This is my third year at the University.  It is also my third year working for an incredible organization called FestiFools.  FestiFools is, put most simply, a giant puppet parade that takes place in downtown Ann Arbor each year on or near April 1st.  It is a celebration of April Fool’s Day and all of the foolishness that comes along with it.

Since I have been with FestiFools it has expanded into an entire foolish weekend.  We are entering our second year of the Friday night event called FoolMoon, which is a beautiful brilliant procession of illuminated lantern sculptures that culminates in a raucous street party in downtown Ann Arbor.

FestiFools is stringing together the two days with a benefit concert at the Blind Pig.  So we now have a whole weekend to ourselves to party and witness some truly beautiful and creative pieces of art.  My favorite part about FestiFools and FoolMoon is watching the faces in the crowd.  I spend months around these ten-foot tall puppets and luminaries, so I can sometimes forget just how awe-inspiring they are.  But when you see a puppet give a five-year-old in the crowd a high five and see the pure joy and surprise on the kid’s face, well, it sticks with you.

When I first began working for FestiFools I was a research student with UROP.  I worked on ways to make FestiFools more marketable and gain larger audiences for the big day.  I was pretty successful.  Between FestiFools’ growing name (it was the 4th annual parade my first year) and my increased publicity, we reached about 5,000 Ann Arborites and friends that year.  When I found FestiFools in the UROP catalog it was under the name START Project or Street Theater Art Project.  As a theatre major, I thought that sounded pretty cool.  Little did I know that I would be suddenly thrust into the world of public art and learn just how important free and accessible art can be to a community.

I’ve always been an arts advocate, but a lot of my enthusiasm came from wanting there to be a job for me when I graduated.  I still think that is an important thing, but my mission when promoting the arts has become much more altruistic.  Once I saw the effects of public art firsthand it became easier to drop my own selfish motives and rely on the important purpose public art serves as my soapbox.

In an article by Jack Becker entitled “Public Art: An Essential Component of Creating Communities” he identifies four main purposes for public art: 1.  To engage civic dialogue and community.  2.  Attract attention and economic benefit.  3.  Connect artists with communities.  4.  Enhance public appreciation of art.

Standing on the street at FestiFools or FoolMoon, I can see all four of these in play.  As a student, I don’t see Ann Arbor as its own town very often, or at least I didn’t before FestiFools.  I sort of thought of it as the land that holds U of M and not much else.  Seeing the community interact and attend these events with neighbors and friends is really inspiring.  It gets them talking about something other than Michigan football.  Sometimes the puppets are political or controversial and a dialogue starts about why someone may have made that and what they are trying to say.

Especially after FoolMoon, it is impossible to ignore the economic benefit to the community.  Everyone is downtown at nighttime and they will probably get hungry or wander into shops they may not otherwise be inclined to stop by.  The same can be said of a sculpture or mural.  The public is attracted to aesthetic beauty and that will make them more likely to stop and observe what else is nearby.

My first year with FestiFools part of my UROP assignment was to create a puppet.  I did this willingly, although not with the splendor I may have hoped.  I’m just not super talented in that type of art.  It was still a blast to make and I really did become more connected with both the University students who were also creating their own puppets and the community supporters at the event who wanted to know more about what we had created.  There is a bond in public art that is wholly unique: the viewer appreciates what you have done for them and thus wants to talk to you and hear more about it, and the artist gains appreciation for the community for whom she is creating because she sees that enthusiasm and often has sought the beauty in the community as inspiration.

Number four is pretty self-explanatory.  The more one is exposed to art, the more likely they are to appreciate it.  And maybe I have just been reading too many dystopian novels recently, but try to imagine life without art.  It is bleak.  Imagine life without beauty.  It is depressing.  Art in everyday life enhances that everyday life.

FestiFools has another mission of arts education.  Detroit has cut arts funding in its public schools.  FestiFools goes in and teaches these kids about art and tries to foster that appreciation that is gained from exposure to art.  I know that it will always be an uphill battle to get funding for the arts, but the arts are so necessary.  They have been proven time and again to improve students’ overall experiences at school along with intelligence and test scores.

And I cannot stress enough, it has to be worth it just for the look on those kids’ faces.  If you have time this weekend, stop by FoolMoon or FestiFools.  Look at a sculpture.  Take a long look at the mural on the side of Potbelly’s.  Stop for a second and listen to the guy playing the washboard and harmonica on the Diag.  Appreciate accessible art in everyday life.

This past weekend I got in a small dispute with a stranger over some of Hip Hop’s most influential characters. I attempted to explain how, in my opinion, The Roots are more musically talented than the Wu Tang Clan. This gentlemen, my adversary, was steadfast in his devotion to the Wu Tang Clan. Allow me to explain myself, I pleaded.

I understand how influential and pivotal the Wu Tang Clan were to the genre of Hip Hop music. They transformed it more significantly than possibly anyone other artists, and, in many people’s opinion, are considered to be the best rappers ever. I agree with this on some fronts. They were undoubtedly pioneers; but they primarily impacted the lyrical component of rap music. Their music is lyrically impeccable, it is true. It is sophisticated, meaningful and entertaining. Its use of wordplay and literary techniques are equal to those of playwrights and novelists. In fact, the “Hip Hop Shakespeare Company” conducts an exercise where they read lines from classic Shakespearian plays and sonnets or lines from Wu Tang Clan songs, and ask the audience to guess which one they come from. It is almost always impossible to tell, unless you have memorized both every word of Will’s and every word of Rae’s. From a lyrical standpoint, I understand why listeners have compared the Wu Tang Clan to the greatest playwright of all time. But I still like the Roots more.

The Roots, in my opinion, are much better musicians than the members of the Wu Tang Clan. They are much better artists. They have similar styles of rapping, and similar content, but it is the production that they diverge. The Roots, unlike many, many Hip Hop artists, create their own instrumentals. With actual instruments. Questlove, the drummer in the Roots, is one of the most talented drummers in the world. Fact. They are creating music from a much more organic approach; they are building everything themselves. What they lack in mind-blowing statements and enticing, politically charged comments they make up for in overall, aesthetic sound. They simply sound better. The music is more enjoyable to listen to. Wu Tang’s music, while important to hear and understand, is not as appealing. Notice the difference in these two songs. Listen to the way the beat completely changes and electrifies at the end of “Don’t Feel Right.” Appreciate Maimouna Youseff’s incredible voice and perfect hook. Then compare that to the static, minimalist sound underneath the just as perfect hook and brilliant lyricism of “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ihRbPtfmA

Radiohead is one of those bands, man.

Radiohead is one of those bands that has a huge following of people who analyze everything they do and try to make a huge sweeping idea out of it all. And, from my experience, Radiohead is also one of those bands that is seen as “legit” in the concert music community. That’s interesting in itself, but it’s true that the music they produce is really quite great. I’m always impressed at how much I can discover when listening back through OK Computer or Kid A. And their latest record, The King of Limbs, has been a recent favorite of mine. Dear listener, if you aren’t a hip college student like I am, check out them Radioheads. It’s great stuff, from Oddslot Creep, to House of Cards.

But this is all beating around the bush to what I really want to talk about. I want to talk about Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood is the lead guitarist/keyboardist/everything player for Radiohead. He is one of the big creative forces in the band, and as wikipedia informs me, was named #48 in Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” That’s pretty high praise, there. He also does a variety of work alone. Notably, he was the composer for the soundtrack of There Will Be Blood.

So this guy is mad talented. But his latest solo record makes my heart explode with pride, as a “classical” composer, myself. He just released a solo record in collaboration with (wait for it…) Krzysztof Penderecki.

This is a big deal guys. Penderecki is a Polish composer, widely known for his piece, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. The piece pushes the limit of what music is, what sounds a string orchestra can make, and also haunts my nightmares to this very day. But don’t take it from me, listen to it below, and be afraid.

(Composer nerd note: This piece is a great instance of what goes into a title. This piece was originally titled after the length of the piece itself-8’37”. Later, Penderecki changed the title to the very programmatic and evocative, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Is the piece less valid because Penderecki changed the name later? Is it still a lament for the victims of that horrible attack? How much does a title mean?!)

So that is a scary piece of music. An absolutely incredible piece of music, but by no means tame. And Jonny Greenwood released an album with this piece on it! The rest of the CD is another piece by Penderecki (called Polymorphia) and two original compositions (in a similar vein to the Penderecki!) by Greenwood, called Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia. And Greenwood’s pieces actually stand pretty well up to the Penderecki! That’s a pretty big deal, considering that Threnody is considered a staple of 20th Century Avant Garde Repertoire (too many qualifiers, there).

Take a listen to Popcorn Superhet Receiver….

(Also of note: Greenwood borrowed a bit from this piece in his score to There Will Be Blood. Interesting. Also might have cost him an Academy Award. )

I love this, though. The rock music industry and polish avant garde are not as far apart as one would think. In fact, the raw unpolished sound that Greenwood can get from his guitar in Radiohead isn’t too far away from the glissandos and rawness of this collection of strings. Music is music, regardless of what makes it up. And Greenwood is a shining example of that.

I encourage you all to buy the album. Because it’s really quite incredible and I doubt you have anything like it in your iTunes right now.

Bear Parade round two.

A poetry collection by Ellen Kennedy titled:

yesterday i was talking to myself and i told myself that i was going to write a book and give it to you so i put paper in my bag and put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the river bank and then sat on the ground and thought ‘i will never write a book’ and watched ducks swim away from me

The title of her poetry collection is very long but it only takes ~5 min. to read the whole collection itself.

Everything on bearparade seems to have a sort of minimalist style.

Ellen Kennedy’s particular brand of bearparadian minimalism is something like ‘lots of declarative sentences and parallelism and some repetition.’ Or: ‘Anaphora‘ + a little ‘polysyndeton,’ + a lot of understatement + deadpan tone.

I think everything on bearparade employs a kind of minimalism because being online shortens your attention span automatically. Minimalist stuff ‘works’ online. Dense stuff doesn’t–you click away from it. Literary stuff is notoriously dense and boring, so bears who parade seem to try to not be dense and boring by using minimalism.

(I think I’m going to start trying to write shorter / more minimalist blog posts. Lots of people’s blog posts here on arts, ink seem ‘hella dense,’ and I’m skeptical people actually, like, read them, beginning to end.)

(For some reason I feel like writing < 600 words is not ‘legit,’ though, for an obliquely academic blog.)

Supposedly Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

But so Ellen Kennedy. Her internet poetry collection is good. It’s relateable and relevant if you’re ~20 and are an internet user, which you most likely are. Like, you’ve probably felt ambitionless and bored like this poem:

i have no ambitions

i don’t want to hate the president i don’t want to go to harvard i don’t want to win the pulitzer prize i just want to sit in my bathtub and think about relationships i will never have with people i will never meet and then go lay in my bed with a magnifying glass and count all the stiches in my sheets until i fall asleep and wake up to repeat again.

There’s something about spending a lot of time online that makes me feel ‘i have no ambitions’-y. There’s something about reading a poem online that’s about having no ambitions and which takes very little ambition to read because it’s minimalist and short that makes me feel very…something.

In another poem titled ‘i want to sleep,’ there’s this:

(…)i used schutzhund methods of training to teach the duck to attack on command. we went on a killing rampage that lasted three days. we killed many small children and received the nobel prize for our achievements.

the other day, as i was eating the leg of a small child like a popsicle, the duck turned to me with tears in its eyes and asked, ‘why do you make me kill things?’

Teaching ducks  to go on killing rampages via “schutzhund methods” seems very unserious and stupid. But then you’re hit with the teary eyed duck’s ‘why do you make me kill things?’ and you’re like, “wait…” And then your hit with i felt ashamed. i stared down at the ground and stood very still and very quietly.

Bears’ parading seems to have a sort of tears-of-a-clown quality to it. Like, ‘I’m full of funny non sequiturs and absurdisms, but I’m crying inside.’

And I thought these beautiful lines in the penultimate poem made the whole collection ‘worth it’:

‘i want to rub my face in my blueberries’

‘so do it’

‘okay’

i rubbed my face in my blueberries

i batted my eyelashes against your cheek and left blue streaks on your cheek

i thought about all the times i’ve almost been hit by a car for listening to loud music while walking and laughed.

I feel like if I could read this poetry collection on a computer in the fishbowl after a stressful exam or stressful text message from a girl, and it would make me feel calmer.

—
@barkmuckner

This year I have seen three one-man shows through UMS– The Infernal Comedy starring John Malkovich, Watt by the Gate Theatre of Dublin, and The Andersen Project this past weekend starring Yves Jacques.

When I saw my first one-man show, years ago, I was first amazed by the amount of work that one performer would have to do by themselves and the number of lines they would learn.  Invariably, at any of these shows, there is a group of people astounded by the number of lines they heard the performer speak.  That is just the surface level though.  When you begin to think of the way conventional theatre operates and the way a one-person show works, there are noticeable differences.

The first thing I think of is the interaction between characters is a central part of conventional theatre.  When there is a solitary figure onstage, they are either playing all the characters by themselves or interacting with people unseen by the audience.  Each of these three performances handled this construct differently: in The Infernal Comedy, Malkovich was actually onstage with two other women, opera singers, who acted as his victims.  Outside of his interaction with the women, the concept was that he was writing a novel and was addressing the audience as an author.  In Watt, Barry McGovern was telling the audience a story the whole time and when, in his story, he spoke to other characters, the characters were spots onstage.  In The Andersen Project, most interestingly, had Yves playing three different characters throughout the show, with a few cameo appearances as other characters.  When he spoke, he usually spoke toward the audience or to someone offstage, although he did have interactions with an invisible dog, represented by a leash and bell onstage.

The second thing I think about is how one actor will fill a space usually filled by many actors and intricate sets.  It is easy for an actor to be swallowed up by the space, but again these three shows took three vastly different approaches to fixing this problem.  The Infernal Comedy was performed at Hill Auditorium, so there was less space to occupy, and the performers shared the stage with the orchestra, who acted as their own sort of set.  In Watt, The Gate took a minimalist approach, and Mr. McGovern was just sort of framed by the set and called upon all of his power as an actor to fill the space.  The lighting highlighted some key moments and took us through his journey, but it was mostly a traditional one actor, one audience set up.  The Andersen Project, by contrast, used projections to suggest settings and fill out the space.  In seeing this piece, I realized I had never seen projections done extremely well.  That production changed my mind on projections entirely.  It made the one-man show a fully realized production.  I never felt like I was missing out because it was only one man, there was so much happening and it all contributed to the story in the way that more actors or a more elaborate set would usually.

Each show had a very different story, but I think The Andersen Project most successfully emobied the spirit of a one-man show.  There was something inherently lonely within each of Jacques’ characters.  And through his solitude onstage, the audience was both reminded of the loneliness of the 21st century world and distancing effect technology has had but also aware of themselves and their own experiences.  By doing such, I think Jacques showed us that we are not all one-man shows.