Guerrilla Zoo [1] is a contemporary arts organisation formed in 2004 by founder and creative director James Elphick. [2] The group produce a variety of creative events from experiential environments, live concerts, festivals, immersive theatre, art exhibitions, arts awards, parties and masquerade balls.
The group fronted by James Elphick curated a series of irregular happenings starting in April 2005 [3] at Corsica Studios [4] encompassing live art, live music & performance art. These events gained equal measures of popularity and notoriety [5] and culminated with their last event at the venue in early 2010. [6]
On Friday 28 March 2008 at The Synergy Centre in Oval, London, Guerrilla Zoo held an event in homage to the works of cult writer William S. Burroughs which marked a changing point in the direction of its events. The popularity of the experiential event which combined all the elements of previous events but within an immersive environment set the precedent for future shows. Interzone was influenced by the strange and seedy city of Interzone described by Burroughs in his books, inspired by his time living in the north Moroccan city of Tangier during the late 1950s.
On Friday 7 February 2014 at Bunker 51 in North Greenwich, London, Guerrilla Zoo returned to Interzone to celebrate Burroughs centennial with a new experimental event, with blessing from his estate. Dazed and Confused Magazine cited it as "The ultimate centenary party for the late creative rebel". [7]
For ten days over August and September 2014, Guerrilla Zoo's artistic director James Elphick and Yuri Zupancic curated an exhibition entitled 'Animals in the Wall' featuring over 50 original artworks by William S Burroughs, alongside artists such as Brion Gysin, Shepard Fairey, Cleon Peterson and Matt Black of Coldcut, amongst others. The exhibition was premiered in Shoreditch at Londonewcastle Project Space.
In November 2009 Guerrilla Zoo celebrated the work of iconic figure [8] of the arts Alejandro Jodorowsky in a season [9] presenting his work through theatre, film and music at venues in London. Events such as: The première of Alejandro Jodorowsky and his wife Pascale Montandon collaborative visual art at The Horse Hospital, [10] also Brontis Jodorowsky starred in the solo production The Gorilla [11] based on Franz Kafka's Report to an Academy at Leicester Square Theatre, and the first Modern Panic exhibition [12] was held at The Old Abattoir, plus many other Jodorowsky-related events.
The Modern Panic [13] series is inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky's Panic Movement and launched in 2009 originally as part of Season of Jodorowsky. The now annual exhibition features provocative and controversial international artists and live art's practitioners. It has established "a reputation for introducing new and edgy art" [14] and been cited as "livening up modern art." [15]
In September 2010 Guerrilla Zoo launched a yearly themed and costumed ball which explores the darker side of fantasy. The Goblin King's Masquerade Ball [16] features promenade theatre, interactive creatures, puppetry, art installations & site-specific immersive games alongside live music, performance and occasionally market traders. In part inspired by the British conceptual designer and artist Brian Froud and the trend of Renaissance events in USA. The event attracts large audiences from around UK and across Europe and has been featured on Arte TV. [17]
In May 2013 the Make Believe Festival [18] was launched, a festival designed to explore the world of immersive experiential story-telling alongside traditional festival staples of live music and performance.
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker. Best known for his 1970s films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his work which "is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation".
The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture. The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA contains galleries, a theatre, two cinemas, a bookshop and a bar.
The Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is an annual nonprofit international festival dedicated to the exhibition of underground and avant-garde cinema, video, and performance.The festival offers an opportunity for independent artists who are frequently overlooked by other conventional, market-driven film festivals to showcase and be recognized for their work though jury and audience awards. In addition to screenings, the festival also hosts events to build community amoungst the audience. Founded in 1993, the festival is widely regarded as the longest running festival of its kind.
The Holy Mountain is a 1973 Mexican surreal film directed, written, produced, co-scored, co-edited by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also participated as a set designer and costume designer on the film. Following Jodorowsky's underground hit El Topo, acclaimed by both John Lennon and George Harrison, the film was produced by the Beatles manager Allen Klein of ABKCO Music and Records. John Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money. It was shown at various international film festivals in 1973, including Cannes, and limited screenings in New York and San Francisco.
Richard "Kid" Strange is an English writer, actor, musician, and curator, who was the founder and front man of mid-1970s protopunk art rock band Doctors of Madness.
Panic Movement was an art collective formed by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Roland Topor in Paris in 1962. Inspired by and named after the god Pan, and influenced by Luis Buñuel and Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, the group concentrated on chaotic and surreal performance art, as a response to surrealism becoming mainstream.
Australian feminist art timeline lists exhibitions, artists, artworks and milestones that have contributed to discussion and development of feminist art in Australia. The timeline focuses on the impact of feminism on Australian contemporary art. It was initiated by Daine Singer for The View From Here: 19 Perspectives on Feminism, an exhibition and publishing project held at West Space as part of the 2010 Next Wave Festival.
Lee Adams is a London based performance artist, curator and experimental film maker. Much of his work has been influenced by the ideas of French dissident surrealist and philosopher Georges Bataille.
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit art organization which hosts exhibitions, music events, software and electronics classes, a media lab, and a resident artist program.
The Dance of Reality is a 2013 Chilean-French semi-autobiographical musical fantasy drama film written, produced, and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, starring Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, and Jeremias Herskovits. It is Alejandro Jodorowsky's first film in 23 years. The film screened at Directors' Fortnight during the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The film is based on an earlier work by Jodorowsky first published in Spanish under the title La danza de la realidad: Psicomagia y psicochamanismo (2001).
FoolishPeople is a British theatre and production collective specialising in original site-specific and immersive theatre, as well as independent film and books. The collective was founded in 1989 by John Harrigan, who developed the theatre practice Theatre of Manifestation. Combining ritual, mythology, shamanism, drama therapy, strategic forecasting and open source collaboration in the creation of FoolishPeople's work. Each project takes form by merging text, performance, sound, art, light and the building itself to create dreamlike worlds that living characters inhabit. FoolishPeople were one of the early pioneers of immersive theatre in the UK and have utilised transmedia within their work since their inception in 1989.
Jodorowsky's Dune is a 2013 American-French documentary film directed by Frank Pavich. The film explores cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's unsuccessful attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune in the mid-1970s.
Alma Jodorowsky is a French actress, fashion model and singer.
Jake Yuzna is an American film director, screenwriter, and curator. Their debut feature Open was the first American film to win the Teddy Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and in 2005 Yuzna become the youngest recipient of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Fyodor Borisovich Pavlov-Andreevich is a Brazilian artist, curator, and theater director.
Ghislaine Boddington is a British artist, curator, presenter and director specialising in body responsive technologies, immersive experiences and collective embodiment, pioneering it as 'hyper-enhancement of the senses' and 'hyper-embodiment' since the late 80s.
Mónica Bello is a Spanish curator and art historian. In her curatorial work she discusses the way artists instigate new conversations around emergent culture and societal phenomena, such as the role of science and technology in the perception of reality. For more than 15 years she has been curating exhibitions and events internationally in collaboration with leading artists, designers, researchers and scientists of various disciplines.
Ho Tzu Nyen is a Singaporean contemporary artist and filmmaker whose works involve film, video, performance, and immersive multimedia installations. His work brings together fact and myth to mobilise different understandings of Southeast Asia's history, politics, and religion, often premised upon a complex set of references from art history, to theatre, cinema, and philosophy. Ho has shown internationally at major exhibitions such as the Aichi Triennale, Japan (2019), the Sharjah Biennial 14, United Arab Emirates (2019), and the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018). In 2011, Ho represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale at the Singapore Pavilion, presenting the work The Cloud of Unknowing.
Miya Turnbull is an artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is of Japanese and Canadian ancestry and uses this to explore her identity in her work. Her work consists of photography, video, projection, and masks. Miya has had several installations around Canada and internationally. Miya's mask work has been inspired by quotes from Joseph Campbell and Andre Berthiaume.