Synesthesia
Synesthesia: n. 1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
Synesthesia is a yearly festival that showcases a unique fusion of art forms in one cohesive two-hour evening performance. It is the culmination of months of work by musicians, sculptors, actors, writers, directors, photographers, dancers and a multitude of other artists who come together to engage each other in a cross-genre conversation.
Synesthesia is an ambitious performance piece that takes an unforgettable look at how artists influence, inspire and steal from each other. It’s a peak inside the dirty work of creation through the schoolyard game of telephone…with art.
And it all started with a fortune cookie.
An artist chooses a cookie and uses the enclosed fortune to inspire a piece of work from their genre. After a few days of furious work, the artist passes his/her creation off to the next artist, who then creates a piece of work inspired by that which was shown to them by the first artist. The second artist then passes his/her work to the next person, and so on…and so on, through a series of 10 to 12 artists.
Each of these “hand-offs” is filmed by a documentary filmmaker who captures the artists’ responses in these first moments of inspiration. This five-month-long game of artistic telephone is then presented through live performance and video, documenting the artists’ journeys…
Synesthesia brings the schoolyard into the gallery. It is live performance, documentary, artistic call and response, and a completely original look at the creative process.