Doors open for Atlanta’s first-ever in-person Night of Ideas at 5:30pm.
Before the Night officially begins, explore Trashy Fashion, an Art Installation by Marina Skye in the Carr Room or the French VR Cinema Experience at Center Space.
Bar, music, and snacks are waiting for you at the Center Space of the Woodruff Arts Center, all night long.
Villa Albertine presents a French VR Cinema Experience with a selection of 3 amazing anticipation films.
On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World) is a virtual reality documentary that captures the voices of the people who experienced the real and imminent threat of nuclear weapons. For most, nuclear threat is unimaginable—out of sight, and out of our control. “On the Morning You Wake” makes that threat proximate and uses the first-hand experience of citizens in Hawaii to make clear the fundamental injustice of a world held hostage by nuclear weapons. Official Selection 2022 Sundance Film Festival / SXSW 2022 Film Festival.
Alteration is an anticipation fiction in virtual reality. Alexandro volunteers for an experiment carried out to study dreams. He doesn’t even imagine that he’s going to be subjected to the intrusion of Elsa, a form of Artifcial Intelligence, who’s going to digitize and dematerialize his subconscious in order to feed off it. Finalist – Tribeca Film Festival – 2017, Prix spécial du jury – Paris Virtual Film Festival – 2017.
In Planet ∞ world in ruins, only fungi and mold grow in the middle of gigantic dried insects bodies. When a weather change occurs, rain irrigates the arid planet and floods it gradually. In the water springs an ecosystem, populated by giant carnivorous tadpoles.
Marina Skye presents a scale model of Trashy Fashion, her upcoming installation for Science Gallery Atlanta’s HOOKED Exhibition.
The current cycle of commerce gives us the world at our fingertips and delivers it all to our front door from the rush of searching, shopping, buying, and waiting. We can have nearly anything we want with the click of a button—but at what cost? Trashy Fashion explores our relationship with the economy of convenience, Big Data, materiality, and the environment—all with an interesting Atlanta perspective.
Trashy Fashion, 2022 (Scale Model)
Art Installation
Dimensions: 5ft x 10ft
Materials: Mixed Media
Night of Ideas comes to Atlanta for the first time in-person.
What does this edition mean for the City of Atlanta and for Villa Albertine? Where do we want to go with the Night of Ideas?
Where are we going? Who better to ask this question to than the next generation? And who better to listen to their answers than the new Mayor of Atlanta?
Six students from local colleges and universities and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will give us their version of the future and kick off the Night of Ideas.
PERMANENT: EW, SN is a dance film and the debut project of a unique collaboration between The African Diaspora Art Museum (ADAMA) and Komansé Dance Theater.
PERMANENT: EW, SN references Radcliffe Bailey’s painting, “EW, SN”, from the permanent collection of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.
PERMANENT: EW, SN employs original choreography and music inspired by Bailey’s themes of migration and mobility, as well as the passage of time.
The project was performed and filmed at the High Museum of Art in Spring of 2021 and features an original music composition by Atlanta’s Orchestra Noir.
“In 1967, Atlanta’s most beloved son, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., debuted his manuscript titled “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” Here, King advocated for human rights and a sense of hope.
While Atlanta represents the highest educational, political, and economic aspirations and achievements of race relations over the past century, it bears witness to some of the most discontented and deprived circumstances for marginalized communities in the South and nation.
Better than perhaps any other city, Atlanta provides a platform for viewing these interactions between diverse populations within an urban New South environment and has prompted us to ask this question again.”
The panel, entitled “Where Do We Go from Here? Atlanta, Urban Development, and the Politics of Inclusion” will feature historian Maurice Hobson, urban planner Ryan Gravel and architect Wanona Satcher and will be moderated by journalist Rose Scott.
“Here, we will discuss Atlanta’s history–in terms of politics and culture, and chart new ways of moving forward with new and innovative ideas while implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion.” (Maurice Hobson)
For this performance, Ashlee Haze will read “A Heaven for a Black Girl”. In the moving piece, Haze envisions a space wherein Black women are free of struggle and police brutality isn’t an issue.
Atlanta has been historically shaped by both corporate growth and the civil rights movement.
The last 20 years have seen a staggering growth for Atlanta, from fintech to music. While some innovative and uniquely Atlantan efforts are under-way to elevate all people in the city (e.g. Black-tech), Atlanta still has a strong wealth gap and other socio-economic challenges (e.g. affordable housing, inequalities) that are mismatched to the demographics.
This panel will explore ways in which we might convene these two identities (business & society) in collaborative ways to face the city’s major challenges, now and in the future. How might we turn Atlanta into the hub for social innovation, contributing to a “net-positive” growth?
During this participatory panel, moderated by curator Lauren Tate Baeza, Dr. Anne Lafont (EHESS, Paris) and Dr. Cheryl Finley (Spelman College, Atlanta) will present their current research on African Art and the Black Atlantic from the Enlightenment to the most contemporary period.
Anne Lafont will present a couple of case studies which address the question of African Art in the era of slavery and try to define what it means to research African art of the diaspora in the early modern world.
Cheryl Finley will present from her new book project Black Venice, the first ever history of Black artists at the Venice Biennale, beginning with its founding in 1895 to the contemporary Black presence at the Venice Biennale.
Everything in the real world is being recreated in the virtual world. The Metaverse is a place where we will spend more and more of our lives. Who owns it, builds it and how it is built will determine the kind of world it becomes.
After her April 2021 TEDx talk, considered canonical viewing for those entering the digital art and metaverse space, Elizabeth Strickle is offering here a new glimpse into the future of our digital lives.
This panel features Accidental Queens, a French video game studio and Fabian Williams, Atlanta-based artist, for a conversation moderated by Alex Frankcombe about the relationship between art, technology, inclusion and social justice.
Accidental Queens was founded by three women. It is a video game studio that uses innovative tools of narration to explore everyday matters and societal issues. Gender deconstruction, digital intimacy, and fake news are just three of the themes its games address.
Fabian Williams is well known for his wall murals around the city of Atlanta and now, he’s entering the NFT and digital arena with a social and innovative purpose.
As we approach its 50th anniversary, where is hip hop going today? What does it mean to want to protect and preserve its archives? What does digital technology bring to this preservation?
To Joycelyn Wilson, hip hop isn’t only a defining culture and art form of our age. It’s also a powerful educational tool, one she uses daily in her job as an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Baked into hip hop is the art of schooling, the art of teaching and learning and innovation, and justice,” Wilson said.
Among Wilson’s initiatives, is the HipHop2020 Innovation Archive, a collection of albums, autographs, and other memorabilia donated by Atlanta hip hop DJ Michael Webster. The project is an ongoing project focused on designing a hip hop-based innovation archive.
The archive has both a physical and digital component, and includes open-source collections and educational resources informed by the Hip Hop Archive.
How did “Atlanta” become synonymous with “culture”? What does Atlanta’s cultural infrastructure need now to thrive for the next 25 years and beyond?
In this participatory Long Table conversation, we discuss the key figures, communities, and decisions that have made Atlanta a world-renown hub for creative expression and cultural export.
From André Benjamin (aka André 3000) proclaiming “The South Got Something to Say” at the 1995 Source Awards to Atlanta Mayor-Elect Andre Dickens exclaiming “Atlanta Influences Everything” at his 2021 election-night speech, the last 25+ years have marked a tremendous expansion of Atlanta “culture” from both a local and mainstream perspective.
In this Long Table, the artist and curator Floyd Hall is inviting the audience to participate to the conversation.
A Long Table is an “experimental open public forum designed to facilitate dialogue”. The event has been described as “a performance of a dinner party where conversation is the only course”.
The closing party is sponsored by Atlanta Influences Everything and features Salah Ananse for 1 hour of amazing DJ Set.
Co-founded by Bem Joiner, Atlanta Influences Everything is a brand and a creative consultancy, focused on combining civic, corporate and cultural understanding to harness the influence of Atlanta culture to do good and connect communities.