Pockets of the cultural world are set to celebrate 60 years of Art’s Birthday, a milestone that the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society also plans to commemorate. To that end, the music organization announced that Art’s Birthday Edmonton 2023 will take place Saturday, Jan. 14 at Idylwylde Community League (8631-81 Street) that will start with a visual arts and video exhibition at 2 p.m. The evening portion will start at 8 p.m. featuring live performances from Soft Ions, Hitoshi Sugiyama, Nathaniel Sutton, Wayne DeFehr, Trevor DePagie and D.N.E.
French surrealist artist Robert Filliou concocted Art’s Birthday in 1963, declaring that roughly a million years ago, art did not exist until someone dropped a sponge into a pail of water. Filliou chose his birthday of Jan. 17 as Art’s Birthday’s official date, enticing enclaves of practitioners − primarily in Europe − to annually celebrate their craft of choice on that day ever since.
Edmonton joined the global Art’s Birthday festivities in 2008, with BEAMS taking over the event in 2010 with live performances taking place annually, the most recent one taking place in 2020 at the Strathcona Community League. The pandemic compelled BEAMS to stream the last two events via Twitch TV.
Admission to the visual arts exhibition is free, while tickets for the live event are priced at $10 and available at the door. Members of the Idylwylde Community League can attend the evening show for free. Additional information will be posted online at beams.ca.
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