Ladies and Gentlemen, people of all ages, step right up!
Plastic Fantastic, the nomadic immersive environment for play made of water bottles, is pleased to present
Plastique Cirque Event and Exhibit
at the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence Program Space
on Friday May 10th, 2013!
In this ambitious production, 40th Street AIR Space resident and Plastic Fantastic's Diedra Krieger curates ten performance artists (Frog, J9, Julie's Hoolies, Kat Schneck, Kristen Bailey, Mary Wood, Pete Grauer, Rachel Brennesholtz, The Hoop Mistresses, and Upholstery) for the opening "Event" and eight visual artists (Anna Perricci, Becky Schwartz, damali abrams, Jenn Rockwell, Kelly Anne, Sean Stoops, Shawn Beeks, Woodley White) with her for an "Exhibition" featuring mixed media and video installations.
Play has an exceptional history in cultural production! Its trajectory is rooted in the history of 60s events, intermedia art and happenings, and follows contemporary collectives who use play as tactical media for interventions. Immersed in this history, Plastic Fantastic and its affiliates continue their search for ways to play as a form to act on serious concerns about plastic and water.
For the "Event" on Friday May 10th [outside] behind the 40th Street AIR Space building, in the Plastic Fantastic geodesic dome, performance artists, circus artists, and puppeteers unite for an evening of escapades that ignite the imagination to a new world of possibilities and ecstatic dystopias. Upholstery leads the shenanigans premiering "Marvin & Mae (& a sea of plastic)", a fantastical tale of loneliness and love told through puppets made entirely of plastic waste. This original work features music by the group and puppeteers Kristen Bailey, Kate Black-Regan & C. Kennedy. Mary Wood not being made of plastic herself shows off her contortionist abilities.
Inside the 40th Street AIR Gallery for the duration of the exhibition, Krieger's Meditative Play Tretrahedrons made of water bottle parts rise into White's prolific reproductions of bottles under Perricci's Tippler's planet, a chandelier made of hundreds of water bottles and LEDs. As Abrams and Kriegers' "Cartwheeling through Feminist Theory" loops, Rockwell's freak show leftovers are hidden amongst the bottles with Beeks' Grizzly Care Bears, figments of pop culture's imagination dumped into the context of a cold reality. Huey Schools After School Program' Earth Day project with Krieger will spiral around the Exhibit. In the second gallery, Stoops' illuminated silhouettes of local Schuylkill river creatures swim and play atop waves and waves of plastic pollution.
If it rains on May 10, please still come to the gallery for the "exhibit" and come back on May 17 for the "event" in our backyard!
But wait! There's more!
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Plastique Cirque
Event and Exhibition
Friday May 10th (If it rains on May 10, come to the gallery for the "exhibit" and come back on May 17 for the "event" in our backyard), 6-10pm
Exhibition Hours: Saturday May 11th, 11am - 2pm; Fridays May 17th & 24th 5-8pm
40th Street AIR Space
4007 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
Please join us to explore the sights and sounds featured in Plastique Cirque. For more information, or to view the work by appointment, please contact
playnicelets@gmail.com.
be asked to share your talents through a 
In addition, residents will have opportunities to work together to plan
exhibitions, both of their own work and of their outreach work. Monthly
meetings (or more when necessary) will help facilitate this work as
well as create opportunities for artists to share ideas and foster
community within the program.
