If you’ve been feeling caught up in a swath of confusion over the departure of the Late Night Cabaret, worried that you’ll have nowhere to hang out after each night at the Fest, you owe it to yourself to read this. This year, we got some feedback from friends and artists, and decided to change things up a bit–so we created the Festival Bar. You’ll find a lot of things you like at the Festival Bar–drinks, dancing, friends, artists, music, Fergie, endless pieces of Festival publicity, and irrational behavior of all kinds.

BUT THERE’S MORE!! You’ll also find…

Turkish food from Konak Restaurant in Old City (new dishes every night)

A nightly visual media installation by Lars Jan (designer/director of James Sugg’s The Sea, Live Arts 2006)–this will include everything from cinematic mash-ups of classics by directors like Fellini, Hitchcock, and Disney, to stop-motion, dancefilms, and machinima. Here are just a few images you might find wandering along the walls of our warehouse:

<%image(20080825-Miwa Matreyek houses and electronics.jpg|350|206|Artwork: Miwa Matreyek. www. semihemisphere.com)%>
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<%image(20080825-La Dolce Vita.jpg|350|222|From Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.)%>

Arcade games like pinball and Wii Boxing (!!!!)
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Crayons and paper for the traditionalists among us
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(red + blue = Purple Mountain’s Majesty?)

Half of the Festival Bar will contain all of the wonderful things listed above–the other half is a black box theater where we’ll present two Live Arts shows–The European Lesson by director/choreographer Jo Stromgren (premiering August 29), and louder, a sound and sight installation by Norwegian art collective, Verdensteatret. Don’t worry, there is a very sturdy wall separating the two spaces.
I went up to 5th and Fairmount last week to visit the bar. Lars Jan and Fergie Carey were casing out the place for their respective purposes (art and bar). Lars gave me a run down on his plans for the visual installation. The theme of what you see will change from night to night, he told me. “It’s all these different ways of presenting an image using a two-dimensional surface.” Lars will also be organizing a massive vault of playlists, put together by local artists. These will be our sound on Sunday-Thursday nights. On Fridays and Saturdays, we will have live DJs (more on that soon to follow).

I asked Fergie what he had to say about the Festival Bar. The sawdust has settled, but there are still plenty of tools and two-by-fours lying around. Fergie picked up a piece of wood, waved it over his head, and shouted, “here’s to the future!”

My thoughts exactly. See you at the bar.