You have your priorities, we have ours. Some of you knew me from before CoolCleveland when I ran the Cleveland Performance Art Festival (PAF), and the rest of you missed out. Fortunately, the archives of the PAF reside at CWRU and I’ve been interviewing artists for our show, Everything Is Subject To Radical Change, (our tagline, which has never been more appropriate than recently). Join us on Fri 09.17 at BOP STOP, or on the livestream. You won’t believe your eyes. Unless you were there.Plus, put the Pekar Comics Fest at the top of your list, right up there with Mark Howard’s show at HEDGE, the Claudettes at Jilly’s, the FireFish Finale on Lorain’s Black River, the Fall Fest at Shaker Lakes, the online Bicycle Film Festival, and the Legal Aid Society’s Jam For Justice. Then you can take wing and fly.
Celebrate the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s 100 years of discovery with a special series of dinner and wine pairings featuring conversations with Museum experts on a variety of science topics.The next soirée is on September 24 and explores biodiversity in the Museum’s newly redesigned courtyard.
There’s a debate as to whether progressive values have taken hold in today’s society, or if regressive forces are winning. For those of us who lived through (and are still fighting) the culture wars, there’s no doubt that we won the battles, and we are winning the war.During the Cleveland Performance Art Festival (PAF) from 1988-2003, some of the 1000 artists from 24 countries were vilified for sniping about the lack of U.S. funding for AIDS. Now we spend over $35 billion a year. LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit art work was banned by agencies regularly; now same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states and anything explicit is a click away. The PAF presented each of the notorious “NEA Four” who were defunded, and had undercover vice squad in attendance — fortunately all the hyperventilating local TV news coverage was saved in the archives… and it’s hilarious. We have come so far. And those 90’s hairstyles!
Thomas Mulready talks with performance artists via Zoom from their homes in Germany, Tokyo, Vermont, Chicago, NYC and Cleveland, and is combining that with rare archival video for one show on Fri 09.17. Yes, he’ll talk about the times they almost got arrested, but mainly focus on how far ahead of their time these performance artists were. Find out how we got where we are today. Read More
Harvey Pekar, who died in 2010, acquired an international, albeit underground, reputation as a writer of engaging graphic novel/comics stories about the dreary lives of ordinary working stiffs. He was also a noted jazz fan and legendary curmudgeon.Each year, his Cleveland Heights hometown honors him with the Pekar Comics Fest, taking place on the Coventry Plaza named for him and nearby PEACE playground. It features comics & art vendors, a chalk art contest, a panel discussion, a zine-making workshop and much more. Read More
The Lakewood-based Young Filmmakers Academy, founded in 2017, has spawned a new project: the Cleveland Kids International Film Festival. It’s open to filmmakers ages 7-17 from anywhere in the world. Deadline is November 21. Read More
Kent’s Standing Rock Cultural Arts will host its 19th annual Short Film Festival in January at the Kent Stage. It’s currently accepting short films in all genres from local and International filmmakers for consideration. Read More
The Kent State University Museum has just opened a show called TEXTURES, which explores the complicated history of Black hair and its political, cultural, economic and aesthetic meanings. Read More
MON 9/20 Animals Misbehaving Science journalist/author Mary Roach talks about her new book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, exploring the intersection forensic science and conservation genetics, in a virtual program via the Hudson Library.
