Alliance News

Historic Christ Church in Old City is opening up its newly renovated Neighborhood House for special events and performances. The 24,000-square-foot building, which is across American Street from the church, recently completed a $4 million renovation. It is inviting rental use by performing arts organizations, community service groups, school groups and others.

After hours of maneuvering and digging and pondering, the museum installed the latest addition to its outdoor sculpture garden, a gift from the collector and philanthropist David Pincus - Claes Oldenburg's Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A, a nearly 10-foot-long electric plug, a cube tap grown to monstrous proportions, now protruding from a grassy knob outside the museum's west entrance.

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival presents Pig Iron Theatre Company, Philadelphia's OBIE Award-winning physical theater ensemble, in the world premiere of Cankerblossom. This freewheeling, visually surreal tale will be performed at Christ Church Neighborhood House from September 1 -18, 2010.

A number of recent articles and threads of exploration have gotten me thinking about the importance of the role of the arts and design in transforming our everyday life. I think we are moving toward an era where the traditional enjoyment of art (performing or visual) in a passive way in a facility/space constructed expressly for that purpose will not die, but will find itself joined (perhaps surpassed) by art that subversively injects itself into our everyday life - you don't make the choice to participate. It chooses you - it is an intervention that is unexpected. This can be disturbing, delightful, inspiring, sometimes all at the same time. I have written before about the "arts flash mob"phenomenon and its visual arts equivalent (which would include some of what we might consider "street art"), here, and here, and here.