Art's Birthday: Celebration and Protest

Description:

Art’s Birthday was a tradition started by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou who declared, on January 17, 1963, that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years prior when somebody dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Over many decades, artists have continued to organize annual celebrations in the spirit of Filliou’s “Eternal Network” or “La Fête permanente.”

This year, The Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC) presented a weekend of programming across multiple venues in Vancouver, including Octopus Books, the Contemporary Art Gallery, Artspeak, and Western Front.

On Saturday, Western Front hosted an all-night collage and fax party in protest of cuts to arts funding. The following day, telecommunication artworks and performances unfolded in the Grand Luxe Hall.

Using slowscan technology, Matt Rogalsky and Daniel Scheidt connected Western Front with Seppo Grundler and collaborators at the ZERO project in Innsbruck, Austria, for a live MIDI jam session. Kenneth O’Heskin then demonstrated The Juggler / Le Jongleur, an art invention and multi-process, event-driven control system designed to coordinate and schedule digital devices within contemporary performance and production environments. The day’s programming was broadcast live on WENR Radio 89.0 FM.

Presented in partnership with PAARC.