PhillySound: new poetry

Tales from the 215: Stories, Slides and Serenades
Whenever Wednesday; 7pm · FREE with admission

"Philadelphia Freedom" celebrates summer in the city with an outdoor evening on the terrace of art, stories, slides and serenades at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The program includes:


Philadelphia Stories 1

Local raconteurs Shelley Spector (artist, gallerist, teacher and curator), Kenneth Finkel (WHYY's Executive Director of Arts and Culture Service), Nicole McEwan (writer), Art Casciato (Director of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, University of Pennsylvania) and host Thomas Devaney (poet and Penn Senior Writing Fellow) will tell their own stories—stories of the underdog, the proud, the loyal, the real and gritty, as we celebrate the humor, heart, and the hard-core contradictions that make Philadelphia such a great and heartbreaking city. Our five storytellers will each have eight to ten minutes to tell their tales.


Philadelphia Freedom

Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss (b. 1970, Philadelphia) whose images are currently on view in ICA's Ramp in her first solo museum exhibition, presents her slideshow "Philadelphia Freedom." Strauss, a self-taught photographer, has been described as the chronicler of Philadelphia's mean streets and the town's own Robert Frank. For the past five years Strauss has been committed to a 10-year project she calls the Philadelphia Public Art Project (PAP), a photo archive that will document the people and neighborhoods of her native city creating photographs that find beauty in the forgotten and overlooked.


The Loathly Lady

Dr. Wendy Steiner, the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Founding Director of the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania will present her pilot film of The Loathly Lady, the first animated opera, with score by Paul Richards, visuals by ICA-featured artist John Kindness, animation development by University of Pennsylvania's Joshua Mosley, and performances by early-music virtuosos.


STRUT!

>From the folks who brought you the Declaration of Independence—hailed as "the feel-good celebration of America we need"—STRUT! (runtime: 68 minutes) spotlights the world of the Philadelphia Mummers and their annual parade. Shot with no script and a point of view that shifts easily from moment to moment, the colorful, ebullient tale is told through revealing interviews, new and vintage newsreel footage, dazzling still photos, and glorious music. For more information visit the official movie site.

On view in the galleries through July 30:

• Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne
• Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence
• Soft Sites
• Ramp Project: Zoe Strauss

Visit us online at www.icaphila.org

Institute of Contemporary Art · University of Pennsylvania
118 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289 · 215.898.5911

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