For Immediate Release:

Fulcrum
Arts Announces Program Schedule For
A_S Festival: City as Wunderkammer
Throughout Pasadena & the Greater Los Angeles Area
November 2 – November 11, 2018

LOS ANGELES, CA – October 16, 2018 – Fulcrum Arts presents
2018’s A_S Festival, a regional celebration of art and science, taking place
from Friday, November 2 through Sunday, November 11, 2018. This year’s
festival, entitled A_S Festival: City as Wunderkammer, will
incorporate the concept of the “wunderkammer,” or “cabinet of curiosities,” as
a model for exploring the intersection of art and science. While often
described as occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, art and science are
instead understood to be powerful engines of contemporary culture. This ongoing
festival features exhibitions, performances, and educational programming. As a
thematic pivoting point, A_S Festival provides opportunities for discovering
the fascinations, curiosities, and tensions ignited by pondering integrations
of art and science. Experience the 10-day festival in public spaces and online,
in collaboration with a dozen locations including local science and cultural
institutions as well as the festival’s own website. For more information,
please visit https://axsfestival.org.

Website as Destination & Physical Locations
Organized rhizomatically, the City asWunderkammer website
functions as a visual/informational supplement to the Festival as well as an
extension of the wunderkammer model. Organized around two central tropes – the
macrocosm and microcosm – the website loosely positions exhibitions,
performances, and events within these categories. Additionally, the website
links the Festival to other innovative institutions and experimental entities
that have been contributing to the rich artistic, cultural, and scientific
landscape of Los Angeles for decades—such as the Carnegie Observatories, The
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and TheMuseum
of Jurassic Technology.

The festival will feature twelve programs comprising performances, lectures,
exhibitions, and other events in partnership with A Noise Within, Armory
Center for the Arts, ArtCenter College of Design, Carnegie
Observatories, The Huntington Library, Mount Wilson Observatory, Pasadena
City College, and Shumei Arts Council.

All but two festival programs are free (Shumei Arts Council’s opening
reception/tea ceremony on 11/3 and Fulcrum Arts Annual Benefit on
11/7).

Wunderkammer

Emerging in the Renaissance period, the wunderkammer is an
ancestor of the modern museum. These collections exhibited a wide variety of
objects and artifacts, and also played a fundamental role in the development of
modern science. They typically combined natural specimens, proto-scientific
equipment, and objects representing multiple disciplines, and marked the
intersection of science, metaphysics, and art.

The concept of the wunderkammer will expand to embrace arts
and culture on a civic scale as a means to reimagine the city as its own
cabinet of curiosities. Often referred to as “The City of Art and Science,”
Pasadena embodies many of the qualities of a wunderkammer, with an abundance of
art, science, and faith-based institutions all in close proximity to one
another. It is through these unique juxtapositions that we hope to foster new
ways of seeing and thinking about the interrelationships between art, science,
culture, community, and citizenship.

Supporters

A_S Festival: City as Wunderkammer is made possible with the support
of the National Endowments of the Arts, the Mike Kelley
Foundation for the Arts, the Pasadena Art Alliance, the City of
Pasadena, and TheEli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Events
Many programs run the length of the festival (if not longer). Here are a few
date-specific events to keep in mind:

Fri. Nov. 2 • 6:00pm

AxS Festival: City as Wunderkammer opens at City Hall in Downtown LA by unveiling the Lawrence English: Seirá project.

Sat. Nov. 3

Opening Reception for Shumei Arts Council | info

Mon. Nov. 5

LASER talk at ArtCenter | info

Wed. Nov. 7

Fulcrum Arts Annual Benefit honoring William Basinski and LIGO;
hosted by The Carnegie Observatories | info

Fri. Nov. 9

Wet Closing
Party at V Gallery, Pasadena City College | info

Composer William Basinski. Photo courtesy the artist.

FESTIVAL PROGRAM (as of press release date):

Nov. 2-11 (daily at dusk)
Lawrence English: Seirá

Australian artist Lawrence English will present a
site-specific public sound artwork that re-appropriates the decommissioned Los
Angeles Civil Defense System, using its networked topography across the county
as a means considering sound’s evolving role in the public sphere. Seirá will
consist of a twelve-minute sound composition by English that will be broadcast
simultaneously across six of the remaining civil defense sirens across the
greater Los Angeles area, every day at dusk.

Location:

Various
locations in Los Angeles County
https://www.axsfestival.org/lawrence-english

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Nov. 2-11

MOONS

Celestial bodies tethered by orbital physics to our solar
system’s planets, commonly known as moons, comprise a consortium of enticing
worlds that are rocky, wet, icy, cratered, hot, cold, and puzzling, some of
whose veneers are textured with mountains, lakes, concealed oceans, valleys,
volcanoes, geysers, canyons and plains, and have both water and heat to fuel
tantalizing speculations. Artists and sources contributing to the MOONS exhibition
include Alternative Moons (Nadine Schlieper & Robert
Pufleb), Carnegie Observatories, Caltech Archives, Kevin
Gill, James Griffith, Tim Hawkinson, The Huntington
Library, Melanie King, Sarah Perry, Steve Roden, Karley
Sullivan, Penelope Umbrico, Mount Wilson Observatories and Jacqueline
Woods.

Presented by Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design.
The exhibition runs through Dec. 16, 2018.

Location:
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery ArtCenter College of Design – Hillside Campus1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103
https://www.axsfestival.org/moons

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Nov. 2-11
Phillip K. Smith III Regular/Irregular exhibition

Claremont Graduate University will present a 2-gallery exhibition of light works by Phillip K. Smith III. The light-emitting sculptures are experiential experiments
that explore perception as they create physical situations the mind cannot
immediately grasp. Space expands, time slows, and ideas about infinity come
into focus.

Presented by Claremont Graduate University. The entire exhibition runs from
Oct. 29 – Nov. 16; Monday – Friday, 9:00am – 5:00pm.

Location:
East and Peggy Phelps Galleries
Claremont Graduate University – Art Building 

251 E 10th St, Claremont, CA 91711
https://www.axsfestival.org/phillip-k-smith-iii-dual-immersive-installation

Phillip
K Smith III “RENDER-Regular” (2018)

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Nov. 2-11 (daily)
Sunstar

Sunstar is an art/science work by Liliane
Lijn, artist, and John Vallerga, astrophysicist at UC Berkeley
Space Science Lab. Sunstar is a large-scale and far reaching
daytime installation sited on the historic 150’ Solar Tower on Mount Wilson.
Using engineered glass prisms and specially designed code, a spray of
diffracted sunlight is projected to specific locations, making the solar
spectrum visible just at the meeting point of earth and sky in the form of a
sparkling star. Sunstar also aligns conceptually with the
particular history of the Mount Wilson Observatory, since, its founder, George
Ellery Hale was a solar astronomer and the light spectrum is the
foundation of astrophysics. On the ground in Pasadena, the projected spectrum
spans about 250 yards. There will be a timetable that directs the beam to the
Pasadena locations of all the other festival participants at scheduled times.

Presented by Mount Wilson Institute

Location:
Citywide – projected onto each festival location (times TBA)

Sunstar from Mt. Wilson’s
150′ Solar Tower. Photo courtesy Mount Wilson Institute.

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Nov. 2-11

Dominique Moody: Our Garden of Dreams

Dominique Moody‘s Our Garden of Dreams will be a work of assemblage art in the form of a sculptural mobile garden that will include salvaged windows, doors, wheels, bottles and branches on a mobile trailer that will become a part of Side Street Projects’
fleet of mobile facilities.

• Workshop: Bottle Bells on Sat. Nov. 3 @ 2:00pm – workshop info

Presented
bySide Street Projects

Location:
Side Street Projects

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Nov. 2-11 (opening reception Sat. Nov. 3)

Crafted from the Earth: The Rugged Beauty of Shigaraki Ceramics

Crafted from the Earth is an exhibition of Shigaraki ware, a rustic Japanese stoneware made near Kyoto
since the 12^th century and deeply admired by tea ceremony
practitioners and international collectors. The exhibition, curated by Meher
McArthur and featuring exceptional contemporary pieces from Southern
California private collections, will explore how the science of the clay composition
and glazing and firing techniques contribute to the rich aesthetic qualities of
these unique Japanese ceramics.  

This exhibition is supported by The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles.

The opening reception will be held on Saturday, November 3,
2018 from 2:00 to 5:00pm.

Traditional Japanese tea ceremony demonstrations incorporating high-quality Shigaraki tea
bowls will be held at 3:00pm and 4:00pm at a cost of $10 per person, and will include
handmade, organic wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets). RSVPs
are required and can be made by calling the Shumei Hall at 626-584-8841.

Presented byShumei Arts Council

Location:
Shumei Hall

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Nov.
2 – 11

Wet

Wet is a collaborative video installation exploring the scientific and poetic aspects
of water from a multiplicity of perspectives. The project will feature creative
research by Pasadena City College students of the Art Science Studio, a special
course being offered in conjunction with the AxS festival, led by instructor Christopher
O’Leary. Through a series of performance lectures, each student will focus
on a specific topic related to the science of water. They myriad styles and tones
reflect the liquid nature of the topic, creating an at times humorous, at times
tragic, at times sublime experience of water, the most crucial ingredient in
the chemistry of life.

Closing Party: Fri. Nov. 9

Presented by Pasadena City College

Location:
V Gallery, Pasadena City College1570
E. Colorado Blvd.Pasadena,
CA 91106

https://www.axsfestival.org/wet

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Mon. Nov. 5, (7:00-9:00pm)

LASER Talk (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) – artist talk and performance

Fulcrum Arts and the Williamson Gallery will present a LASER Talk in
conjunction with the AxS Festival and the MOONS exhibition.
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is an international
program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for
informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded by Leonardo,
a nonprofit organization that serves the global network of distinguished
scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers, which focus on
interdisciplinary work, creative output and innovation. The AxS LASER
event will feature a sound performance by artist and musician Steve
Roden; Cindy Hunt on treasures in the Carnegie Archive; Lia
Halloran on her astronomy series; Dan Lewis on the
art/science of ornithology; and Peter Callopy on treasures in
the Caltech Archive.

Presented byAlyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, ArtCenter College
of Design and Fulcrum Arts

Location:
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery

https://www.axsfestival.org/election-day-parade-grand-buddha-marching-band

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Wed. Nov. 7 (6:00-9:00pm)

Fulcrum Arts Annual Benefit

• Honorees: William Basinski and LIGO

Fulcrum Arts’ 2018
annual benefit will honor composer William Basinski and The Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), Caltech. The event will
feature the world premiere performance from Selva Oscura, the
new album from Basinski and Lawrence English, a new collaborative work.

Patron gifts begin at $1,000. Tickets are $150 in advance
(purchase here) or $200 at the door.

Location:

The Carnegie Observatories

813 Santa Barbara St.,

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Fri. Nov. 9
Wet – Closing Party

See Wet description above (exhibit runs Nov. 2 – 11)

https://www.axsfestival.org/wet

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A B O U T:

Fulcrum Arts

Based in Pasadena, California, Fulcrum Arts empowers artists
to invent, inspire, and provoke. The 501(c)(3) provides resources and
opportunities for artists, collectives, and independent arts organizations to
advance their visions and contribute to a vibrant, challenging, and inclusive
creative community. The nonprofit advances the fields of art and science to
impact culture on a national level through exhibitions, partnerships,
interdisciplinary symposia and convenings, and residencies.

Fulcrum Arts is the new incarnation of
Pasadena Arts Council (PAC), an art service organization originally formed in
1964 to provide resources, communication services and other support to artists,
cultural organizations, audiences and visitors throughout the Pasadena area. As
the first umbrella arts organization chartered in California, Pasadena Arts
Council received its non-profit status in 1968.

Links:
• Fulcrum Arts – https://www.fulcrumarts.org

• A_S Festival: City as Wunderkammer – https://axsfestival.org

• Fulcrum Arts Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/fulcrumarts

• Fulcrum Arts Twitter – https://twitter.com/Fulcrum_Arts

• Fulcrum Arts Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/fulcrumarts

• A_S Festival Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AxSfestival

• A_S Festival Twitter – https://twitter.com/axsFestival

• A_S Festival Flickr- https://www.flickr.com/photos/axsfestival

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For more information, photos, to schedule an interview with Robert Crouch,
Executive and Artistic Director Fulcrum Arts, or any of the artists, or to
request press passes, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201
or lynn@greengalactic.com.