Upcoming Event ~ “Taiwan Fest!”

Hey Folks!  

Heard from the ACSEA (Asian-Canadian Special Events Association) and they are putting on what sound’s like a really cool event in Downtown Toronto and Vancouver! 🙂 

Each year, this organization hosts the annual TAIWANfest, and this year it’s going to be called “Dialogues with Asia” starting with “A Cultural Tango with Hong Kong.”  The event’s purpose is the “engage Torontonians and Vancouverites in a cultural dialogue to better understand Asian cultures.” But I’m sure they’d love for people of all locales to stop buy and participate! Sounds like a great opportunity to learn more about not only Taiwan (an awesome place – most of my students say that it is actually more like old-style, traditional China than even the mainland) but also other countries in the Asian sphere.

You can see the schedule for August 26-28 here and September 3-5 here. Special events include an International Pan Asian Culinary event and “A Cultural Tango with Hong Kong Symphony” Check it out!

Who:  ACSEA (Asian-Canadian Special Events Association)

When: August 26-28, 2016 (in Toronto) &  September 3-5, 2016 (in Vancouver)

Where: 

Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay W
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8

The Centre / Granville Street / QE Theatre Plaza
Vancouver Playhouse Annex

More Information: Here.

“TAIWANfest returns to Harbourfront Centre and Downtown Vancouver this summer and begins its “Dialogues with Asia” series with “A Cultural Tango with Hong Kong.” One of the great ways to experience the culture is to take part in the Friendship Picnic – a program designed to cultivate new friendships over food. Mark down the dates and get ready to meet someone from Taiwan or Hong Kong. If you’re a little more adventurous, try the Hakka nutritional beverage called Lei-Cha, made from ground up seeds and nuts. For some great stories, check out the full Experience HAKKA! Redefine your understanding of Asian cultures with exhibits and films August 26-28 at Harbourfront Centre and September 3-5 in Downtown Vancouver.”

 

 

Coming Exhibition: The Great Terracotta Army of China’s First Emperor

“The Great Terracotta Army of China’s First Emperor”

Who:  

Tokyo National Museum

When: Oct. 27, 2015 – February 21, 2016 (Usually open Tuesday through Sunday until 5:00 PM)

Where: 

Tokyo National Museum
13-9 Ueno Park, Taito-ku,
Tokyo, 110-8712, Japan

More Information: Here.

About 2,200 years ago, Qin Shi Huang succeeded in unifying China and became its First Emperor. His legacy is preserved in a vast terracotta army, the discovery of which is considered the greatest archeological find of the 20th century, and which continues to arouse wonder and provide new knowledge. With assistance from institutions such as the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, this exhibition brings together artifacts with connections to the First Emperor while exploring the “everlasting world” of his terracotta army and its mysteries

Coming Exhibition: Ornament and Illusion ~ Carlo Crivelli of Venice

“Ornament and Illusion:
Carlo Crivelli of Venice“

Who:  

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

When: Oct. 22, 2015 – January 25, 2016 (Hours Vary)

Where: 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way
Boston, MA 02115

More Information: Here.

Ornament and Illusion is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli in the United States. The Gardner’s newly conserved Saint George Slaying the Dragon is the touchstone for a two-part installation. The first reunites four of six surviving panels from Crivelli’s Porto San Giorgio altarpiece, of which the Gardner painting is a fragment. The second features 20 of Crivelli’s most important works from Europe and the U.S. Together, they will introduce visitors to the artist’s repertoire of dazzling pictorial effects, and refine each encounter with his bravura illusionism.

The art of Burning Man: skeletons, temples and flaming Tetris

by Steven W Thrasher via “The Guardian“

Burning Man is not the typical place people would go to view art in the “default world” (the term “Burners” have for the “muggle world” those of you who are not here in Black Rock City inhabit). It’s extremely hard to get here – far less accessible than most public municipal art – and upon arrival, it is more physically inhospitable than the most uptight New York art gallery.

It’s so filthy here that the least dusty place you visit each day is a port-a-potty, and the cleanest part of your body is the inside of your shoe – not exactly the way you feel when visiting the Museum of Modern Art.

But Burning Man is a launching site of the most interesting and fun large-scale public art, architecture and public planning projects on the face of the planet. Many pieces get major exposure here before being placed elsewhere. Long before the Big Rig Jig hovered in Banksy’s Dimsaland, the Raygun Gothic Rocket Shiplanded in San Francisco, or Cube-a-tron arrived in Zurich’s train station, I saw it years ago here on the playa.

Burning Man is also a beautiful locale for viewing the bigger picture, from the curvature of the earth to the stars and the moon. And, for all the tech-enabled festivalgoers (or “burners”) among the 70,000 people in attendance this year, cell service is so poor that it’s very rare to see people holding phones or even taking pictures. The experience of looking at art and nature without a screen – and actually talking to other people about it – makes the festival a great way to experience new works.

Here’s a guide to a few of this year’s most interesting art and architecture projects, large and small – not including the Burning Man himself, immolated on Saturday night. If you can’t imagine schlepping all the way into the desert to see them, it’s OK: some of the ones not burned to the ground may very well be coming to a public plaza near you.

Straightedge and 2πR by Ardent Heavy Industries
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One of the most ambitious project at this year’s burn – and at 2.6 miles long, the physically largest project ever built here – is the cerebral but playful Straightedge by Ardent Heavy Industries. Straightedge illustrates the curvature of the earth, and dispels our visual assumption that any stretch of the planet is as flat as it looks. The collective of artists achieves this by placing poles 50 feet apart for 2.6 miles, each adorned with two LED lights controlled by satellite to blink in unison. At one end of Straightedge, the lights are right next to each other. But one line of lights follows the surface of the actual earth: the other is actually straight. At first, the two lines start to drift apart incrementally by inches. By the end of the 2.6 miles, they lines are about five feet apart, and shattering the idea that the flat looking playa is so level after all.

Ardent Heavy Industries also returned to Burning Man this year with an updated version of 2πR, a delightful interactive piece where users dance on a circular stage and their movements create corresponding bursts of flames around them. It’s a slightly safer cousin of AHI’s infamous piece Dance Dance Immolation, in which participant would dance in a flame-retardant suit; when they put a foot wrong, they would be blasted by fire. (As Ardent member KC Crowell explained, Dance Dance Immolation won the Guinness Record for Hottest Video Game and the project was destroyed in a blaze of glory “by dropping a piano on it” a couple of years ago.) . . . .

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Coming Exhibition: Disney and Dalí ~ Architects of the Imagination

“Disney and Dalí ~ Architects of the Imagination”

Who:  

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

When: July 10, 2015 – January 3, 2016 (Hours Vary)

Where: 

Walt Disney Family Museum104 Montgomery Street
The Presidio, San Francisco
104 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94129

More Information: Here.

From an intangible dream to a phantasmagorical reality, The Walt Disney Family Museum is excited to announce Disney and Dalí: Architects of the Imagination, on view from July 10, 2015 through January 3, 2016. 

Guest-curated by filmmaker Ted Nicolaou, this extraordinary, immersive, and enriching experience tells the story of the unlikely alliance between two of the most renowned innovators of the twentieth century: brilliantly eccentric Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and American entertainment innovator Walt Disney. Presented through an interactive multimedia experience of original paintings, story sketches, conceptual artwork, objects, correspondences, archival film, photographs, and audio—many of which highlight work from Disney studio artists Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, John Hench, Kay Nielsen, and more—this comprehensive exhibition showcases two vastly different icons who were drawn to each other through their unique personalities, their mutual admiration, and their collaboration on the animated short Destino. Although the film was not completed during their lifetimes, the friendship between these two great men nevertheless endured.

“The Walt Disney Family Museum, founded by Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, presents the life story of Diane’s father, which story inspires visitors to heed their imaginations and persevere in pursuing their goals,” said The Walt Disney Family Museum’s Executive Director Kirsten Komoroske. “In keeping with this mission, the exhibitions at the museum feature dreamers, innovators, and collaborators. The museum’s next major exhibition unveils another aspect of Walt’s story: the friendship between Walt and the influential and revolutionary artist, Salvador Dalí. The exhibition, co-organized with the Dalí Museum, not only further fulfills the mission of the museum, but also further solidifies the museum’s place among the many phenomenal fine art institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Born almost three years and half a world apart, Disney and Dalí’s boyhood imaginations were grounded in their upbringing in the 1900s, causing their lives, careers, and legacies to be paralleled on a level unlike any other. Though they may seem like opposites on the surface, a deeper look into the lives and artistic prominence of the surrealist and the dreamer—highlighted through hand-written letters, alongside archival film and audio—will showcase just how alike these two innovators really were in blurring the lines between reality and dreams.