Thursday, May 24, 2012

Here are some Howl! Festival highlights

[Photo via ~ Joan]

From the EV Grieve inbox yesterday...

I am delighted to send you the updated Schedule of Events for HOWL! Festival 2012 (June 1–3) in Tompkins Square Park. The spirit of Allen Ginsberg comes alive as more than 350 artists, poets, and performers, including youthful new talent, light up the Main and Kid’s Stages and transform the Park into giant artwork infused with the creative energy, flamboyance, and countercultural panache that’s the hallmark of the East Village.

Named the Village Voice’s Best Outdoor Festival 2011, The HOWL! Festival, the quintessential East Village event, features:

· Opening Celebration: A Group Reading of Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, led by poet Bob Holman, the Festival opens with a “Greek chorus” of poetic voices from Beat to Slam reading their work and culminating with the signature reading of Ginsberg’s Howl.

· The Great HOWL! OUT LOUD Kid’s Carnival offering games, miniature golf, clowns, and fairway attractions; tons of arts and crafts activities including the Kids Around the Park, mask-making, origami, face painting, and more; and continuous entertainment by and for kids including teen heartthrob and straight up rocker Jack Skuller (http://jackskuller.com), Tap City Youth Ensemble, Rosie’s Theater Kids, and the forty piece band, TriBattery Pops.

· CBGB favorites like Deans of Discipline, Bowerty Tones and Sic F*cs .

· Renowned Butoh company Vangeline Theater presenting The Raft of the Medusa, inspired by Gericault’s painting.

· Riki Colon hosts House of HOWL! extravaganza with legendary Voguers and theatrical drag.

· The Hot HOWL! Tea Dance, the Festival's poppin' Disco with DJ Johnny Dynell, and Hip Hop HOWL!

· BANDERA FEVER! "La Reina" Rhina Valentin hosts two days of live music, poetry, art, educational workshops and displays focused on Puerto Rican culture.

· Art Around the Park, a live-action, weekend-long event with more than 140 artists transforming a 900 foot long blank "canvas" in an explosion of color and artistic styles.

· LOW LIFE 6: EAST VILLAGE OTHERS: Jackie Factory’s, Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell stage a be-in of love and glitter. The Sunday evening climax to HOWL! celebrates the world-changing explosion of East Village culture from 1966-1972 and pays homage to movements and supernovas of the time like The Exploding Plastic Inevitable; Jack Smith; The Fugs; the Yippies; and the Bowery-raised Warhol Superstar, Jackie Curtis.
Find the Howl site with more specifics here.

5 comments:

  1. that's good, now if they can just get rid of Tower Brokerage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. One of the most despicable, racist, classist things that these Realtors can do is to buy people out of their apartments and send them off, out of Manhattan. They destabilize affordable units and one by one change the demographic. It is racist and classist for Realtors to say that $200.000 is more money than these people will ever see in their life time. That they should just move along, move to Staten Island or somewhere else and give us the apartment, give us the land. It's like what happened to the Indians.

    Also, artists have been driven out of the neighborhood due to a lack of affordable housing. For most artists, it's not about the money, because most artists don't make much money. Maybe if you're in the art world and an investment banker buys your painting for a million dollars, or if you are on a major record label, then you could live here. Theater actors, musicians on independent labels, performance artists, cartoonists, poets and others aren't getting rich. There are plenty of venues and festivals throughout the world for artists to showcase, but what artists really need is affordable housing, studio and rehearsal space. Many of the people who fund arts organizations are also the ones who have driven the artists out, so go figure?

    ReplyDelete
  3. so excited for this.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "countercultural panache that’s the hallmark of the East Village"


    lets reword this

    countercultural panache that was the hallmark of the East village

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's true if you talk to the artist's at Art Around the Park, many of them don't live here anymore. Some will tell you candidly how they moved-out because they couldn't afford an apartment and certainly couldn't afford studio space. Same story, the building they lived-in was sold and the landlord jacked-up the rent, or in some cases the building was torn down to make room for condos, or dormitory style housing, etc.

    ReplyDelete

Your remarks and lively debates are welcome, whether supportive or critical of the views herein. Your articulate, well-informed remarks that are relevant to an article are welcome.

However, commentary that is intended to "flame" or attack, that contains violence, racist comments and potential libel will not be published. Facts are helpful.

If you'd like to make personal attacks and libelous claims against people and businesses, then you may do so on your own social media accounts. Also, comments predicting when a new business will close ("I give it six weeks") will not be approved.