Those with a craving for the arts got a particularly sweet treat last weekend when the CRAVE arts immersion festival overtook Syracuse.
Among the events were Math in Motion at the MOST, Symphoria Inside Out, a zombie makeup workshop at the Red House and a "Thriller" flash mob in City Hall.
CRAVE also featured Cafe Club Surreal [16], a live performance art event, One Hello World [17], an online event where music is composed to turn anonymous voicemails into songs, and a DJ Spooky concert [18] at Goldstein Auditorium.
Check out more of The NewsHouse's video coverage [19] produced by Kaitlyn Richards [20], plus our interactive map above.
Festival preview
Originally published on Sept. 19
The Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation, in conjunction with the Syracuse Convention and Visitors Bureau and Syracuse University-affiliated Connective Corridor, will host the CRAVE arts festival and conference on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 20 and 21. The two-day interactive festival will showcase live art, film, dance, music, theater and spoken word events at Syracuse University, along the Connective Corridor route and in various art galleries in downtown Syracuse.
CRAVE, an acronym for Cultivating Resources in the Arts for Value in Our Economy, will kick off with its headliner, DJ Spooky [21]. Otherwise known as Paul Miller, the multimedia artist, composer and artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will give a public lecture on digital functionality and its relationship to presenting art as part of the 2013 Syracuse Symposium [22]. The event will be at 2 p.m. on Friday in the auditorium in SU’s Life Sciences Complex.
DJ Spooky will then perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Goldstein Auditorium of SU’s Schine Student Center as he presents the world premiere of “Happening,” a multimedia concert. Syracuse University students are allowed free admission to DJ Spooky’s concert with their school ID. Otherwise, general admission tickets are $22.
Other noteworthy events for the festival include Syracuse Stage’s Singing Sidewalk, Zombie Day, Café Club Surreal and “Dancing Light Theater: Math in Motion,” presented by the Museum Of Science and Technology in Armory Square. Connective Corridor buses will also have live performances as students make their way downtown.
Larry Luttinger, executive director of the CNY Jazz Arts Foundation [23] and lead organizer of CRAVE, said the festival is a collaborative effort to bridge together arts, culture and technology in Syracuse.
“CRAVE is meant to engage and attract new audiences,” Luttinger said. “We want people to engage art in all its forms, and in turn, engage and empower Syracuse.”
Luttinger said he hopes that CRAVE will raise awareness of Syracuse’s potential to be an economically thriving city in both private and public sectors.
Plans for CRAVE were first announced by CNY Jazz in January of this year after the foundation won a $62,000 state grant. The festival is just one of many efforts the foundation is funding to boost Syracuse’s economy through arts initiatives.
The organization also has two upcoming arts conferences, one of which will be during the festival. Artists, art councils, educators and community development organizations across New York State will gather in Syracuse from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, for Creators’ Conclave [24], where they will discuss how the arts can revive struggling communities through new audience engagement strategies.
Sam Read, a member of University of Washington’s School of Drama and the creator of Seattle’s Arts Crush Festival [25], will be leading the conference. Three winners will each be awarded $1,000 at the conclave to develop their plans for community projects, which will be blind peer reviewed. A registration fee of $45 is required to attend the conclave. Registering for the conclave also provides access to DJ Spooky’s “Happening” concert and various shows and exhibits occurring downtown during the festival.
For more information, visit www.cravefest.org [26].
