Home Live Art’s signature Alternative Village Fete is a wonderfully curious blend of performance, craft and folk culture. This is folk meets the urban with a healthy dose of the alternative, from Made in China’s wonderful world tour of food games to Victoria’s portraits, to crafts and cotton candy.
Curated by Home Live art, the Village Fete is tailored to each individual space it tours to, and this time a host of London-based performers and artists have come to toy with the elements of a traditional community event in the heart of London’s ‘urban jungle’, . Amongst the aggressive Brutalist buildings that line Southbank, the Village Fete pops up like a more softly-spoken urban carnival- cotton candy stalls, dancing on the green, vintage shops and local produce.
What makes the Village Fete so successful is its careful appropriation of participation and subtle blend of live art and traditional crafts and games. Home Live Art inject what are traditional community practices with a range of artistic disciplines, and provide access and engagement in an open formal play. The fete is not restrictive in content and allows for playful interventions and interpretations of folk culture from a range of local live artists. The fete is a potent example of an increasingly popular artistic practice that accesses specific urban sites and local community areas.
What the Village Fete does is reconstruct the urban infrastructure, intervening in the social norms of a public space and making use of its cultural associations. Ragroof Theatre’s Tea Dance or Victoria Melody’s criminal portraits inject not only a different narrative into the space, but also engage visitors and audiences in a different social convention.
By bringing a level of domesticity and playfulness, Home Live Art have curated a genuinely surprising alternative fete: one that celebrates not only the variety of narratives present in London’s cultural heartland, but also play with contemporary ideas of community in an increasingly urban environment. It’s the live that makes the Alternative Village Fete such a potent event, and in its tours it carries with it a growing archive of social interactions and playful interventions.
You can catch the Alternative Village Fete at Tattershall Castle Lincolnshire, Dark Materials Programme on 15th and 16th of October, and the Brighton White Night Festival in 29th of October. http://www.homeliveart.com/
Tagged: Home Live Art, Watch this Space