SIX CULTURAL HIGHLIGHTS AT VIVID SYDNEY 2019
Australia’s largest festival, and one of the world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas takes place 24 May – 15 June 2019. Each year Vivid Sydney transforms the city into a colourful canvas of light, music, and ideas, and is a major celebration of the creative industries. Here are Six cultural highlights at vivid sydney 2019.
An event which aims to define the cultural identity of Sydney, with a grand platform for out-of-the-box thinkers, artists, musicians, creative professionals and educators to showcase their talents to local and international audiences. Every evening, light installations and projections illuminate Sydney’s most famous sites including the Sydney Opera House, Circular Quay, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Darling Harbour and Taronga Zoo.
Below are our top picks for this year’s festival…
Pixar Animations Studio set to create incredible light installations in the sky featuring Woody and Buzz
Academy Award® Pixar Animations Studio are set to create an incredible light installation on Sydney’s iconic Argyle Cut in The Rocks with Woody and Buzz making an appearance ahead of their Toy Story 4 debut in June. Pixar will transform Sydney’s iconic Argyle Cut in The Rocks with a creative light projection that will delight visitors of all ages as they are transported through a visual feast of behind-the-scenes artwork and the evolution of iconic animation.
FKA twigs will perform a one-night only show at Carriageworks
Internationally acclaimed songwriter, director and dancer, FKA twigs will perform a one-night only show at Carriageworks for Vivid Sydney 2019. FKA twigs gives her all on-stage with performances revered as ‘iconic and hypnotic’. Drawing on various genre-bending works, including electronic music, punk and R&B, her avant-garde debut studio album LPI was released to critical acclaim.
Love guru and relationship therapist Esther Perel imparting her wisdom on modern love and dating in the digital age
Relationships are going through a complex cultural shift. Expectations on intimate partnerships are at an all-time high, while our tools for connection are quickly shifting with the digital age. Renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel is one of the world’s most listened to and respected authorities on modern love and resolving conflict. With the macro lens of an anthropologist and micro antennae of a therapist, she is perfectly attuned to the impacts that technology is having on human behaviour. Esther will be on her first visit to Australia to investigate love, lust, our desire for connection and delicate matters of the heart through her unique lens. In this Vivid Ideas exclusive, she charts the tricky territories of infidelity, online dating, screen addictions and social media overuse as well as the challenge of simply being present.
The director of Bjork and Sigur Rós’ iconic videos will be lighting the Sydney Opera House sails in a ‘ballet’ of psychedelic floral deities (pictured top)
This year, Los Angeles-based Andrew Thomas Huang is the torch-bearer entrusted with the Lighting of the Sails. The Chinese American artist-filmmaker is admired as much for his sci-fi suffused art as for creating music videos for the likes of Björk, Sigur Rós and Thom Yorke in which bodies, objects and nature morph, intertwine and dispel in hallucinogenic fantasies. Huang’s Austral Flora Ballet is a hypnotic tribute to Australia’s native plants. Together with choreographer Toogie Barcelo and the animation design team at Bemo in Los Angeles, Huang crafts a lush spectacle from such beloved floral gems as the New South Wales waratah, kangaroo paws and red beard orchids. The focus on indigenous species inspires the animated shapes, colour palette and textures in this magnificent opus. Huang and Barcelo collaborated with dancer Genna Moroni to generate fluid arabesques in direct response to the sensuous arcs and rhythms of Sydney Opera House. The result is a ‘ballet’ of psychedelic floral deities that bloom with human movement across the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Huang’s new piece underscores the connection between the human body, architecture and the natural world through the lens of Australia’s botanical treasures.
Award winning film director, Spike Lee, will be talking about race in the media in his first ever public experience in Australia
From She’s Gotta Have It (1986 and the 2017 Netflix Original TV series), Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991) to Malcolm X (1992) and Inside Man (2006), the African-American director and producer quickly established himself as a trailblazer of contemporary cinema and continues to cross cultural divides with each project. Spanning a 40-year career, Spike’s films are a potent cocktail of racial tension, urban violence and controversy sparked with comedy. As an oeuvre, they make as much of a contribution to politics as to pop culture. Few directors are in possession of such daring cross-over into the mainstream. Fewer still attain cult status. In this Vivid Ideas exclusive, which also marks his first time in Australia, Spike Lee reveals his celebrated body of work and personal views in conversation with Rhoda Roberts AO, one of Australia’s leading arts and festival producers, TV and radio journalists. With his trademark wicked humour, hear Spike talk candidly and with authority about issues of race in the media and Hollywood. Most of all, imagine what you can do with his insights on film-making that takes the message far beyond the screen into popular consciousness.
See more at Vivid Sydney.
