Friday-Sunday February 24-26, FREE

PRESS RELEASE:
CONTACT:
Walter Wright
119 Gallery
978 452 8138
artguy@119gallery.org
www.119gallery.org

XFest 2012: Improvised music, visuals and movement.
Lowell, MA
Friday-Sunday February 24-26, FREE

119 Gallery presents XFest 2012, a festival of improvised music, visuals, and movement. The format of the festival is simple and challenging: 20 visiting artists and 40 local artists perform. On Friday and Saturday evenings there are 10 half-hour sets that include two visiting artists and two local artists.

Performers include musicians, visual artists, movement artists and poets. Every set is an improvisation; the artists are playing together for the first time. What is improvisation?

“Improvisation can give us the skills to deal with many social and aesthetic issues of the twenty-first century. Although we have become adept at talking about aesthetic hybridity, cultural alerity, crossing borders (both earthly and cyber), and global fusion; few of us have really studied what physical and intellectual practice will make our bodies and minds ready for this brave new world … Improvisation can lead us out of our habitual responses by opening up alternative experiences – new physical sensations and appetites … Although this practice begins with attentiveness to corporeal experience it also develops a mental flexibility that can provide an intellectual map with which to chart new pathways for negotiating awkward and difficult crossings.” — Ann Cooper Albright in “Taken By Surprise.”

Improvisation is composition in real time. It is a process that breaks from tradition and focusses instead on communication and possibility.

119 Gallery promotes contemporary and new media art, innovative ideas and cutting-edge techniques with a rich program of exhibitions, performances and community-based arts services. We welcome people of all ages, backgrounds and means to explore and experience new, innovative art.

Supported by the artists.