With record heat waves most of us have our attention on global warming while we soak in the pool or sit in the shade. Hmm maybe we need to do something NOW! Thank goodness some people are doing something including Pino Fortunato founder of the EcoArt Project, a nonprofit organization based in New York. He knows the power of artists to bring about change. Hence the creation of a new art festival that is underway to bring awareness of the environment all while reviving a small village in Italy.
August 6-15 2022 one can find the Inauguration of FADA - Festival Arts Design Acerenza. The theme is respect for the environment and nature, sustainability and climate change. The festival is held in the picturesque town Acerenza in the Italian province Potenza. The ancient village hosts an immersion of digital art that captures the beauty of mother nature and shows our destructive ways all while hopefully inciting change. Here the historic evening stroll of yesteryear now becomes a multisensory creative immersion. Digital art, projections, virtual photographic installations, NFT works (non fungible tokens or crypto tokens), a meditative virtual journey into the heart of the human mind in a metaverse using Oculus viewers, and finally an environmental sound installation produced by plants , are the installations presented for the launch of the initiative that contrasts technologies of the future with the ancient millenary historic center. The various exhibition spaces are located on Via Umberto I, from Saturday 6 to Monday 15 August, 4:00 pm-midnight.
One of the exhibitions presents the 3D drawings made by the Cuban designer, Arantxa Sanchez Puentes who arrived from Havana in July after winning a residency at the Felegnameria Salandra in Acerenza as a prize in the Design Havana 2021 competition.
Not to be missed, located in the municipal villa, on Sunday August 14 at 6pm, is an unexpected environmental sound installation called Arcadia, generated by plants connected to a technological system that transforms the galvanic conductance of matter into sounds. The result is an emotional concert not to be missed. The installation is by the Australian musician and composer Sam Nester known for his performances for the Lincoln Center in New York, the Brooklyn Arts Museum and the Paris Opera Ballet among the many prominent collaborations.
Arcadia installation and collecting sounds in forest © Sam Nester
Plastic Sea 2022 © French Cowboy aka Mia Macfarlane & Julien Crouigneau
FADA 2022 was curated by Lisa Lowenstein and presents 50 works of art selected from over two thousand collected over the last 12 years and published in the online gallery / showcase of the EcoArt Project platform (ecoartproject.org). On display in Acerenza the digital works of artists Cheryl Maeder (Florida), Harold Garcia (New York), the MYStudio group of Anna Borou Yu, Jiajian Min and Tiange Zhou (China and Boston), Sam Nester (New York and Australia), Rocco Davide Stigliani (Bologna and Tolve), Giuseppe Lo schiavo (London and Milan), the IRK magazine and the French Cowboy group - Mia Macfarlane & Julien Crouigneau (Paris), Peter Gerakaris (New Hampshire), Arantxa Sanchez Puentes (Havana ), Christopher J Carter and Raleigh E Latham (California), Stefie Gan (New York), and Costas Picadas (Greece and New York).
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