALL EVENTS ARE FREE. For more information about AiOP’s history and artists’ project descriptions and schedules, visit the website: www.artinoddplaces.org/orlando-play. More details about festival programming coming soon! #aiopplay
CLICK HERE for high resolution images of projects.
WHEN: Friday, November 11, 12 – 9 p.m. Saturday, November 12, 10 – 8 p.m.; Sunday, November 13, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
PANELS
ART IN PUBLIC SPACE
Conversation with AiOP PLAY Curators and Public Art Leaders
Thursday, November 10, 6-7:30pm
Upstairs at the Gallery on Avalon Island, 39 S Magnolia Avenue at Pine Street
ARTISTS TALK
Conversation with AiOP PLAY artists
Thursday, November 10, 7:30-9pm
Upstairs at the Gallery on Avalon Island, 39 S Magnolia Avenue at Pine Street
TOURS
All tours begin outside of Gallery on Avalon Island, 39 S Magnolia Avenue at Pine Street
Friday, November 11
12pm, 3pm, 6pm
Saturday, November 12
12pm 3pm (with Curators), 6pm
Sunday, November 13
12pm + 3pm (with Curators)
WHERE: Downtown Orlando: Magnolia Avenue from Jefferson Street to South Street &
Pine Street from Magnolia Avenue to Orange Avenue
WHY: AiOP began as an action by a group of artists, led by Ed Woodham, to encourage local
participation in the Cultural Olympiad of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Ga. In 2005, after
moving back to New York City, Woodham re-imagined AiOP as a response to the dwindling of
public space and personal civil liberties – first in the Lower East Side and East Village and, since
2008, on 14th Street in Manhattan. AiOP has always been a grassroots project fueled by the
goodwill and inventiveness of it participants.
EVENT SPONSORS: Presented by Fifth Third Bank and produced by Downtown Arts District, additional sponsors are Aloft Orlando Downtown, City of Orlando, City Beverages, Downtown Development Board Inc., Downtown Orlando Partnership, Embassy Suites by Hilton Orlando Downtown, Florida Blue, Culture Builds Florida, Orange County Arts & Cultural Alliance, Orange County Library System – Orlando Public Library, Orange County Regional History Center, and United Arts of Central Florida.
MEDIA PARTNERS: Bright House Networks, Clear Channel Outdoor and Orlando Weekly
ABOUT THE DOWNTOWN ARTS DISTRICT:
The Downtown Arts District (DAD) is a dedicated nonprofit for advancing arts and economic development in the City of Orlando. Established in 2000, the Arts District represents and serves the arts community through signature programming and public art projects. The Arts District is
the producer of the monthly 3rd Thursday Gallery Hop, the annual La Maschera themed arts celebration, and the award-winning network, OrlandoSlice.com. In addition, the Arts District is the parent company to CityArts Factory – downtown’s largest collection of community art galleries, and the home of SAK Comedy Lab. It also manages the Gallery at Avalon Island. Visit www.orlandoslice.com for more information.
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