The four guest curators imported for Oct. 16's Aurora art event hail from Ukraine, Belgium, Hong Kong and yes, even Dallas.
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They bring with them a cosmopolitan flair that, for one lit-up night, promises to transform the Dallas Arts District into "an open-air playground of new media art: light, video, sound and performance."
The foursome began meeting last April, around the start of baseball season, and here they are close to World Series time, ball-parking strategies for making the Arts District both their individual and collective diamond.
The one local guest curator is Aja Martin, whose day job is director of the Zhulong Gallery on Dragon Street in the Design District. Zhulong and Martin are all about the intersection of art and technology, a pairing she contends "is all about being inclusive."
Martin has attended each of the four Aurora events, dating back to 2010 in Heritage Village and came away with an insight that gave her a focus. She loves the fact that an estimated 30,000 people attended the last Aurora, in 2013.
It is, she says, a community get-together.
"I see that it's families," she says. "People venture into the city for this event from all around. So, I want to do a show that speaks to my audience."
Her audience is "everyone who lives in or near the city." She's all for the largesse that recently gave Southern Methodist University, where she received her master's in art history, $45 million for arts programs. And she loves the fact that the Nasher Sculpture Center, where she used to work, just launched its Nasher Prize, which gave $100,000 to the winner, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo.
Dallas, she says, "is doing a lot of big things right now, and I'm happy to see that Aurora and its growth mirror the excitement in and around the city." But Aurora, she says, "really is for everybody." It is free and open to the public, so Martin vows to "do something spectacular" with her five fellow curators, each of whom gets an individual section in which to flex their artistic muscles.
Section 1: Klyde Warren Park
Martin is thrilled to be given the lush greenbelt above the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, saying it lends itself to the merging of art and technology as well as any space in the 68-acre Arts District. There, she intends to employ the talents of 15 artists, some of whom will erect free-standing sculptures. They include James Geurts from Australia, who's well known as a conceptual land artist, and the Estonian duo, Varvara & Mar, who have shown their stuff all over Europe, Spain in particular.
The guest curators and two resident curators, Shane Pennington and Joshua King, have lined up 80 "international, national and local artists" whose work will permeate the six sections. This year's theme is "synesthesia," which means a union of the senses, and it's not something the curators have taken lightly, Martin says, though the event "is all about light."
Section 2: Nasher Sculpture Center, Crow Collection of Asian Art
This one belongs to Tim Goossens, who has lived in New York for nine years. He was born and grew up in Belgium and worked at MoMA PS1 before ascending to his current job.
He's now curator of the Clocktower, one of the oldest nonprofit art spaces in the U.S. There, he has worked with such luminaries as rocker-artist Patti Smith. Goossens gushes about having as his playground the Nasher and the Crow and to work with such artists as German sculptor Bettina Pousttchi, who in 2014 staged a memorable show at the Nasher.
Goossen's section also includes one of the event's more endearing features. Memory Lane will showcase photographs submitted by North Texans, who offer up images from their private lives, circa the 20th century, sharing such family events as weddings, bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras.
Section 3: Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Hall Arts Center Parking Garage
Guest curator Carson Chan considers Berlin his home, but at the moment, he lives in New Jersey, pursuing a doctorate in architecture at Princeton University. He obtained earlier degrees at Cornell and Harvard. In other words, this is one smart dude who brings to Dallas his architectural expertise, which he intends to employ in Section 3. He has titled his presentation Second-Hand Emotions, borrowed, of course, from Tina Turner.
On the night of the show, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will perform, inside the Meyerson, Bruckner's Symphony No. 5. On the exterior walls of the symphony hall, Chan will project a video by Lynne Marsh titled Fanfare.
How's this for technology? He will take the added step of enlisting new media artist Niko Princen, whose installation will invite Aurora visitors to "blow out a candle in Amsterdam by blowing into a microphone in Dallas. That sound is then transmitted over the Internet and played on bass speakers, which could produce strong enough sound waves to blow out a nearby candle."
Section 4: AT&T Performing Arts Center, Wyly Theatre, KPMG Plaza at Hall Arts
The section overseen by resident curators Pennington and King will include an encore performance by the team from 3_Search. Just as they did in 2013, the team will use the sleek vertical exterior of the Wyly Theatre as a mammoth screening surface. This time, however, a European opera singer and a VJ will embellish the sensory experience.
Section 5: One Arts Plaza, St. Paul United Methodist Church, Dallas City Performance Hall
Guest curator Julia Kaganskiy is overseeing the easternmost section, which she dubs Altered States. Born in Ukraine, Kaganskiy moved with her family from the former Soviet Union to New York when she was 6. She requested her section, saying she loves the buildings, calling them "spectacular."
She's working with eight artists, some of whom will offer live performance. In her own words: "The installations, performances and video works presented here attempt to forge new lenses through which we might interpret our surroundings and our place within them, taking inspiration from sources as varied as meditation and spiritual practice, to hallucinations and dreams, to the mathematical truth and beauty of computer algorithms."
Section 6: Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Faculty members and students who have given to the world such alumni as Erykah Badu, Norah Jones and Elizabeth Mitchell from the TV hit Lost will offer performance and artwork inside and outside the building.
